tardisgirlepic - Tumblr blog

tardisgirlepic · 6 years

Text

Ch. 5: “The Doctor Falls” Analysis Doctor Who S10.12: The Time War: Floor 507 & Christmas Foreshadowing

<- Read previous chapter

Floor 507: Lots of Symbolism for the Episode

Floor 507 gives us lots of symbolism not just with the people, but also with the setting, itself. In fact, it offers more metaphors for the Time War and even foreshadows some of the Christmas episode.

Rural Life

At the beginning of “The Doctor Falls,” we saw a bucolic setting of patchwork farm fields, a large hill, and sheep grazing. It looked idyllic. In fact, this opening immediately set a calm, non-violent, happier mood, except for one thing. In “World Enough and Time,” this setting showed up in the 2nd close up of a window in the spaceship, so we knew immediately that any calm, non-violent mood would be short-lived.

Because this part of the ship was closer to the Black Hole, time was literally slower here, which matched the pace of life we came to see. However, like the ship, itself, Time was an antagonistic character, along with the Black Hole, creating desperate situations on multiple floors.

References to “Human Nature” & “The Family of Blood” Set the Premise

The scene shifted and we saw a horse-drawn wagon full of children, adding to the eclectic technology on the entire ship. Here on Floor 507, there were callbacks to the 1800s, like bed warmers in the farmhouse, although clearly the children were wearing modern clothes.

The scene seemed to promise a slower life for a little while, except violence already came to this floor. We seemingly saw what happened to the expedition(s) of Mondasian Cyber-patients, shown below. Like scarecrows, they were chained to Roman crosses in the fields, mirroring the odd scarecrow army in the 10th Doctor 2-parter “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood,” where the Doctor turned himself human. This immediately set the premise of one group being targeted for their qualities and converted if caught.

However, the crosses made these bio-mechanical Cyber-patient zombies symbols of a face of a martyred 12th Doctor. (Bill, the 12th Doctor, and Missy were all associated with the cross in this episode.)

Because these Mondasian Cyber-patients on Floor 507 were without headgear, they were in constant pain, like the Star Whale in “The Beast Below.” Suffering on the cross certainly applied to them. They were martyred beings in the quest for freedom during Operation Exodus.

This brings up moral and ethical questions, which DW has touched on at times because wars create monsters on both sides. How far does a group go to survive, including forcing people to become cyborgs? On the other side, did the rural people know these Cyber-patient scarecrows felt constant pain? What, if anything, would the rural people have done differently, if they did know? Their priority was the children. In fact, these questions become important because they are part of the reason people need redemption in the first place.

Going Back to its Roots: The Man Who Fell to Earth

Regardless of the Cybermen madness, Floor 507 at the opening still set the mood of a slower, quieter life, in stark contrast to the dirty, decaying city life on Floor 1056. In fact, the wagon traveling down the road brought visions of a scene from The Man Who Fell to Earth. It was clear from that movie that Newton had been on Earth a long time because he saw visions of a bucolic setting from the 1800s. DW seems to be paying tribute here to the novel the program is based on.

But it’s more than that, too. It’s going back to the very root of the story in another way. The subtext in the movie shows that the man who fell was actually the boy who fell to Earth. This matches other independent subtext that we’ve examined in Chapter 18 of the Fairytales document: the Doctor at the epicenter was really a child or barely more than one, even if he didn’t look like it. The 1st Doctor fits this, as well as a Child archetype.

The Homestead Symbolism

Visions of the past were repeated again, when the wagon pulled up outside the farmhouse, shown below. The imagery that spoke the loudest to me at first glance was the much older stonework in disrepair with plants growing in the cracks. It was part of an old foundation that included the remnants of a stone building with a fireplace. It spoke of a time long gone.

In contrast, the farmhouse, springing out of the old remnants around it, was much newer and could easily be a home from today with what looked like modern roofing. The mix of technological eras was a theme in both parts of the finale and spoke to something the Doctor said to young Davros in “The Magician’s Apprentice,” when he ended up on Skaro by mistake.

DOCTOR: No, this is a war. A very old one, going by the mix of technology. Which war is this? I get them all muddled up.

Therefore, the mix in technology on this prison ship told us that this war was an old one.

We can glean much more meaning from this setting of the entire homestead (farmhouse, barn, windmill, old building, etc.) since they provide abundant imagery, including foreshadowing for Christmas.

The Farmhouse

The farmhouse, at first glance, seemed like a rather simple symbol, but it was actually quite complex.

A Welcoming Haven One of the first things we saw was that it was a welcoming haven for the children, as Hazran greeted them with open arms, shown below. We saw the children, except Alit, run to her, squealing in delight to see her again.

We found out later that the children came from around the community to stay at the house, so adults from the community could more easily protect them when the Cybermen came to take the children.

The Waltons Reference Foreshadows Xmas Surprisingly, Missy added to the symbolism of the farmhouse, mentioning The Waltons later on. Really? She knew about such things? The Waltons was an American TV series that ran from 1972 to 1981. The show highlighted the lives of the Waltons, an impoverished rural family living in Virginia, struggling through the Great Depression. The later years touched on World War II.

The main themes of the show were important to what was happening in “The Doctor Falls.” One of them included being kind and hospitable to both neighbors and strangers. We saw that, for example, with Hazran, taking in various people: the children, the Doctor, and Nardole, although Hazran was scared of CyberBill.

The other major theme of The Waltons was the importance of family, especially during adverse times. “The Doctor Falls” didn’t really address the family aspect beyond having an extended family-type atmosphere with Hazran welcoming the children. Hazran did ask Nardole about his family, which he knew nothing about. Not knowing about one’s origins was a theme, as we saw with the Doctor, Nardole, and Bill.

In prior analyses, we examined the subtext that said the Doctor had to learn who his family was, at least in part, so this theme should be part of the Christmas special. Keep in mind that because DW is told in metaphor, it could always end up in subtext rather than a direct callout.

The Changing Face of the Farmhouse The farmhouse represented a non-verbal character with a changing personality. Initially, Hazran personified the welcoming aspect of the house. After a short time, shown below, the colonists upgraded the farmhouse with a rudimentary technological fortification. The house had the beginning of sandbags walls, which would grow quite tall, along with wooden barricades made of pointy stakes.

Later, we saw the transformed house, shown below, in a shroud of darkness even with multiple suns shining, symbolizing Hell had caught up to it. Not only was there a high sandbag wall around the foundation with more barricades, but also the newly boarded windows had gun loops, the holes in the boards to shoot from.

The personality of the house had changed. It no longer projected the welcoming, slumber-party-like atmosphere that we saw at the beginning with the children. Instead, it reflected war. Correspondingly, Hazran had a rifle and was quick to use it against CyberBill.

This fortification was not that different from Bill’s and other patients’ upgrades to Cybermen, except the farmhouse showed us the other side of the war. So we were seeing the motivations for escalating war technologies on both sides.

In another upgrade in technology, Nardole rigged the automatic firing of rifles (red arrow example) from the gun loops.

The Doctor, himself, mirrored not just Hazran, but also the house and its armament. Below, he was sitting in a rocking chair on the farmhouse porch holding a rifle.

Ultimately, though, the house became a symbol of hopeless desperation to save the children inside. It could no longer protect them. Nardole had to help the children and some adults escape while the Doctor drew the Cybermen’s attention. Again, the Doctor mirrored that hopeless desperation at the end and tried to protect the children and adults in the only way left to him, blowing himself up with the Cybermen.

DOCTOR: Without hope. Without witness. Without reward.

The Alamo: A Symbol of Heroic Resistance to Oppression & a Turning Point in the War The heroic stand of the people at the farmhouse and especially by the Doctor gained even more significance with Nardole’s mention of the Alamo. It was a reference to a pivotal event in the 6-month-long Texas Revolution from Mexico, which put this farmhouse and associated events into perspective of the broader Time War.

Leading up to the revolution and to Battle of the Alamo, the Mexican government’s increasingly dictatorial policies incited the colonists in the northern border region of Mexican Texas. They were mostly immigrants from the United States, and they revolted on October 2, 1835.

For 13 days, starting in February 1836, a group of Texan defenders housed in the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas, held out courageously before President General Antonio López de Santa Anna and the Mexican army, which vastly outnumbered the defenders, finally overpowered them.

At the end of the Battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, Wikipedia says that “fewer than fifty of the almost 250 Texians who had occupied the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas, were alive.”

Santa Anna’s cruelty during the battle “inspired many Texians—both Texas settlers and adventurers from the United States—to join the Texian Army.” The battle cry "Remember the Alamo" spurred on the rebellion, and, according to Wikipedia, “buoyed by a desire for revenge, the Texians defeated the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto, on April 21, 1836, ending the revolution.”

The Alamo became a symbol of heroic resistance and undying self-sacrifice and represented the turning point in the war. Therefore, the farmhouse represented the symbolism of the Alamo, marking this as the pivotal turning point of the Time War. The long Time War was nearly over because the Doctor came back to near the beginning – symbolized by Alit and by the 1st Doctor – to change the future from the past.

The Phoenix & the Epicenter of the War At the end of the episode, we saw the Doctor rise from the ashes, gaining new life. Therefore, he symbolized the Phoenix ("The Pyramid at the End of the World" analysis), like Bill. However, there was another Phoenix, which we haven’t discussed. The newer farmhouse, too, was a Phoenix rising from the symbolic ashes of the older ruins, as shown below. This is a very important point because it gives us a lot of symbolism.

Because this war on the ship represented the Time War and because the new farmhouse represented, in part, the turning point of the war, the older ruins represented the epicenter of where it started.

We examined how the Doctor would have to go back to the beginning to get to the timeline of the Doctor, who was at the epicenter (Chapter 18: Doctor Mysterio Analysis Part 5: Rescuing Children & Missy/Master). And that’s why Nardole and the children had to go back in time by moving to Floor 502, which most likely was meant to be the very epicenter of the war, the symbolic time period where it started, because we only have one episode left of Capaldi’s run.

Therefore, in the 2017 Christmas special, we have to go back to an older time. Of course, DW’s metaphors will take us to a different setting, which appears to be World War I. And that makes complete sense.

Here’s the thing. I mentioned in the previous chapter that there have been multiple time wars. The 1st Doctor started one on purpose, using the metaphor of ancient Rome burning. The 5th Doctor started one by accident in the metaphor of the Great Fire of London, but he didn’t try to stop it. In fact, he said it should burn. Then, in the 9th Doctor episode “World War Three,” we had a reference not only to WWIII, but by metaphor it represented the 3rd time war.

In the Christmas episode, we are going back to the 1st time war represented by WWI, as we should expect, since that is the beginning of the global wars. Also, it matches the metaphors set up, which would be the 1st Doctor. The Waltons being a TV show set in WWII, shows that we are going back from that, too, which is exactly what we would expect to get to the epicenter.

Other Things the Old Ruins Tell Us

Mirroring the Doctor Just as the farmhouse mirrors the Doctor, so do the old ruins. There was not much symbolically left of the original Doctor within the 12th Doctor.

The 12th Doctor made a comment to his mirror the half-faced man in “Deep Breath.”

DOCTOR: You are a broom. Question. You take a broom, you replace the handle, and then later you replace the brush, and you do that over and over again. Is it still the same broom? Answer? No, of course it isn't. But you can still sweep the floor. Which is not strictly relevant, skip that last part. You have replaced every piece of yourself, mechanical and organic, time and time again. There's not a trace of the original you left. You probably can't even remember where you got that face from.

Therefore, we have to go back farther in time.

The Fireplace & the Vestal Virgins Anyway, the most interesting thing about the old house is the fireplace. In Chapter 13: Clara Has to Come Back: The Love Story and The Ghost, we examined the meaning of fire in fireplaces, symbolizing passion, for one thing. However, fireplaces, themselves, hold a lot of symbolism. People would have huddled around the fireplace to keep warm, and it also provided light and security, so it represented warmth, light, and security, just to name a few symbols. However, there is something important the Doctor mentioned that connects to this.

The Doctor said in “The Eaters of Light” that he used to be a Vestal Virgin, 2nd Class. Vestal Virgins were priestesses of the Roman goddess Vesta, who was the virgin goddess of the home, hearth, and family. Wikipedia says of Vesta:

According to tradition, worship of Vesta in Italy began in Lavinium, the mother-city of Alba Longa and the first Trojan settlement.

So here is another connection to Trojans.

Anyway, Wikipedia says of the priestesses:

The College of the Vestals and its well-being were regarded as fundamental to the continuance and security of Rome. They cultivated the sacred fire that was not allowed to go out.

Allowing the fire to go out meant a severe whipping.

Since the eternal fire represented the security of Rome, the symbolism in the finale – that old fireplace was cold and also in ruins – represented the Vestal fire going out and Rome falling. That may be a reason the Doctor was a Vestal Virgin, 2nd Class. It’s probable that he let the fire go out, dooming Rome. Most likely, Rome is a metaphor for Gallifrey.

BTW, given all the imagery that we’ve examined so far, the farmhouse reminds me of how Daleks became fortified over time.

The Barn

The barn represented multiple symbols: isolation, endings, and beginnings. In the 1st example, the barn Bill slept in was a metaphor for the barn in “Listen” that the child Doctor slept in. He was isolated from the other children, so they wouldn’t hear him crying. It represented endings, as there were signs of potential suicide until Clara intervened in his life and gave him a new beginning.

In another example, the War Doctor in “The Day of the Doctor” originally went back to the barn determined to stop the Time War the only way he knew how, destroying Time Lords and Daleks alike. He isolated himself quite a distance from the city. He was going to end billions of lives, until he got a new outlook, giving him a new beginning, along with Gallifrey.

Of course, the barn on Gallifrey showed up again in “Hell Bent,” where the Doctor spent time alone, waiting for Rassilon. Ohila said the Doctor went back to the beginning when he went back to the barn. Therefore, in “The Doctor Falls,” it was fitting that Bill and the Doctor ended up in the barn.

The Windmill

Windmills hold a lot of symbolism, depending on the context. We saw several different camera shots of the one on Floor 507, as well as the one on Floor 502 at the end with Nardole and Alit. The first time a windmill showed up is right at the beginning after the wagon pulls up in front of the farmhouse, shown below.

Since windmills convert wind energy to electricity, they are symbols of conversion. Certainly, there were a lot of conversions going on in the finale with people being upgraded to Cybermen. Nardole blew up the windmill, symbolically showing the end of the conversions on Floor 507.

However, when I see windmills, my first thought is usually a reference to the Spanish novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The English idiom “Tilting at windmills” derives from the title character, who upon seeing windmills believed them to be giants, and he wanted to do battle with them. The idiom has come to mean attacking imaginary enemies.

Interestingly, there was a tilted windmill, shown below, about halfway through the episode. I see this as a physical representation of the idiom. Things really weren’t happening the way they appeared throughout the entirety of DW – in the same way that CyberBill saw herself in an illusionary form.

In fact, the fiction mist in the TARDIS, spewing out while the Doctor was dead, stopped after he resurrected. Therefore, things were illusionary until the fiction mist stopped.

The Forest

The forest was the appropriate place for the Doctor to be while shooting at the Cybermen. After all, he was Merlin, a.k.a “the wild man of the woods.” Additionally, it was appropriate that he was able to destroy Cybermen even though he wasn’t shooting at them and didn’t even have a sonic in his right hand at the time. That furthers the whole Merlin symbol.

Also, it seems appropriate that he should die in the forest since River is associated with it. Of course, there was “The Forest of the Dead” episode in the Library. However, there was also the phrase mentioned twice, “the only water in the forest is the river.”

The Time War & Christmas Foreshadowing

In general, the finale was metaphorically showing us how the Time War spread across time and what the stakes were. By concentrating on Floor 1056 in the 1st part of the finale, it allowed us to see the desperation in that part of the ship and that side of the war. Of course, Floor 507 showed us the desperation on the other side of the war to save their children. The stakes were high on both sides.

In one way, it was beautiful to see how this alternate universe model put the abstract concept of the Time War into a concrete example, such as we saw. At the same time, it was horrifying to watch. It brought real emotions into play as we watched what happened to Bill, especially.

Because this all was about going back in time to stop the Time War by changing the parameters that started it (not giving into temptation), it was inevitable that we would see a war in the Christmas special. In fact, in case you haven’t read it, I detailed this and the main points of what was foreshadowed in my post-airing analysis of “The Return of Doctor Mysterio.”

It’s mostly about how important the brains in the big “C” room are in that episode and what they really would mean for foreshadowing of Season 10. It explains how it would fit into the ideological war (the Time War) that we are seeing now, and how the Doctor had to turn back time to rescue the children at the epicenter of the war. That has almost all come true, except that the rescue isn’t over yet.

This arc is about Gallifrey and how to save it, so we should see this at Christmas. After all, the Time Lords freed themselves from the time lock and were hiding out at the end of the universe. It’s a matter of time before disaster happens.

The other problem that we examined before is that the 12th Doctor, by saving River in the Library, created a bootstrap paradox loop that they are stuck in. So this is all happening in looped time.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that people in the Christmas special are stuck in a moment of time, a metaphor for the looped time with the Library problem. A Groundhog Day hell. This has to get resolved.

The icy setting of Antarctica is quite appropriate to give us a preview of the Groundhog Day hell.

Last Thoughts

I’m looking forward to the Christmas special, although it’s bittersweet. I’ll greatly miss Peter Capaldi, but I’m also eager to see Jodie in the role. I’m getting my tissues ready.

I wish everyone a great Christmas and Happy New Year! I’ll start posting the analysis of the Christmas special within a few weeks of the airing.

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #the doctor falls #missy #master #meta #analysis #first doctor

10 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 6 years

Text

Ch. 4: “The Doctor Falls” Analysis Doctor Who S10.12: Coming Full Circle: Fighting One’s Inner Nature & the Soul’s Journey

<- Read previous chapter

Redemption: The Great Work & the Soul’s Journey Home

It may not appear on the surface that the other characters in the finale tell us more about the long journey home of the Doctor’s soul to redemption. We’ve examined some of what Missy represents. However, delving deeper, we will see that every main character symbolizes some aspect of the Doctor’s inner fight against his nature, leading to his redemption.

Bill, CyberBill & Her Hybrid Nature

I’m going to start with Bill since in “The Doctor Falls” she illustrates a simple and brilliant, but heartbreaking example of various aspects of analytical psychology, including the psyche and how the Great Work works.

The Ego: Bill Starting to “Wake Up” on the Hospital Roof

Near the beginning of the episode on the roof of the hospital, CyberBill was just standing next to the building as Missy and the Master taunted the Doctor, who was tied to the wheelchair. CyberBill did nothing. I can only conclude that her Cyber-programming (representing her Shadow) was in control at this point because the real Bill would have been begging them to release the Doctor or trying to save him somehow.

This is a beautiful illustration of a concept I talked about over a year ago in the Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who. We looked at all the dreams in “Last Christmas” and saw how the end of the episode left it open as to whether people were actually awake or not.

However, “awake” has 2 meanings, the literal and the metaphorical meaning.

Of course, the literal meaning is that people are not sleeping. The metaphorical meaning, however, is that “awakeness” means a state of awareness of self, which is a continuum of the conscious part of the psyche vs. the Shadow part. A fully awake person is whole, is Self, while a person who is not fully “awake,” still has a Shadow and can said to be not fully conscious.

DW dreams can be literal dreams, or they can mean that a person has not achieved Self. We can say that Bill is not conscious on the roof at the beginning, or so it seems from her later reaction of saving the Doctor. Of course, “not conscious” literally means “asleep,” so this can be confusing as to which definition is being referred to. However, in her case her unconscious was initially in control, and we later saw that she was in a dream-like state, i.e. an illusion.

It is said that many of us go through life asleep (or living an illusion, which is how Buddhists put it), which is meant to be taken metaphorically. DW is playing with both the literal and metaphorical definitions in many of the episodes.

One more thing about “Last Christmas.” I said that dreaming was meant both literally and metaphorically. The Doctor had gone far enough through the Great Work to be aware of the fact that he wasn’t fully awake, and I mean that in both the literal and metaphorical sense. His realization of the dreams mirrors Bill’s realization of her own illusion.

Anyway, back to the finale. As it happens, once the other Cyberman captured the Doctor, Bill woke a little, so to speak, and saved the Doctor. Bill grabbed the ladder of the shuttle, and Nardole said, “Bill’s back.” However, she wasn’t conscious enough to realize later that she zapped her energy beam on the roof to save the Doctor.

She had to reassert herself over the programming. In effect, her conscious part had gained some control over the unconscious part, yet she was unaware of her Shadow, as is the case in the Great Work at the beginning stage.

We could say that she was awake in a physical sense of being aware of her surroundings, but she was not fully awake metaphorically since she was in a delusion about herself. She was only beginning her journey to wake up.

This mirrors the Doctor’s arc, albeit Bill’s experience represents a very brief snapshot.

The Shadow: Beginning to Know Her Dark Side

At first, Bill woke up in the barn (physically) and didn’t realize that her consciousness was uploaded to a Cyberman’s body, so waking up here also represented the nascent awareness of self. So we first saw her as she saw herself: in an illusionary, dream-like state that the Doctor said was like a perception filter created by her mind. Even after seeing herself in the mirror, she didn’t recognize herself. This mirrors the real-world situation where most people are not aware of some aspect of themselves. The way we view ourselves is not necessarily the way other people view us, just like what Bill was experiencing.

It was not until she came face to face with CyberBill’s shadow, shown below, that her realization started growing that she was a Cyberman. Since she was just beginning to recognize her Shadow, she was at the first stages of seeing her dark side, which is Stage 1 of the Great Work. However, while she saw CyberBill’s shadow, she had no idea that she had the power of a Cyberman. There was still much for her to learn. Most of the initial Shadow remained in her unconscious. Because she hadn’t woken up, metaphorically, she was stuck in an illusion.

Experiencing the Collective Unconscious

It’s not until after she destroyed part of the barn that her Shadow moved from darkness into the light of consciousness. In the process, she confronted the anger and instinct of her dark side (Cyber-programming) and only then was she able to control her hybrid nature.

This instinct to zap things with energy came from the inherent nature of Cybermen. Therefore, this instinct is part of the collective unconscious of Cybermen. Interestingly, they are part of a hive mind, a collective, adding to that symbolism.

Actualization: Bill Integrates Her Cyber Side into Her Personality

After Bill had a realization of her power, she had several choices: repress it, use it for evil purposes, or use it for good purposes. Repression would lead to some type of complex, giving power to its Shadow. She chose to use it for good purposes, bravely stepping forward to help deactivate the Cyberman coming up in the lift. The Doctor later helped her out too, showing her that she could support the colonists’ escape by using her energy beam to open a hole in a wall.

This is a beautiful example of how Bill actualized her potential into her personality, progressing toward the next stage in the Great Work. However, in order to advance to that next stage, she needed one more set of events.

Achieving Pure Consciousness: Alchemical Marriage, Death, Rebirth

A stage of the Great Work isn’t complete without a union (alchemical marriage), so here’s where Heather came in. This fiery union (the Doctor provided the actual fire) between Bill and Heather created a newborn consciousness in Bill – a rebirth of her sense of self. This really was meant to be Self, skipping some Great Work levels, since she stepped out into space at the end, meaning she achieved pure consciousness with the Shadow side destroyed, represented in the image below by the dead Cyberman lying on the ground near the dead Doctor.

Pure consciousness could be taken not just metaphorically but also literally, as she was no longer human but her atoms could be rearranged to manifest as human.

She was the Phoenix rising from the ashes, just like the Phoenix on the jackets she wore in “The Pyramid at the End of the World.”

In order for that to happen, her old self, CyberBill, had to die, which freed her from the Cyber-programming. Symbolically, we saw it when the Cyber-suit fell down in the background – the ghost of her past. This opened Bill’s heart to greater depths and purified her to awaken to her greater sense of Self. Fighting one’s inner nature is over for this version of Bill.

Heather, too, represented a rebirth of the Doctor’s Self. She was also the Phoenix rising from the ashes – a purified Self, since she had achieved wholeness and the soul’s journey home. Going back to the TARDIS on Floor 0 represented going back to the Heaven metaphor and completing of the final stage of the Great Work.

This final alchemical marriage was one of a divine nature. Bill’s Mother of God Consciousness was Heather, while Bill represented the God/Christ/Buddha consciousness. Therefore, this is the metaphorical Divine Marriage: the Mother of God consciousness and the God consciousness. However, it’s only metaphorical. It’s not meant to be incestuous. It’s divine love.

And interestingly, Heather and Bill’s union was pre-destined. Back in “The Pilot” analysis, I mentioned that Bill represented William Hartnell, the 1st Doctor, and Heather was named after Heather Hartnell, William Hartnell’s wife. This is why Heather hadn’t been fleshed out, because her meaning existed in the subtext.

Pre-destiny Contradicts Free Will, or Does It?

Since we know that the Doctor believed in free will and he had Bill write a paper about this, it might seem strange that DW set up Heather and Bill’s reunion as pre-destiny. However, pre-destiny or free will depends on whether one is inside or outside the system of reference.

“Time Heist” gives us the best example of this difference. In that episode, the Doctor, as the Architect, who was a future self, was directing a self who went back to the past to rescue the Tellers in the Bank of Karabraxos. Past self had no idea why he was there because he had a memory wipe to hide his guilt of robbing the bank, yet his destiny was already sealed and directed by his future self. The Architect was on the outside of the system and had free-will while past self was on the inside and was pre-destined while there.

In the finale, the ship was a metaphor for the system of reference. Therefore, being on the ship meant being inside the system. However, the ship, while having a huge amount of symbolism as we’ve already seen, was only a small example of a system of reference.

The broadest system of reference is the entire arc of DW back to the 1st Doctor, which ties into the coming full circle that we’ll examine more below.

Anyway, from the subtext definition of the Hartnells’ relationship and from the application of the concepts from “Time Heist,” Bill and Heather were husband and wife (at least alchemically) before going inside the system and getting memory wipes, so they were back together at the end of “The Doctor Falls” where they started on the outside of the system. I see them mirroring the Doctor and River and even the Doctor and Susan.

Bill’s Hybrid Nature & the 12th Doctor

Bill’s hybrid nature – a human mind inside a Cyberman’s body – actually mirrors the Doctor’s hybrid nature. In fact, Bill’s progression in realizing her situation actually mirrors the process the Doctor went through. When he broke out of the confession dial, he was back at the nigredo stage of understanding. His dark side was in control, and it killed the general. Only after going hell bent through the universe did he realize that he had become the Hybrid, bringing his Hybrid nature into the light of consciousness. Like Bill, it was this knowledge that allowed him to confront his Shadow.

So Bill represented the struggle the 12th Doctor was going through all the way to the end of the finale when both preferred to die rather than lose themselves. Bill’s words mirrored both their desires, “I don't want to live if I can't be me anymore.” Of course, the Doctor will be struggling with that in the Christmas special.

However, the 12th Doctor’s struggle started in his very first episode, “Deep Breath.” In that episode, we saw that the half-faced man was a mirror of the Doctor. Also, we saw over and over how the subtext of many prior and future episodes showed that a face of the Doctor had to be part machine. True to form, CyberBill mirrored the half-faced man as a cyborg.

Bill’s & the Doctor’s Anger With Bill as a cyborg, we saw the results of CyberBill’s explosive anger and how much damage she could do. The destruction mirrored, although to a much lesser extent, the damage the Doctor could do when he was angry. In fact, the Doctor told Bill that she could no longer get angry because she was a Cyberman. However, his words also applied to himself as the Hybrid.

Because CyberBill’s power of destruction was enormous, like the Doctor’s, people were fearful of her, just like many were fearful of him. So once again the fear she engendered in the people around her mirrored what the Doctor experienced.

Bill, the Wheel & the Roman Crosses There were several symbols that told us Bill represented a face of the 12th Doctor in the finale. We saw the 1st symbol when Bill was asleep in the barn. She was lying next to a 12-spoke wheel, shown below (white arrow). Because the spokes were inside a circle, it symbolized that this face of the 12th Doctor was a prisoner, which makes complete sense since her consciousness was imprisoned in the Cyberman. She was also a prisoner in the barn and on the ship, along with everyone else.

As more proof that Bill represented the 12th Doctor, all around the barn there were items that symbolized Roman crosses, which, as we’ve seen, represented the 12th Doctor. In fact, for emphasis, Bill placed her hand on one of the crosses, shown below.

Bill’s image above mirrors CyberBill’s below, including CyberBill’s hand on the same cross symbol in the barn while standing in the same position.

Bill’s Cyberman Suit & the Doctor In yet another example of mirroring, near the end of the episode, Bill’s Cyberman suit fell near the Doctor, mirroring the dead Doctor. While Bill broke free of her Cyber prison, the suit falling near the Doctor meant he broke free of his prison.

What does this all mean? Missy said that Bill was the exposition. This wasn’t just a joke. Bill really was the exposition to tell us more about the Doctor. CyberBill mirrored Hydroflax in being a cyborg with very destructive powers, and it was the robot part, in both cases that was the problem. In fact, Hydroflax’s head was being controlled, signified by the flashing light and hardware on the sides of his head, just like the Smilers in “The Beast Below.”

Therefore, just as Bill’s Cyberman side controlled her until she recognized and integrated it into her being, the Doctor’s Hybrid complex controlled him until he did the same.

That’s not all. Like Bill, the Doctor had to come to terms with his power and anger and how destructive they could be. Also, Bill’s healing and unification with Heather mirrored the Doctor’s healing by getting rid of the cyborg Hybroflax and unifying with River.

There Are 2 Versions of Bill

When all the companions showed up at the end of the episode, Bill was the only companion who had 2 versions that called out to the Doctor. The first is shown below at the university in “The Pilot.”

The second was from “The Lie of the Land” when she and Nardole went to rescue the Doctor on the prison ship. In this scene from the clip, she said his name as he was sitting at the desk, but he looked like he didn’t recognize her for a moment. Nardole was in this image, but he didn’t say anything in this clip. He had his own clip by himself where he called to the Doctor. It’s important to note that the Doctor was not really the Doctor in this scene in “The Lie of the Land.” The Master was possessing him, as we examined in the analysis.

Given the 2 clips, there were 2 Bills, just like there were 2 Doctors (the one that died, and the one that got resurrected, another Phoenix). This wasn’t surprising since in the “Extremis” analysis, we saw that there were 2 faces of the Doctor in the subtext.

BTW, interestingly, Bill didn’t know about the Doctor’s regeneration energy in the finale, which implies that the Bill in the finale was the first one from “The Pilot.”

Also, at the end of the finale, there were 2 Nardoles, but one didn’t have a speaking part. Is Nardole’s non-speaking version representative of his superficial role in the Christmas special, for example, as a mention of his name? Most likely, there has to be at least a mention of him escaping with the children. Otherwise, this would leave an unsatisfying plot hole in the text for many people. Heather would have been able to move the ship away from the Black Hole, but that doesn’t mean she saved everyone, as far as the text is concerned.

Hazran & Her Redemption

It may not seem like there is a redemption arc for Hazran; however, there is one, of sorts. Her name is one letter different from Kazran in “A Christmas Carol,” which is not a coincidence. Elder Kazran was the cruel tyrant who ruled Sardicktown and the entire planet, controlling the skies and the sky fish, including the shark. The 11th Doctor changed Kazran through his past, as a 12-year-old child. Hazran is meant to be an incarnation of her past self, Kazran. And since we’ve examined how there was a gender change at the end of “The Husbands of River Song,” it makes perfectly good sense that we should expect Kazran to be a woman with almost the same name.

Since Floor 507 was meant to be Purgatory (at least for some, if not all, of the characters), Hazran was in Purgatory. We have to look at her entire arc with Kazran in the same way as Missy and the Master. Elder Kazran was the Shadow at the beginning of his episode while younger Kazran was the Child Archetype, displaying the potential of elder Kazran. The Doctor kept showing the boy’s Shadow to him, and the boy changed his elder self, who finally showed kindness and even playfulness at the end. He mirrored the 12th Doctor in “The Last Christmas,” as both drove sleighs with someone they loved. Kazran, being 12, was the 12th Doctor, and it was foreshadowing what the 12th Doctor’s arc was going to be. Of course, the cruel tyrant was the Master persona.

BTW, the characters were sleeping in “A Christmas Carol.” The Doctor and young Kazran have a conversation that gives us that information:

KAZRAN: The fish love the singing. It's true. DOCTOR: Nah. The notes resonate in the ice crystals, causing a delta wave pattern in the fog. Ow. A fish bit me.

Delta wave patterns are high amplitude brain waves associated with deep sleep.

So Kazran’s reincarnation is Hazran, who was a helpful, motherly type in “The Doctor Falls.” She took in children to keep them safe from the Cybermen and showed her kindness in doing so. While we didn’t see her going to Heaven (Floor 0), she did move up several floors with the children and most of the other adults. This was a symbolic ascension.

Nardole & His Redemption

Applying the same concepts to Nardole, he embarked on his redemption arc. He was the quintessential Child archetype, who had to learn to balance playfulness with the responsibilities of being an adult. His latest responsibilities were foisted upon him by the Doctor to take care of the adults and children from Floor 507. He objected initially because his dark side took over when in groups. Near the end of the finale, he seemed to be acclimating to his new role and higher floor assignment, having ascended with the group.

Alit’s Symbolic Redemption

Because Alit represented the Child archetype, she needed redemption. Not only did she achieve it symbolically by ascending floors in the ship, but also in a biblical way. The Doctor held out the symbolic apple from the Garden of Eden, offering it to Alit in the image below.

He added

DOCTOR: Then how about humanity's first weapon? (an apple) Tempting, isn't it?

As he said, the apple represented temptation. However, we have to go back to Grant in “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” to see what the temptation was. Grant got powers that he wasn’t supposed to use and even promised the Doctor he wouldn’t use them. But he did. As we saw, older Grant was wearing a mask that looked like an upside-down CyberLeader mask. He got extraordinary strength and destructive powers, much like Cybermen, although he did use them for good purposes. Grant’s use of his powers made him a target for being taken over, possessed, so to speak. And Grant was a mirror of the Doctor, so the Doctor wasn’t supposed to use some of his powers, either, but he did. Nardole even mentioned in Doctor Mysterio that the Doctor wasn’t supposed to interfere in others’ problems, but that never stopped the Doctor all the way back to Classic Who.

Anyway, in Alit’s case, she took the apple but threw it at the Cybermen, symbolically rejecting the temptation of gaining strength and special abilities. In this way, she symbolically returned the Child archetype to innocence before the Fall from the Garden of Eden. She also represented all the children, so they were all rescued symbolically, even though we didn’t see a literal rescue of them from the ship. That rescue may be implied from the ending where Heather piloted the TARDIS off the ship. However, I do hope we get a textual explanation of Nardole’s fate in the Christmas episode. His fate was tied up with the children. And adults.

It’s important to note that the Doctor symbolized the serpent in the Garden in this scene since he offered the apple to Alit. In the Book of Genesis, the serpent is not referred to as Satan, but it is in The Book of Revelation. It was up to Alit to either accept the temptation or reject it. Unlike young Grant in “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” Alit chose to reject the temptation, thereby getting a symbolic redemption.

Another thing to note is that Alit was associated with a horse-like machine on wheels in the barn, shown below (white arrow). While the machine didn’t look exactly like a horse, it didn’t have to due to being a gestalt system, like what Santa mentioned in “Last Christmas.”

The property of this gestalt system is reification, which we looked at before in the Fairytales document. Its shape suggested a horse. Therefore, it was meant to be a horse. Because it was on wheels like the Trojan Horse, it suggested a mechanical Trojan Horse. That certainly agrees with the other metaphors that we’ve seen. Also, this was another symbol that tied Alit with CyberBill and the Doctor, suggesting that all 3 were Trojan Horses that needed redemption.

Missy’s Shoulder Devil and Angel

We need to revisit something from the previous chapter, but in a different way. Missy, in her conversation with the Doctor on the roof of the hospital, said to him after she knocked out the Master that she was in 2 minds. While we saw the meaning of being in 2 minds, there is another meaning. She was of 2 minds, being torn between her shoulder devil, the Master, and her shoulder angel, the Doctor. Therefore, the Master was the externalization of temptation while the Doctor was the externalization of conscience. Again, this showed that the Doctor was a symbolic angel, who won Missy over to his side and redeemed her, and, therefore, by the various metaphors, himself.

BTW, there was one interesting piece of subtext on that rooftop scene that showed the Doctor as both the angel and the corresponding opposite. In the image below, the Doctor is lying on the rooftop after being attacked by the Cyberman. The white arrow shows an angel wing again with his jacket spread out. However, his other side is in darkness (yellow arrow). Also, his leg is in an odd position (green arrow). The corresponding idiom would be that the Doctor had “one foot in heaven and one in hell,” displaying his 2 opposing sides.

The Doctor’s 2 Shadows

The Heaven and Hell idiom extends to the Doctor’s 2 Shadows. When the Doctor talked to Bill in the barn, he had 2 shadows, shown below (green arrows). Using the Library metaphor definition, multiple shadows meant that he needed to die. In “The Caretaker,” he also had 2 shadows. Danny, a face of the Doctor, died to fulfill the requirement. However, there was something very interesting about “The Caretaker” shadows, as well as these shadows…

In this next image from the finale, the Doctor moved forward, and one of his shadows did something interesting, just like in “The Caretaker.” It became distorted (white arrow), unlike the one marked by the green arrow. It’s hard to see the distortion in this image due to the BBC logo, et. al., added to the image. Check out the episode to best see what I mean. The suggestion is that one is not a humanoid, which certainly goes along with the cyborg symbology.

The Doctor & the Trojan Horse

Back in “The Lie of the Land” analysis, we examined the subtext which showed that the Doctor was a Trojan Horse. The finale not only showed a toy Trojan Horse, but also gave us a reason why the Doctor was to be considered one. On the roof with Missy and the Master, there was no way he could win the war against the Cybermen without help from his old friends. Therefore, in order to assure their help, he changed the Cybermens’ parameters to go after Time Lords. He could be considered a traitor to his own people, which brings in the whole Trojan Horse theme. It’s possible these Cybermen actually were able to leave the ship. What happened then?

The Doctor’s actions here mirror Kar’s in “The Eaters of Light.” After all, we saw that Kar was his mirror in that episode. To fight the Romans, Kar let the Eater of Light beast through the portal to kill the Romans. However, the beast ended up threatening both the Romans and Pictish civilization, mirroring both the humans and Time Lord situation in the finale.

In fact, he told Kar

DOCTOR: So, you were supposed to guard the gate while everyone else went off to war. But you had strangers at the door, and a guard dog in the attic, so you let the beast come through. KAR: It was the only thing that could defeat them. DOCTOR: So you thought the Eater Of Light could destroy a whole Roman army. KAR: It did. DOCTOR: And a whole Roman army could weaken or kill the beast. KAR: Yes. DOCTOR: Well, it didn't work. You got a Roman legion slaughtered, and you made the deadliest creature on this planet very, very cross indeed. To protect a muddy little hillside, you doomed your whole world.

So the Doctor could have potentially doomed his whole world to protect people on the ship. In fact, the ship was meant to be a model of the broader universe and the Time War, so this didn’t just affect Missy, the Master, and himself. The Doctor had to redeem himself after being the Trojan Horse.

In another example, while he was born to save the universe (BBC’s line), he went hell bent through it unraveling time. So what we’ve been watching with Season 10 is that he’s gone back to change the past to set it right. He went back to near the beginning were the trouble began, the epicenter of the Time War.

BTW, the existence of the toy Trojan Horse is a great example of one way that we know we are on the right track reading the subtext from “The Lie of the Land,” et. al.

3 Suns: Missy, the Master & the Doctor

There was an oddity on Floor 507 with 3 suns. At different times throughout the finale, we saw what looked like at least one sun shining, not just during the day, but also in near darkness, as the image shows below. (They aren’t just reflected lights, like moons would have.) How did that happen?

In fact, we first saw the reflections of 2 suns with Alit in the middle, shown in the image below, when she looked out the window of the farmhouse at the Cyberman attack near the beginning of the episode. She was behind bars, a prison metaphor, which corresponds to the prison metaphor we saw with Bill and the wheel.

The Suns were really metaphors. (The lights in the darkness would have fit in “The Eaters of Light.”)

Missy told the Master:

MISSY: I loved being you. Every second of it. Oh, the way you burn like a sun. Like a whole screaming world on fire. I remember that feeling, and I always will. And I will always miss it.

It’s interesting that Missy talked about the Master burning like a sun since we’ve examined how the Doctor was a Sun. By extension of the metaphors, Missy and the Master were Suns, too.

Alit isn’t a Sun. If she were, she would have to die, as is the case with Suns in the Great Work. However, she is a reflection of Suns, representing the Child archetype of the Doctor, et. al.

When the Doctor met Missy and the Master to talk them into staying and helping to save the colonists, it was dark, and we saw 2 Suns at first with the Master and Missy, as tiny specks in the background.

At the end of the meeting, Missy took the Doctor’s hand and rejected his request to stand with him, shown below. However, taking his hand represented an integration.

Then, immediately, the camera showed the same wide shot from above, except now there were 3 Suns behind the Doctor, confirming that the Doctor integrated with Missy and the Master. Three faces in 1, and three Suns in 1, giving the Doctor immense power, which is why we saw the Doctor’s OMG long hair.

Near the end of the episode, the Doctor was able to blow up Cybermen by himself with amazing speed, whereas it took Missy, the Master, CyberBill, and him to kill one Cybermen with great effort earlier in the episode. Again, this is a demonstration of his strength, and like Samson from the Bible, he died using his strength to destroy the enemy.

Alit & Nardole: Symbols of Renewal After Ragnarök

We knew back in the “Thin Ice” analysis that Ragnarök was coming, followed by a renewal. Near the beginning of the finale, Alit was carrying a bouquet of daffodils, shown below. Daffodils, a spring flower, are symbols of rebirth and renewal, so she foreshadowed and represented the coming renewal after Ragnarök. The Child archetype of the Doctor would renew after getting a symbolic redemption.

Also, Nardole was associated with daffodils, so he, too, was a sign of rebirth and renewal. As the Doctor and Bill were saying goodbye to him, he was standing in front of the daffodils (white arrow). They are more difficult to see in the image than in the episode, but once he moved out of the way, they were clearly visible.

Also, near the end of the episode, he and Alit were on Floor 502 standing near daffodils. Interestingly, Floor 502 looked like a renewed Floor 507. There were a couple of larger patches of daffodils, too, as Nardole and Alit headed for the farmhouse to meet Hazran.

BTW, Alit and Nardole were mirrors: both were Child archetypes and represented faces of the Doctor. To suggest the mirroring in a physical way, Alit mirrored Nardole’s movements as he told Hazran that he remotely rigged explosions. In the image below, Alit’s hands were animated in the same way as Nardole’s when he mimicked an explosion.

Also, Alit and Bill were mirrors. We already saw the prison metaphor. Also, they both represented the Abandoned/Orphan Child archetypes. However, Alit represented the potential of Bill’s Child to return to freedom and redemption from the Cybermen.

Coming Full Circle: The 1st Doctor

It was inevitable that the 1st Doctor was going to show up. Of course, Bill and Heather’s existence suggested that right from the start of Season 10. However, more than a year ago when I went back to analyze the 1st Doctor’s stories, I saw something interesting. Things weren’t happening the way they seemed, just like in nuWho. For example, in the very first episode, the TARDIS landed in caveman times, and the chronometer said it was Year 0, so the Doctor said the gauge was broken. That was the start of things not happening the way they seemed.

In fact, there was a shadow at the end of that first episode, rather than the image of the person who made it. While it could have been just a shadow, it was clear that DW was using Jung’s symbolism in the next story “The Daleks.” Therefore, that very first shadow could be interpreted as a Shadow at the nigredo level, which fits with the primitive cavemen.

Even more surprising, it was clear to me that the Doctor was being observed, as though he were in a bottle in various stories. I got the distinct impression that the Doctor, Susan, Barbara, and Ian were inside a system of reference with a memory wipe, just like in “Time Heist.” In fact, those scenes were similar to the finale where the Master was observing the Doctor and his companions.

Anyway, all of this suggested that the characters were inside a smaller system of reference for the entire arc of DW, so there was a bigger system that we weren’t aware of. We had to come back to the 1st Doctor at some point, whether it was through Susan, Ian, or the 1st Doctor, himself.

It was clear, too, that at the end of “The Tenth Planet” (the 1st Doctor’s regeneration story with the Mondasian Cybermen and the setting at the end of the finale), once again things weren’t happening the way they appeared. There were 2 versions of the scene leading up to the regeneration in the story, itself, suggesting there were two 1st Doctors, just like there were two 12th Doctors, Bills, and Nardoles. One set may be inside the system while the other set are outside the system. Therefore, I see DW coming full circle, returning to revisit some aspects with the 1st Doctor.

This time, however, the 1st Doctor gets to glimpse his future (the 12th Doctor), even though he didn’t know it yet, while the 12th Doctor gets a glimpse of his past. It will be a fascinating contrast for Christmas, just like seeing Missy and the Master together.

The 1st Doctor Needs Redemption

It was clear from the subtext of the 1st Doctor’s stories that he was doing some terrible things. For example, Nero was one of his faces, linking back to the whole king and tyrant characters. Also, Nero gave Barbara a gold bracelet, which allowed the Animus to enslave and control her. This was equivalent to putting her in the brain room from “The Return of Doctor Mysterio.”

Also, the Doctor actually started the fire in Rome associated with Nero (the 10th Doctor even mentioned it), and then the Doctor laughed maniacally, much like the possessed 12th Doctor did in “The Lie of the Land.” Setting the fire was actually a metaphor for starting a time war. (There were multiple time wars mentioned in DW.)

Therefore, the 1st Doctor was acting many times much like the Master, and the similarity was shocking. In the 1st chapter of this analysis, we saw how ice represented Hell, so it was appropriate that we saw the 1st Doctor in Antarctica, which represented Hell. As a result of his misdeeds, he needs redemption, so that is what I expect will be part of the Christmas episode. We should expect plenty of subtext suggesting this. Of course, the resurrected 12th Doctor is there, too, needing redemption for his 2nd face.

BTW, the 5th Doctor was in a struggle that started the fire in “The Visitation” on Pudding Lane, which was the Great Fire of London. That, too, was a metaphor for another time war.

The Big Illusion

In nuWho, every episode has something that says things aren’t happening the way they appear, and when I went back to the 1st Doctor episodes, I saw the same things. Regarding nuWho, in all the 11th and 12th Doctor episodes in the TARDIS, there is a mist coming out of the floor. I believe this is the fiction mist that the 10th Doctor mentioned in the Library episodes. That mist existed outside the TARDIS, too, at times, but it was always inside. That is until the very end of the Season 10 finale. After the Doctor resurrected, the mist stopped spewing out of the floor. That’s really interesting!

But the fiction part doesn’t just start with the 11th Doctor. For example, in “Smith and Jones,” Martha’s first episode with the 10th Doctor, the hospital was torn from Earth and sent to the moon. There was no way this could happen in reality, so we know that something else was going on.

As for Classic Who, the 1st Doctor’s fifth story “The Keys of Marinus” showed how people thought they were living a lush life. However, it was all an illusion, similar to what we saw with CyberBill.

It appears that the Doctor and companions have been in a dream-like state for a very long time, living in illusions. In fact, quite a few of the episodes are part of dreams, like the delta waves from “A Christmas Carol,” even though they may not appear that way on the surface. I take the dreams and living in illusions as simply meaning that the Doctor hasn’t become whole, and this lack of wholeness has clearly been there from the beginning. So we had to come back full circle to make the Doctor whole from the beginning.

In the Next Chapter

We’ll take a look at the setting on Floor 507 and what that tells us about a character we haven’t looked at yet, among other things. Also, we’ll examine how the setting adds to the coming full circle theme, among others.

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #missy #master #1st doctor #the doctor falls #meta #analysis

1 note · View note

tardisgirlepic · 6 years

Text

Ch. 3: “The Doctor Falls” Analysis Doctor Who S10.12: Concepts for Understanding the Complex Symbology of the Characters’ Inner Nature Struggles

<- Read previous chapter

I apologize for getting the rest of these chapters out after several months have gone by. Life got in the way. If anyone went to the 12th Doctor panel at the Chicago TARDIS in November, that was me speaking up at the Q&A regarding the subtext. I never mentioned this set of documents, though, as I feel very self-conscious about advertising my work. Since I’m writing these documents to help viewers enjoy DW more, I should have mentioned it, and I will at my next opportunity.

Additional Concepts from Analytical Psychology

In the previous chapter, we looked at the characters fighting their inner natures at a superficial level. However, characters can represent many things at once, which DW loves to do, especially in Season 10. Bill, for example, as we saw in “The Pilot” analysis, represented all of the nuWho companions. Also, she symbolized a face of the 12th Doctor, which her guitar necklace at the end of the episode symbolized after integrating with him.

While this overloading of symbols attached to certain characters gives us a very rich subtext, it makes it much more difficult to explain. Therefore, to analyze the characters at a deeper level, we need to look at them through different lenses. One of these lenses is Carl Jung’s model of the psyche, which requires us to look at additional concepts from Jung’s brand of psychology, analytical psychology. (As we’ve seen, DW is heavily relying on the symbols from analytical psychology for the subtext.)

Even though Jung and Freud are considered founders of psychotherapy, Freud is a household name while the general public does not know Jung nearly as well by name. This is probably due to the fact that Jung’s model is much more complex than Freud’s, so it’s much harder to wrap one’s head around.

However, Jung defined many concepts that are very well known and far-reaching. For example, he defined the concepts of the collective unconscious, introversion and extroversion, archetypes, complexes, the shadow, and much more. In fact, we’ve seen how important shadows are in DW, although in a different context. However, they take on additional meaning when we use Jung’s definition. Moffat has a very brilliant but simple example of Bill’s CyberBill Shadow in the finale that perfectly illustrates some aspects of Jung’s model of the psyche. Therefore, her Shadow represents much more than it seems on the surface.

Also, we’ve seen how DW references fairytales, like Cinderella, and fairytale-like stories, such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. However, I named my first document of this series Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who for a reason beyond what we’ve already examined. Through Jung’s interpretations of fairytales (they really are important), he developed many of his ideas, such as archetypes, for his model of the psyche.

Besides the paradigm that we’ve already used to look at the subtext, we also need to look at Doctor Who episodes through the lens of fairytale interpretation. This lens will give us new, additional meanings of the characters. The bottom line is that we need to look at these episodes in multiple ways to get the fullest view of what the multi-symbolic characters really represent.

Before we start looking at the deeper meaning of Bill’s CyberShadow and the other characters, we need to take a look at the main parts of Jung’s model.

Jung’s Model of the Psyche

According to Journal Psyche:

Among Jung’s most important work was his in-depth analysis of the psyche, which he explained as follows: “By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious,” separating the concept from conventional concept of the mind, which is generally limited to the processes of the conscious brain alone.

Jung believed that the psyche is a self-regulating system, rather like the body, one that seeks to maintain a balance between opposing qualities while constantly striving for growth, a process Jung called “individuation”.

Jung saw the psyche as something that could be divided into component parts with complexes and archetypal contents personified, in a metaphorical sense, and functioning rather like secondary selves that contribute to the whole.

Like Freud, Jung believed the psyche is made up of 3 main parts, albeit they are somewhat different: the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.

The Ego The ego represents everything a person is aware of: thoughts, emotions, and memories. And Simply Psychology says, “The ego is largely responsible for feelings of identity and continuity.”

The Personal Unconscious According to Jung, the superficial layer of the unconscious is the personal unconscious, which is basically the same as the Freudian unconscious.

According to Wikipedia:

The personal unconscious includes anything which is not presently conscious, but can be. The personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed. The personal unconscious is like most people's understanding of the unconscious in that it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for some reason. Jung's theory of a personal unconscious is quite similar to Freud’s creation of a region containing a person's repressed, forgotten or ignored experiences. However, Jung considered the personal unconscious to be a "more or less superficial layer of the unconscious." Within the personal unconscious is what he called "feeling-toned complexes." He said that "they constitute the personal and private side of psychic life."

A great example here is the Doctor forgetting Clara. She became part of his personal unconscious.

A complex, according to Simply Psychology is “a collection of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and memories that focus on a single concept” in the personal unconscious.

The more elements attached to the complex, the greater its influence on the individual. Jung also believed that the personal unconscious was much nearer the surface than Freud suggested and Jungian therapy is less concerned with repressed childhood experiences.

A great example of a complex is the Doctor’s feelings toward the Hybrid. He ran away from Gallifrey because, as Ashildr said, he was afraid of himself. Obviously, thoughts of being the Hybrid were extremely distressing and persistent, and they had a great influence on his behavior. Therefore, Jung would say that the Doctor had a complex about believing he was the Hybrid.

The Collective Unconscious The collective unconscious is Jung’s most controversial contribution to his personality theory. BTW, his theory was used to create the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular personality test.

According to Simply Psychology:

This is a level of unconscious shared with other members of the human species comprising latent memories from our ancestral and evolutionary past. ‘The form of the world into which [a person] is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image’ (Jung, 1953, p. 188).

One thing to keep in mind is that Jung believed we shouldn’t take the entire model literally. It’s metaphorical. For example, if one takes the idea of a collective unconscious literally at first glance, that can conjure erroneous ideas, at least it did in me before I started studying Jung’s work. Initially, I didn’t think much of his collective unconscious at a literal level, but as I learned more and about how he came up with the idea of this collective, I could see his points. Also, once I realized that he never meant it literally, I could see how brilliant this was.

Jung believed that personality was both a function of the environment and heredity, which, although very controversial at the time, has been borne out, like many parts of his theory, by research, especially on twins.

A great example of how the collective unconscious works is to look at CyberBill. Instinctively, when CyberBill got angry, she destroyed part of the barn by zapping her energy beam because that was part of her so-called “genetics” of how Cybermen work. This instinctive behavior is part of the collective unconscious of Cybermen and what Jung called an archetype.

Regarding archetype, according to Ann Hopwood, Jung wrote

‘the term archetype is not meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited mode of functioning, corresponding to the inborn way in which the chick emerges from the egg, the bird builds its nest, a certain kind of wasp stings the motor ganglion of the caterpillar, and eels find their way to the Bermudas. In other words, it is a “pattern of behaviour”. This aspect of the archetype, the purely biological one, is the proper concern of scientific psychology’. (CW18, para 1228).

Hopwood, herself, goes on to say

The archetypes predispose us to approach life and to experience it in certain ways, according to patterns laid down in the psyche. There are archetypal figures, such as mother, father, child, archetypal events, such as birth, death, separation, and archetypal objects such as water, the sun, the moon, snakes, and so on. These images find expression in the psyche, in behaviour and in myths.

We’ve certainly looked at some of these archetypal figures, such as the sun and the moon, even though I didn’t describe them as archetypes at the time. They are an extremely important part of storytelling because these patterns come with certain specified characteristics that enrich characters.

The Self Archetype We’ve examined the concept of the Self before. It’s the unification of the conscious with the unconscious, which represents the psyche as a whole, making all that is unknown about oneself known. We saw how Self (capitalized) represented the individuation of a person, in other words self-actualization, integrating one’s personality: the person has achieved their highest potential. This is a goal of the Great Work, which we’ve seen.

The Self symbol is a circle with a dot in the middle, shown below, which is the same ancient symbol used for sun. The centered dot is the Ego while the Self is both the whole and the centered dot.

As we saw, the Doctor would not be healed and achieve who he was born to be until he achieved Self, coming to terms with whom he actually was, which meant confronting his dark side and accepting it to move past it. “Hell Bent” happened the way it did because it had to happen that way for the subtext story. The Doctor had to confront his dark, psychopathic side of not caring about destroying the universe for someone he loved.

In fact, check out the deleted scenes for Season 10, especially the one from “Knock Knock” at 2:40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bupTCmouOnI He confirms this.

The Shadow Archetype Finally, we get to the Shadow archetype. I’ve seen a lot of psychology sites define this in terms of the Jungian model, but none reflect it the way Marie-Louise von Franz, Jung’s protégé, does in Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales. She said Jung would get angry with students who took his concepts too literally and say, “The shadow is simply the whole unconscious.”

In general, it’s everything that isn’t known about oneself, including repressed memories. The Shadow generally represents the darker side of oneself, things we don’t want to know or think about. However, there may be good things about oneself that are unknown or repressed, too.

Nevertheless, von Franz said that we have to “bear in mind the personal situation and even specific stage of consciousness and inner awareness of the person in question” when we speak of the Shadow. It’s contextual and changes as the person becomes enlightened. And she goes on, “Thus at the beginning stage we can say that the shadow is all that is within you which you do not know about.”

Missy’s discovery of her good side is a great example of the brighter side of her Shadow. Did Missy repress her good side? It sounds like it since she and the Doctor used to be friends. Perhaps it was the Time Lords’ earworm of the drumbeat that changed everything. It certainly changed a lot and instilled hatred and revenge in the Master toward the Time Lords.

Missy could not become aware of her Shadow without moral effort, just as the Doctor couldn’t become aware of his Shadow without moral effort.

However, as von Franz said, “But this is no achievement, for then comes the much more difficult problem where most people have great trouble: they know what their shadow is, but they cannot express it much or integrate it into their lives.”

Near the end of the finale, Missy does try to integrate the Shadow into her life when she decided to symbolically and literally kill her dark side in favor of doing the right thing – standing with the Doctor to help save the colonists. Interestingly, the integration of her Shadow does go wrong, though, as her dark side makes a stand too, and decides to kill the good side. It’s a fascinating externalization of the battle of the inner nature one goes through to achieve higher levels of consciousness. One cannot advance without the conflicts and possible setbacks.

The Anima and Animus Archetypes We’ve looked at these archetypes before, especially in regards to “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” and the brain room. We examined how the unconscious of a man is expressed as a feminine inner personality called the anima while the unconscious of a woman is expressed as the masculine inner personality called the animus.

As we saw back in “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” analysis, the Animus was also the character out of the 1st Doctor story “The Web Planet.” Its use and context in the story is a clear indication that Jung’s definition of Animus was intended. The story, therefore, deals with the unconscious, even though it mostly doesn’t seem that way on the surface. The unconscious is a very common subtext subject in DW, going all the way back to the beginning of DW. Therefore, DW is beating us over the head again, especially by naming a character “Animus,” telling us we should use Carl Jung’s model of the psyche to analyze DW.

Jung believed that the Anima and Animus development had 4 distinct levels for each.

According to Wikipedia:

In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a man is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality, by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.

The 12th Doctor’s character arc beautifully illustrates this process.

The 4 levels of Anima development are

Eve, named after the Genesis account of Adam and Eve.

Helen, an allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology.

Mary, named after the Christian theological understanding of the Virgin Mary

Sophia, named after the Greek word for wisdom.

Of these 4, we’ve seen references to the first 3. (Helen is connected to the Trojan Horse, which shows up as a toy Trojan Horse in the finale.) Therefore, it seems very likely that there would be a character or some reference to Sophia or wisdom in the upcoming Christmas Special.

Wikipedia goes on to say of a woman’s Animus:

Jung focused more on the man's anima and wrote less about the woman's animus. Jung believed that every woman has an analogous animus within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials. He viewed the animus as being more complex than the anima, postulating that women have a host of animus images whereas the male anima consists only of one dominant image.

The 4 parallel levels of Animus development are

Man of mere physical power

Man of action or romance

Man as a professor, clergyman, orator

Man as a spiritual guide

The really interesting thing here about the levels of Animus development is that they correspond with the 12th Doctor. He:

Went hell bent through the universe with a terrible destructive power

Went to romance River

Became the professor and was an orator, giving TED Talks-type lectures

Became like Clarence the Angel 2nd Class in It’s a Wonderful Life; the Doctor got his wings by becoming Missy’s spiritual guide and redeeming her

That makes the Doctor the Animus, and we’ll talk about what this means in a bit.

Other Archetypes It’s impossible to list all the archetypes because there are so many variants, and they end up blending. However, Wikipedia does have an interesting, basic list of archetypal events, figures, and motifs, most of which we’ve talked about in some form as they’ve arisen in the subtext:

Jung described archetypal events: birth, death, separation from parents, initiation, marriage, the union of opposites; archetypal figures: great mother, father, child, devil, god, wise old man, wise old woman, the trickster, the hero; and archetypal motifs: the apocalypse, the deluge, the creation. Although the number of archetypes is limitless, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images, "the chief among them being" (according to Jung) "the shadow, the wise old man, the child, the mother ... and her counterpart, the maiden, and lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman". Alternatively he would speak of "the emergence of certain definite archetypes ... the shadow, the animal, the wise old man, the anima, the animus, the mother, the child".

So as you can see, DW is drawing heavily on Jung’s archetypes to tell the stories. Since Jung’s work with fairytale interpretations is how he came up with the archetypes, DW is begging us to look at the episodes as fairytales, including how to interpret them – in part.

There is one archetype that we do need to look at further to help explain the characters in the finale.

The Child Archetype & Some Variants

While I don’t want to get into most of the archetypes in depth other than what we already covered, the Child archetype is one that we haven’t discussed much, especially since there are several variants to look at that are important for the finale.

The Child Archetype

We all have an inner child, which is what the Child archetype refers to. Jung saw the Child as representing the developing personality. If we had one word to describe a quality of a child, many of us would say innocence. There is a playfulness and naivety that corresponds to children in general. However, there is the darker side where, for example, children throw tantrums and hide from responsibility. They are dependent, but as they grow they should become more responsible. The healthy Child balances playfulness and the fun side with the increasing responsibilities of the adult.

Carolyn Myss, internationally renowned author and speaker of human consciousness and spirituality, states:

The Child also establishes our perceptions of life, safety, nurture, loyalty, and family. Its many aspects include the Wounded Child, Abandoned or Orphan Child, Dependent, Innocent, Nature, and Divine Child. These energies may emerge in response to different situations in which you find yourself, yet the core issue of all the Child archetypes is dependency vs. responsibility: when to take responsibility, when to have a healthy dependency, when to stand up to the group, and when to embrace communal life. Each of the variants of the Child archetype is characterized by certain tendencies, including shadow tendencies.

When adults tap into the inner Child, these qualities and more come forth. For example, we saw the 12th Doctor’s playfulness of his Child come out with Clara in Season 9. However, the 11th Doctor best represents playfulness, impulsiveness, and spontaneity of the Child archetype, as well as hiding from the responsibility of dealing with his PTSD from the Time War. His anger and power made him a huge threat to the universe, which terrified his enemies. He was dependent, too, on people to admire him, which was partially what his episode “The God Complex” was about.

In nuWho, the long 10-season arc is about dealing with the damage of the Time War.

The 9th Doctor was left angry after the Time War and tortured a Dalek in “Dalek”

The 10th Doctor wasn’t giving 2nd chances, no mercy; he said that he had been full of mercy before the war

The 11th Doctor was hiding from responsibility

The 12th had to come face to face with reality and deal with the damage from the Time War to heal

Reacting to situations unconsciously through fear or anger, for example, can stifle the learning and growth of the inner Child. Since the Doctor had this problem, it was up to the companions to help make him better, healing him throughout nuWho. Clara even goes back to the Doctor as a child to help heal him, which is symbolic of helping the inner Child. It’s important for the Doctor to be conscious of his archetypal patterns and how they affect his behaviors in order to move beyond harmful issues. This is exactly what we’ve been watching with the 12th Doctor. He, like any soldier, is going through all the pain and torture of reliving memories and nightmares (the Veil is a metaphor for them), as well as tapping into that inner Child to finally heal.

Therefore, the Child archetype is extremely important, and it’s not surprising at all, in fact, it was expected that children would figure prominently in the finale. I even named Chapter 18 of my Fairytales document “Rescuing Children & Missy/Master.” I meant “children” in both the literal and archetypal (metaphorical) sense.

Nardole Nardole has taken on several roles which we’ve examined, but there is one that we haven’t looked at. In “The Husbands of River Song,” it took me awhile to figure out what metaphorical part he was playing. Once he lost his head and took off flying with Hydroflax, I realized that he represented the Doctor’s inner Child and the cowardly part of the Doctor.

In fact, Ramone and King Hydroflax also represented the Doctor. River wasn’t being unfaithful as it appears on the surface. These 3 faces are all different externalized representations of the Doctor. That’s why the sheriff’s shield from “Robot of Sherwood” was in King Hydroflax’s ship. Ramone was the romantic side while we’ll talk more about King Hydroflax in a bit. River was trying to symbolically kill King Hydroflax to help heal the Doctor of his psychopathic tendencies.

It’s all part of the rescue.

In the finale, the Doctor’s strength of destruction was symbolized, as we saw in the finale, by his longer hair, which we’ll also examine more in the next chapter with additional symbolism. As River said in the 11th Doctor story “The Angels Take Manhattan,” she and the Doctor couldn’t be together in the TARDIS for extended periods of time because they were both psychopaths. Therefore, killing Hydroflax (the psychopathic part of the Doctor) and being together on Darillium helped heal them both.

BTW, at the end of THORS, Ramone was the only face we saw in Hydroflax’s body while we only heard Nardole’s voice from inside. That implied that the Doctor’s cowardly side disappeared when he was with River, while his romantic side took over. In fact, there is a lovely deleted scene in “Thin Ice” at the link above with him talking with Bill about River, the Ice Fair, and setting a romantic mood for his wife.

Alit Alit was meant to be the physical representation of the Child archetype. She mirrored the child Doctor in “Listen.” (She also mirrored Bill, which we’ll get to in the next chapter.) Alit, like the young Doctor, felt different and apart from the other children. For example, while the other children in “The Doctor Falls” were happy to see Hazran, Alit looked around like it was her first time at the farmhouse. Then, she was lying on her bed while all the other children were playing. It’s similar to how the young Doctor separated himself and stayed in the barn-like structure.

Also, she had a problem listening to authority just like the Doctor. For example, Hazran told her to get under the bed and stay there. However, not only did Alit complain, but also she didn’t stay there long. She alone got up and looked out the window.

We’ll examine her and the other main characters more below because they fit at least one of the variants of the Child archetype. Please keep in mind there are other variants that I’m not listing below because, while they are used in DW, they are not essential for the finale.

The Wounded Child

Carolyn Myss states:

The Wounded Child archetype holds the memories of abuse, neglect, and other traumas that we have endured during childhood. This is the Child pattern most people relate to, particularly since it has become the focus of therapy since the 1960s. Many people blame the relationship with their parents that created their Wounded Child, for instance, for all their subsequent dysfunctional relationships. On the positive side, the painful experiences of the Wounded Child often awaken a deep sense of compassion and a desire to help other Wounded Children. From a spiritual perspective, a wounded childhood cracks open the learning path of forgiveness.

The shadow aspect may manifest as an abiding sense of self-pity, a tendency to blame our parents for any current shortcomings and to resist moving on through forgiveness. It may also lead us to seek out parental figures in all difficult situations rather than relying on our own resourcefulness.

A great example of the Wounded Child is the Master. The Time Lords drove him crazy by installing a drumbeat earworm in his head, and he wanted revenge in “The End of Time.” He blamed them for the abuse and other traumas for making him the way he was. He is the Shadow aspect of this archetype.

The Doctor fits the Wounded Child archetype too, but at a different stage. We saw his forgiveness of Bonnie after his war speech in “The Zygon Inversion.” Then, we saw that his own painful experiences awakened his deep sense of compassion and desire to help others, like Missy.

The Abandoned/Orphan Child

Carolyn Myss states:

From Little Orphan Annie to Cinderella, the Orphan Child in most well known children’s stories reflects the lives of people who feel from birth as if they are not a part of their family, including the family psyche or tribal spirit. But because orphans are not allowed into the family circle, they have to develop independence early on. The absence of family influences, attitudes, and traditions inspires or compels the Orphan Child to construct an inner reality based on personal judgment and experience.

The shadow aspect manifests when Orphans never recover from feelings of abandonment, and the scar tissue from family rejection stifles their maturation, often causing them to seek surrogate family structures to experience tribal union. Therapeutic support groups become shadow tribes or families for an Orphan Child who knows deep down that healing these wounds requires moving on to adulthood. For that reason, establishing mature relationships remains a challenge.

There are several characters that symbolize the Abandoned/Orphan Child archetype: Bill, the Doctor, Nardole, and Alit.

Bill While Bill was a real orphan, symbolizing this archetype, she also felt abandoned by the Doctor. Initially, she developed an inner reality of her mother, which helped her gain an independence that saved her from failing victim to the Monks. Then, she even developed an inner reality as CyberBill.

The Doctor The child Doctor is a great example of not feeling part of a family in the orphanage of sorts. He separated himself from the rest of the children in a self-imposed manner. Then, he was only 8 when the Time Lords put him into a life of service, as the Master said happened to Time Lord children. He had to develop independence in the absence of family. He saw Missy as the only person who was like himself, so he felt a great sense of aloneness.

Nardole In “The Doctor Falls,” Nardole and Hazran had an interesting conversation:

HAZRAN: I've never met anyone like you. So where are you from? NARDOLE: I don't know. I was sort of found.

Because Nardole didn’t know where he was from being sort of found, these imply that he also was the Abandoned/Orphan Child archetype. That fits with being a face of the Doctor and the Doctor’s inner Child.

Alit As we’ve seen, Alit very much mirrors the child Doctor, so it’s not surprising that she would be the Abandoned/Orphan Child archetype.

Dependent Child

Carolyn Myss states:

The Needy or Dependent Child carries a heavy feeling inside that nothing is ever enough, and is always seeking to replace something lost in childhood – although exactly what is never clear. As with the Wounded Child, this leads to bouts of depression, only more severe. The Dependent Child tends to be focused on his own needs, often unable to see the needs of others. As with all apparently negative archetypes, you can learn to recognize its emergence and use it as a guide to alert you when you are in danger of falling into needy, self-absorbed attitudes and behavior.

The Master/Missy The Master is a great example of the Needy Child, as he’s always looking to control things and people since he had no control of his childhood, as we saw.

Also, Missy needed the Doctor to be like her, so she hooked him up with Clara to control him. However, Missy and the Master aren’t the only needy ones.

The Doctor While we saw above that the 11th Doctor needed admiration, making him dependent, he wasn’t alone. The 12th Doctor showed his neediness in the first part of the finale when he needed Missy to be good, disregarding Bill’s safety. He got Bill killed because of it.

Magical/Innocent Child

Carolyn Myss states:

The Magical Child sees the potential for sacred beauty in all things, and embodies qualities of wisdom and courage in the face of difficult circumstances. One example is Anne Frank, who wrote in her diary that in spite of all the horror surrounding her family while hiding from Nazis in an attic, she still believed that humanity was basically good. This archetype is also gifted with the power of imagination and the belief that everything is possible.

The shadow energy of the Magical Child manifests as the absence of the possibility of miracles and of the transformation of evil to good. Attitudes of pessimism and depression, particularly when exploring dreams, often emerge from an injured Magical Child whose dreams were “once upon a time” thought foolish by cynical adults. The shadow may also manifest as a belief that energy and action are not required, allowing one to retreat into fantasy.

We’ve examined this archetype before, although in a different way: as part of the Sacred Marriage of the Great Work back in the Fairytales document Chapter 13: "Clara Has to Come Back: The Love Story and The Ghost."

The Doctor, Merlin, and The Ghost are all part of the Magical Child archetype. Certainly, we’ve seen how the Doctor and Grant as the Ghost thought all things were possible. After all, it was Grant’s wishes that got him to where he was as an adult. Therefore, Grant symbolizes the externalization of the Magical Child in a magical type of episode.

In “The Doctor Falls,” the Doctor did do something magical. When he was running through the forest shooting Cyberman, at one point he lifted his hand to the sky without his sonic, shown below. However, Cybermen were still exploding. DW shows the Doctor in many magical moments but they are very subtle.

Divine Child

Carolyn Myss states:

The Divine Child is closely related to both the Innocent and Magical Child, but is distinguished from them by its redemptive mission. It is associated with innocence, purity, and redemption, god-like qualities that suggest that the Child enjoys a special union with the Divine itself. Few people are inclined to choose the Divine Child as their dominant Child archetype, however, because they have difficulty acknowledging that they could live continually in divine innocence. And yet, divinity is also a reference point of your inner spirit that you can turn to when you are in a conscious process of choice. You may also assume that anything divine cannot have a shadow aspect, but that’s not realistic.

She goes on to say:

The shadow of this archetype manifests as an inability to defend itself against negative forces. Even the mythic gods and most spiritual masters — including Jesus, who is the template of the Divine Child for the Christian tradition — simultaneously expressed anger and divine strength when confronting those who claimed to represent heaven while manifesting injustice, arrogance, or other negative qualities (think of Jesus’ wrath at the money-changers in the Temple). Assess your involvement with this archetype by asking whether you see life through the eyes of a benevolent, trusting God/Goddess, or whether you tend to respond initially with fear of being hurt or with a desire to hurt others first.

We’ve seen over and over how the Doctor is on a rescue/redemptive mission for himself, Missy, and other children, who represent other Child archetypes. He certainly has god-like qualities, for example, being able to create the universe by rebooting it and destroying it. And DW is using religious symbolism to show us, in part, the Divine Child.

The whole idea of going back to the Child archetype and fixing whatever wounds the Doctor had takes him back to a sort of innocence, which is a redemption.

The 13th Doctor will have no need to have the St John Ambulance symbol – which, as we’ve seen, is both a symbol of torture and healing – on the door of the TARDIS. She can begin anew, unburdened by the events of the Time War that plagued her nuWho predecessors.

The Rocking Horse Metaphor

It’s seems very appropriate that in the finale where the Child archetype loomed large that we also saw 3 rocking horses in the episode. Rocking horses are symbols of early childhood in addition to DW’s Horse metaphor so part of the rescue.

There is a large rocking horse (white arrow) in the schoolroom with the Master and Missy. The horse is easier to see in the episode. The schoolroom, too, is symbolic of childhood, adding to the whole Child archetype.

Also, there are 2 small rocking horses (yellow arrows) in the scene with the Doctor and Alit in the farmhouse. The interesting thing here is that the Doctor wiped them and the other toys (toy soldiers, Trojan Horse, caboose, etc.) away to symbolize a reboot. Because he wiped the rocking horses away, they symbolized negative aspects that the Doctor wanted to get rid of, just like the other toys.

Given that we are dealing with the Wounded Child archetype, I believe the rocking horses also are a reference to a classic D.H. Lawrence short story “The Rocking-Horse Winner.” The rocking horse took on multiple negative symbols in the story and led to the death of Paul, a child. The only meaning that we need to be concerned about, as it pertains to the finale, is that it was a symbol of the fatal obsessions of a Wounded Child.

Certainly, the 12th Doctor had been fatally obsessed with certain things. For example, in “Listen” he had to find out what was at the end of the universe, and it nearly killed him. Clara had to intervene and go back to his childhood, a symbol of saving the inner Child. He was also obsessed with redeeming Missy, which was fatal to Bill.

Anyway, in the image above, when the Doctor wiped the horses away, he was wiping away the wounds. His inner Child was symbolically healed.

Before we get to a deeper understanding of the characters using the archetypes, we need to look at the Great Work again.

Reviewing a Few Concepts of the Great Work

I believe it’s worthwhile in a chapter on Jung’s model of the psyche to review a few points of the Great Work, as it defines the process someone goes through to achieve Self.

Transformational Personal and Spiritual Process

In Chapter 9 in the pre-viewing analysis of Doctor Mysterio, I said of this process:

The Great Work can be used to describe the psychological process of personal and spiritual transmutation to achieve individuation, meaning wholeness of Self, by integrating one’s unconscious with one’s conscious. Individuation has the effect of holistic healing, both mentally and physically. This process, if carried out through the 4th stage, brings out the person’s purest nature.

The Great Work Basics

A little later, I explained the basics:

While alchemists of old tried to transmute lead and mercury into gold, gold became a metaphor for the soul being freed from a dead or leaden state of mind (why we’ve seen all the dream-like episodes), as a way to move toward consciousness, an understanding of self, and spiritual enlightenment.

The standard definition involves a four-step process of transmutation:

nigredo (blackening) is the Shadow (negative, fearful aspects of the unconscious)

albedo (whitening) refers to the anima or animus, a reflected light appears in the darkness

citrinitas (yellowing) is the wise old man (or woman) archetype, solar light from within – Sun stage

rubedo (reddening) is the Self archetype, which has achieved wholeness

Each level does several things: it burns off impurities, such as fears and other negative aspects; creates a union (alchemical marriage); and generates a rebirth of one’s sense of self. In order to get to the next level, there has to be a death of that sense of self. A fiery love at each stage opens the heart to greater depths and purifies the alchemist to awaken them to a greater sense of self. Eventually, the person would show their purest nature. However, few people reach the highest level (rubedo – red), for example, becoming Christ-like. In another example, we would talk about Buddha-nature in kung fu and taiji.

Elixir of Life & Philospher’s Stone

The Great Work is the process that creates the philosopher’s stone. It’s also called the elixir of life, which is interesting because DW uses that term for the substance that the Sisterhood of Karn drank to achieve immortality, one of the real-world goals of the philosopher’s stone, along with rejuvenation. The Sisterhood also used it to create the War Doctor. The stone represents the goal of the individuation process, finding a wholeness of Self.

In Christian Terms

In similar Christian terms, this is the process one’s soul takes on the journey home to reconcile with God through Christ's sacrificial suffering and death. Wikipedia says of the philosopher’s stone (lapis philosophorum a.k.a lapis), “Many of the medieval allegories for a Christ were adopted for the lapis, and the Christ and the Stone were indeed taken as identical in a mystical sense.”

I’m not suggesting we should look at this in a mystical sense. The Great Work, like religion, is meant to be a transformative, spiritual experience to make one a better person. Uniting aspects of the conscious and unconscious brings enlightenment, which can seem mystical in the similar sense as undergoing religious revelations.

As for the Doctor, he symbolically achieved his pure nature at the end of the finale, which his kindness speech signified. He got redemption after he sacrificed his life for the good of others and sent Heather to Bill. His 2 angel wings represented not only his ascension to Heaven, but also his completion of the 4th stage of the Great Work. Through this sacrifice, he became Christ-like, Buddha-like.

Same Characters Can Represent Different Stages of the Great Work

While we’ve looked at the standard, 4-step Great Work process, which was highlighted through the 4 representative colors (black, white, gold, and red) in “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” we’ve also seen how the 12th Doctor represents the 12-step Great Work with the Fish metaphor. For our purposes in this chapter, we’re going to stick with the 4-step process.

Missy and the Master are great examples of the same character at different stages. Missy was much more enlightened at the beginning of “World Enough and Time” than the Master. She was doing the moral work of making her Shadow part of her conscious. However, the Master represented the nigredo or black stage, the first stage of the Great Work, while Missy was a later stage. Just before the end of her life, she made the choice to become fully enlightened by actualizing the goodness within as part of her character.

In fact, the image, shown below, of her lying dead on the ground tells us a lot. The photo is harder to see than the actual episode, so I’ve marked her 2 arms (white arrows), which are held out in a crucified position. The subtext is telling us she achieved the Christ-like, final stage of the Great Work (for a woman that would be the Mother of God, a.k.a Virgin Mary, symbol) and was crucified for it. It is significant that she rebuffed the Master’s sexual advances, which supports the Mother of God symbol.

Fairytales, Spirituality & the Shadow

Doing fairytale interpretations using Jung’s model adds a whole new spiritual dimension to fairytales, including DW as a whole. After all, Jung believed that spirituality was a huge part of actualizing Self to become whole through the process of the Great Work. This is exactly what, as we’ve seen, the Doctor has been going through, borne out by all the spiritual symbolism in the finale and elsewhere.

Furthermore, it’s not lost on me that the 2017 Christmas Special is titled “Twice Upon a Time.” The reference to fairytales is unmistakable. River even said they were all fairytales.

Therefore, DW is beating us over the head with the idea of fairytales, and we need to take notice in more than just a superficial way.

Just like our other lenses, the fairytale lens is like viewing an onion. I’ll pull back a few layers to give you an idea of how this works and what the characters represent, but by no means will this character analysis be complete. It could never be. Each time we revisit an episode, we could do additional interpretations with possibly deeper meaning, especially after watching other episodes. Also, as our knowledge of Classic Who episodes grows, they help refine our understanding of nuWho symbolism.

Spirituality & the Ship’s Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights)

While in Western culture, we don’t typically associate spirituality with fairytales, many don’t make much sense unless we do. Or they can take on a more important spiritual meaning than a traditional surface reading affords. We can look at Grimm’s fairytales, as an example, since the Doctor mentioned the Grimm brothers. But the finale makes reference to another set of fairytales, which I want to point out.

The clock on the ship had a differential of 1001 years on the day counter at one point, shown below. My daughter reminded me that 1001 was a reference to Scheherazade and One Thousand and One Nights, better known in English as Arabian Nights. According to Wikipedia, they are “a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age.”

The frame story is that Scheherazade agreed to marry the king, who killed his previous wives, believing that all women were unfaithful, like his first. Scheherazade didn’t want to suffer the same fate, so she cunningly used stories. Wikipedia says

On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king, curious about how the story ends, is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins (and only begins) a new one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion of this tale, postpones her execution once again. So it goes on for 1,001 nights.

These fairytales are not merely stories. They are meant to be used for spiritual enlightenment. Reading the spiritual symbolism, they show the trials the soul has to go through to reach full enlightenment.

They have a connection to our DW characters, as well. Interestingly, Missy was the one whom the Doctor was supposed to execute. Then, he was supposed to watch over her dead-ish body in the Vault for at least 1000 years. Being on the ship for over 1000 years, as far as the ship’s differential was concerned, he fulfilled his obligation of watching over her.

At the same time, the implication is that Missy’s execution was delayed by more than 1001 years, so in a way they mirrored the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights.

DW, itself, is reminiscent of Christian parables or passages from the Dao De Jing where just as one’s spiritual development grows, so does one’s understanding of the profoundness of the parables and passages. As we peel away layers of the onion, the beautiful spiritual treasure inside is revealed.

Characters Can Represent Aspects of Each Other’s Psyche

While using other characters to represent some aspect of a main character is a classic storytelling technique designed to make stories much more engaging, characters can represent aspects of each other. In this way, the story can add to the main characters’ characterizations without bogging them down in the text. This technique also adds a lot of dimension and extends what can be done. It’s much more interesting in a show like DW to watch different characters deal with problems than to have to trudge over a mountain of problems for one character.

Above, we saw how the Doctor ended up mirroring the stages of the Animus development, which may seem quite odd because he becomes the unconscious of a woman, expressed as the masculine inner personality: the animus. Therefore, the implication is that in addition to how we already view the Doctor, we should, in one sense, consider him an externalization of a woman’s inner personality for the fairytale interpretation. It sounds strange, but is it really?

The Doctor and Missy The Doctor and Missy are like 2 sides of the same coin. We saw him become like her in “Hell Bent,” where he didn’t care if he destroyed the universe to save Clara. The psychopath in him came forth. He had to confront the Hybrid in his Shadow, as part of his healing. He couldn’t move past it until he accepted that side of himself to move beyond it.

Of course, Season 10 dealt with Missy’s psychopathic side. Once the Doctor became enlightened, he could then help Missy do the same. In the end, she mirrored his goodness.

Coming back to something I mentioned in a previous chapter and delayed the explanation until now is the dialogue between the Doctor and Missy on the rooftop where Missy talks about being in 2 minds. First, the Doctor said

DOCTOR: Knock yourself out. (Missy pirouettes and KO's the Master with her parasol.) MISSY: Your wish is my command. (She unties the Doctor.) MISSY: I was secretly on your side all along, you silly sausage. DOCTOR: Is that true? MISSY: Don't spoil the moment. DOCTOR: Seriously, I need to know. Is that true? (He holds Missy's hand.) MISSY: It's hard to say. I, I'm in two minds. Fortunately, the other one's unconscious.

How can she be in 2 minds unless there is a telepathic link, for example? OR is she an externalization of, for one thing, the Master’s psyche? The answer is that both are possible.

“Last Christmas” beats us over the head with the concept that characters can be externalizations of an aspect of the psyche. Also, the episode made it quite clear that the characters were connected in a shared mental state, a multi-consciousnness gestalt that formed telepathically. As we know, things aren’t really happening the way they seem, as we are viewing constructs from the unconscious, supporting the whole fairytale theme. Santa is a great example:

SANTA: Hey. You want to take the reins, Doctor? DOCTOR: You're a dream construct, currently representing either my recovering or expiring mind.

Missy is no different, functioning like the Santa dream construct. How else could she survive in the locked Vault (a metaphor for the unconscious) without any food for 6 months, since no one came to visit her while the Doctor was on the prison ship? Since we know that Clara is Missy’s familiar from the title “The Witch’s Familiar,” Clara is Missy’s proxy. And we know that Clara was in the Doctor’s personal unconscious. By extension of the proxy relationship, Missy was in the Doctor’s mind.

This makes sense, too, as the Doctor and Missy are 2 sides of the same coin and Shadows of each other. This brings to mind the image from “Tooth and Claw” where the 10th Doctor’s and the werewolf’s faces are pressed against the wall on opposite sides of it, shown below. The subtext unmistakably shows us that the Doctor had a dark side. He and the wolf were 2 sides of the same coin.

Season 10 showed us many times that Missy was mimicking the Doctor, as she was becoming like him. Therefore, through this lens, Missy’s struggle for redemption represents the Doctor’s inner fight of his nature. And he, hers. Missy’s struggle allows us to see how he had to come to terms internally with killing a lot of people. While he represents her Animus, she represents his Anima.

Another interesting point to note is that gender roles are vital to the Anima and Animus. Therefore, as far as the subtext story is concerned, the Doctor had to be male externally until he reconciled his feminine inner personality with his outer masculine personality, shown by the reconciliation of Missy and the Doctor.

Since the 12th Doctor achieved that, it was inevitable that the Doctor would be able to become a woman externally. It’s clear to me from the subtext all the way back into Classic Who with the 7th Doctor that DW was marching down the road toward reconciling the Doctor’s male/female split problem: the female personality was always internal and always hiding. In fact, the 10th Doctor’s Time Lord consciousness in the watch, when he turned himself human, had a female voice among the men’s, as we saw many analyses ago. She said she was hiding among men.

I don’t want to suggest that this reconciliation wasn’t there from the start. It’s obvious that Classic Who is using Carl Jung’s symbolism of integrating opposites (male/female) from the very 1st Doctor. However, the 7th Doctor’s stories really show where the Doctor’s arc was heading, at least in a broad sense.

The Doctor and the Master By extension of Missy being a Shadow of the Doctor, the Master, too, is a Shadow of the Doctor, so they are 2 sides of the same coin. The Master mirrors King Hydroflax in cruelty, destruction, and death. In the finale, the Doctor said to the Master:

DOCTOR: Well, let's see how I do. Your Tardis got stuck. You killed a lot of people, took over the city, lived like a king until they rebelled against your cruelty. And ever since then you've been hiding out, probably in disguise, because everybody knows your stupid round face.

The Doctor even says the Master lived like a king, a reference to King Hydroflax. Also, the Master mirrors the Monks in many ways, some of which we looked at in “The Lie of the Land” analysis. In fact, the Monks were in disguise, just like the Master. Also, we saw in that analysis that the Master was possessing the Doctor, which explains the maniacal laughter and other oddities. Therefore, the Master was in disguise there, too, so Razor’s mask in the first part of the finale is a clever externalization of the other disguises.

Since the Doctor and Master are 2 sides of the same coin, the Master represents the Doctor’s psychopathic side. This actually gels with the notion that the Master is the War Doctor, which we looked at in Chapter 19: “The Rescue Plan.”

Because DW wouldn’t want to show us that the Doctor stabbed the Master, Missy took on that role. However, she symbolized not just trying to kill her past, but also the Doctor trying to kill it.

In the Next Chapter

Next, we’ll continue our examination of the characters and what they tell us about the Doctor.

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #first doctor #the doctor falls #meta #analysis #missy #master

3 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 2: “The Doctor Falls” Analysis Doctor Who S10.12: Fighting One’s Inner Nature: How the Characters Display It at the Top Level

<- Read previous chapter

Note: I broke this chapter up into 2 parts because of length. This chapter is about how the main theme in DW is supported by the characters at a top level. The next chapter delves into the complex, multi-symbolic, contextual nature of the characters that shows us their deeper meaning.

Fighting One’s Inner Nature & How It Relates to the Characters

In “The Doctor Falls,” after Missy stabs the Master in the back and he blasts her in the back with his laser screwdriver, he says, “You see, Missy, this is where we've always been going.” While the quote perfectly applies to their murder/ suicide, it has a much broader meaning, as things have come full circle back to the beginning or near the beginning. Missy and the Master’s plight is an example of the theme of fighting one’s inner nature, which started with the very 1st Doctor.

While this theme is a main theme throughout DW, I find it especially prevalent in the rebooted series since the very first 9th Doctor episode. Perhaps that’s mostly because I’ve spent a long time analyzing nuWho and because I haven’t seen all of the available Classic Who episodes nor analyzed them nearly as much. (This is something I need to look at more closely with Classic Who.)

More important for this analysis is that it’s a major theme of the 12th Doctor since his very first episode. Furthermore, its importance to Season 10 can’t be overstated, and every single major character in the Season 10 two-part finale, including the 1st Doctor, embodies this theme in some form. An understanding of this theme and how it relates to the characters will help us understand their deeper symbolism and what they tell us about the Doctor’s story.

Externalizing the Fight Against Their Inner Natures

The finale brilliantly externalizes the characters’ inner fights on multiple levels. There is the obvious surface-level fight that is relatively easy to see with all the main characters. For example, Missy is struggling with whether to ally with the Master or the Doctor and all that they represent. However, below the surface-level fights, there are much more complex conflicts going on. For example, Missy says she is in 2 minds. What does that mean?

Moffat said if we want to know whom the Doctor is, we have to read the subtext, which means we have to understand the meaning of the other characters, too. DW has always been this way, using character mirrors, for example, to give us information about the Doctor. In fact, Missy and the Master are perfect examples of how we have to understand their multifaceted symbolism to see what they tell us about the Doctor.

Because the explanation is quite long, I’m breaking this up into 2 chapters. We’ll look at the easiest symbology in this chapter. Then, in the next chapter, we’ll concentrate on looking at the complex symbology of the characters and how they relate to the theme.

On the Surface: Fighting Against Their Inner Natures

Before we delve into the complex symbolism of the characters, it’s important to examine the characters on the surface to see what we can glean. By surface, I mean what we can gather from just looking at the finale and parts of other episodes that seem obvious, rather than the complex symbology that requires a much deeper analysis and understanding of outside references.

Alit & Kazran

Alit’s and Kazran’s symbolism is important. Because they are mirrors and require more detailed explanations, their symbolism is not on the surface. I’m going to save them for the next chapter on complex symbolism.

Nardole

Nardole’s major surface-level fight of his own nature is just beginning at the end of “The Doctor Falls.” We hear of it in his protests of tending to the human colonists:

NARDOLE: And more to the point, you are not sending me up there to babysit a load of smelly humans. DOCTOR: Yeah? Well, I'm afraid that's exactly what I'm doing. NARDOLE: Huh? This is me we're talking about. Me. You know what I was like. If there's more than three people in a room, I start a black market. Send me with them, I'll be selling their own spaceship back to them once a week. Please, I would rather stay down here and explode. You go and farm the humans.

His black-market statement was not a surprise. When we first saw Nardole in THORS, he was in River’s employment, and he knew at least some of her plans for the surgeon and King Hydroflax. Most likely, he knew she was involved in the black-market sale of the Halassi Androvar diamond.

Also, in “Oxygen,” he asked about the mining and gave us a bit more about his past:

NARDOLE: What are you mining? Is it worth stealing? ABBY: You think this is a robbery? DOCTOR: Well, killing you'd be a good start if it was. NARDOLE: It's how I'd do it. (They all stare at Nardole.) NARDOLE: If I was to do that sort of thing. Which, actually, I probably wouldn't, so please don't worry.

Nardole is a con man and thief, and it seems he is not above murdering people, which fits in with River’s persona. He also mirrors the Doctor, who murdered the general in “Hell Bent” and showed he, too, was not above conning and thievery in “Thin Ice.” Having Nardole settle down and protect the smelly humans without falling back into old ways is going to challenge his inner nature.

Bill

Bill’s surface-level struggle of fighting her inner nature is heartbreaking. CyberBill is a hybrid, a living mind uploaded into a robot, even though she initially doesn’t see herself that way. Since Bill’s human appearance has to be an illusion, just like CAL’s, it isn’t much of a surprise, if you’ve been following my posts. Therefore, the beauty is in seeing the storytelling: how this gets revealed.

It’s a wonderful idea to start with a human-looking Bill in the barn after 2 weeks passes from when CyberBill brings a lifeless-looking Doctor to Floor 507. Hazran is scared of her and locks her in the barn, which Bill, wanting to see the injured Doctor, doesn’t understand. She’s confused even after looking into the mirror, a brilliant device for the reveal, that Alit brings. Switching back and forth between Bill and CyberBill is another stroke of genius because it allows us to see Pearl Mackie reacting to situations while CyberBill is there to remind us of the illusion.

The heart of Bill’s major inner struggle starts coming to light once the Doctor tells her what she is, and he warns her not to get angry. The terrifying truth of her situation and what she is capable of once she destroys part of the barn is only compounded by her realization that everyone is scared of her.

On top of that, the Master’s cruel words to Bill are painful to watch. While he can’t see the results of his cruelty since he only sees CyberBill, her pain is externalized because we see Bill in her illusionary form. The irony here is that we see externalization in the illusion while it’s truly internalized in reality.

This illusion of herself as still human started in “World Enough and Time.” She, like the other Cyber-patients, would have had a sock over her head, which is what the reflection (shown below, yellow arrow) in that episode shows. It’s easier to see the reflection in the episode than in the image below.

However, Bill shows an exceptional mental strength that few others have. She fought to keep her identity all those months of living under the Monks, which has served her well since she is able to keep her humanity, even as CyberBill. Also, when she moves in front of the Doctor, Missy, and the Master to face whatever is coming up in the lift, she shows her bravery, even though she is scared. However, knowing that she can feel the Cyber-program taking over bit by bit, she’s ready to give up her inner conflict and her life, mirroring the Doctor, if she can’t be herself.

Regarding Bill’s internal struggle, DW wants us to look at “The Lie of the Land” to get an idea of Bill’s current fight against the Cyber-programming. For me, “The Lie of the Land” only works relatively well when placing it within the symbolism of the Library metaphor. In the finale’s context, the multi-symbolic Monks represent the Cyber-programming, and within the context of the Library that would be Doctor Moon.

BTW, we looked at some of the Library symbolism in “The Lie of the Land” analysis, but I need to map out the rest of the Library symbolism in that episode for you in the Season 10 post analysis. It’s a highly metaphorical episode, and in my humble opinion, it requires too many hoops to jump through to understand it in the normal context without understanding and applying the Library metaphor. Without that, the leaps of logic, especially at the end, result in what look like hand waving. This leaves the episode emotionally unsatisfying. It’s a great example of what I feared “The Doctor Falls” would be. I’m so glad that I was wrong about that.

The Master & Missy

I can’t think of a better single, simple canon example of fighting one’s inner nature than the relationship between the Master and Missy. They are the perfect embodiment of 2 different inner natures, yet they are the same person with 2 different faces. Therefore, pairing these 2 characters is a brilliant idea, externalizing the inner conflict and highlighting their most important differences.

Narcissism The Master and Missy together in the dancing scene on top of the hospital perfectly embody narcissism. We saw the externalization of the Master’s narcissism in “The End of Time” where he turned everyone on Earth into himself. That trait is perfectly highlighted in “The Doctor Falls” when the Master not only dances with himself as Missy, but also wants to kiss himself as her. Later, he desires a sexual relationship with her, which she turns down. While she’s willing to flirt with him, she draws a line and won’t cross it, marking an important difference in their inner natures.

Mental Stability Mental stability has never been a strength of either the Master or Missy. Since having the drumbeat removed from his head, he’s not a total loon, at least on the surface, but he’s far from being mentally stable. In contrast, within Season 10 in general and in the finale, Missy, when the Master isn’t unduly influencing her, looks much more mentally stable than he does. Admittedly, it’s a low bar. But still…

In previous seasons, both were psychopaths, duplicitous, and cruel. However, while Missy was changing in Season 10 and growing a conscience, representing change and moving toward redemption, the Master represents being unrepentant and stuck in the past. Missy is fighting her past for Season 10, which is externalized, especially with the presence of the Master.

The Season 10 finale highlights the Master’s old duplicitous and cruel ways, especially against Bill, who is very sweet natured and trusting. The Master’s and Bill’s contrasting natures make hurting her all the more horrible. And I don’t doubt that the Master is especially enjoying this because he is also hurting the Doctor.

Control Both the Master and Missy have sought control over others but in different ways. Because the Master is no longer being driven mad by the drumbeat, we get a more accurate picture of the damage left behind. Since he had little power, I’m referring to true control, over his life while the earworm was pounding in his head, it’s one reason why he lusted for power in the 10th Doctor episodes.

And still does in the 12th Doctor episodes.

In “The Doctor Falls,” the Doctor talks about how the Master kills people and makes himself king until the people rebel. And we’ve seen him do that type of thing before in the 10th Doctor episodes.

In contrast, Missy’s type of control is typically not as overt. For example, she uses her proxy, Clara, who is Missy’s familiar (as the “The Witch’s Familiar” suggests) to control the one person she seems to care the most about controlling. The Doctor.

However, we see in “The Doctor Falls” a different type of control. While she seems to go along with the Master to subdue the Doctor, it’s the Master whom she ends up ultimately controlling by backstabbing him. A murder/suicide to kill her past and create a bootstrap paradox upon his death to bring about his next incarnation, which may or may not be Missy. Ironically, it’s the murder/suicide that shows the biggest differences in their inner natures.

Duality of Their Nature: Spite & Hatred Vs. Friendship Toward the Doctor The most striking difference between the Master and Missy is the duality of their nature toward the Doctor. In the past, John Simm’s Master hated the Doctor, Rassilon, and the universe in general. He spited the Doctor when he could, and it looks like nothing has changed here because he still holds grudges.

Besides knowing that hurting Bill would hurt the Doctor, the Master is vindictive toward him in other ways. For example, the Master spites the Doctor in “The Doctor Falls” after the he asks the Master to stand with him:

MASTER: See this face? Take a good, long look at it. This is the face that didn't listen to a word you just said.

The Master enjoys the anguish on the Doctor’s face and walks off.

However, the Master’s spite and hatred against the Doctor is most acute when the Master shouts that he won’t stand with the Doctor. That, of course, is in response to Missy saying she would after she tries to kill her past. Since the Master isn’t dead yet, the thought of his future self standing with the Doctor is so repugnant that he prefers to murder his future self than to stand with his old friend.

The murder/suicide is a surreal expression of duality: narcissism of the Master’s present self and self-loathing of his future self. Again, it shows his vehement hatred of the Doctor, and the Master won’t give the Doctor the satisfaction of reuniting with his old friend through Missy. The murder/suicide is the ultimate expression of spite from the Master that shows he is fighting the other face of his inner nature right up to the end.

This mirrors his decision in “The Last of the Time Lords” not to regenerate. The Doctor begs him to, but the Master, wanting to do everything he can to hurt the Doctor, refuses and dies in the Doctor’s arms.

While the Master is happy being the Doctor’s archenemy and delighted to hurt the Doctor in whatever ways he can, Missy is the frenemy, who becomes the Doctor’s friend at the end to stand with him. Of course, however, the Master murders her first.

The Master’s hatred toward the Doctor is especially striking when compared to Missy’s deep-seeded desire to unite with the Doctor. It’s been clear since “Death in Heaven” when she tried to give the Doctor a Cyberman army that she’s wanted to be friends with him. She sounded quite sincere and childlike.

DOCTOR: Why are you doing this? MISSY: I need you to know we're not so different. I need my friend back.

It’s been her driving factor to make him become like her. We know she is sincere. And the Doctor, too, wants Missy to become like him, as we find out in the finale.

DOCTOR: Missy. Missy. You've changed. I know you have. And I know what you're capable of. Stand with me. It's all I've ever wanted. MISSY: Me too. But no. Sorry. Just, no. (she takes his hand) But thanks for trying. (Missy leaves.)

They both have tears in their eyes, and they both really want this, but on their own terms. His own redemption requires Missy to turn good. She represents chaos and the temptation to become like her and to go, for example, hell bent through the universe once again. Clara, as a proxy of Missy, also represents chaos and temptation, which is why the Doctor had to have a memory block until he figured out how to deal with these issues.

The 12th Doctor

Near the beginning of “The Doctor Falls,” Missy and the Master goad the Doctor, as he is tied to the wheelchair on the roof of the hospital:

MASTER: Ten years you spent up there, chatting. You missed her by two hours. MISSY: Ripped out her heart, threw it in to a bin, and burned it all away. He's internalising. I love it when he's Mister Volcano.

Missy wants him to explode in rage and become like he was when Clara died: Mr. Volcano. He doesn’t explode, but we see the externalization of ire on his face as he’s internalizing what happened to Bill.

While the above example illustrated the theme, the best instance in the finale of the 12th Doctor externalizing his fight against his inner nature is his struggle against regeneration. This Doctor went past his regeneration cycle and is very weary, having lived too long and with too much loss. Also, he’s been through a staggering amount of internal conflict – tortured, in part, by what he did during the war.

That’s not all. Being the Fish metaphor, his life, for the most part, has been about imprisonment, torture, and self-sacrifice on a grand scale. He chose torture and death over and over rather than confess his secrets to a manifestation of an inner conflict, his nightmare that chased him for 4.5 billion years.

While many of the Doctors spend their first episode a little confused about whom they are, the 12th Doctor has taken 3 seasons to answer his question of whether he is a good man. Not wanting to lose his hard-earned identity of becoming that good man, he’s ready to end his life, rather than regenerate into some unknown entity.

The 12th and 1st Doctors

Right at the end of the finale, we see the 1st Doctor. Pairing him and the 12th Doctor is brilliant, mirroring the pairing of Missy and the Master. This externalizes the inner fight of the Doctors’ natures: one person with 2 different faces. No doubt, this will give us an interesting contrast for Christmas, highlighting the Doctors’ differences in a way we haven’t seen before. This also brings us full circle – back to the epicenter of the war, where we examined the Doctor would have to return to (Chapter 18: Rescuing Children & Missy/Master).

However, there’s something else, too. Before the 12th Doctor died in the forest, he told the Cyberman that blasted him with an energy bolt:

DOCTOR: Argh! No, no. I'm not a doctor. I am the Doctor. The original, you might say.

This nearly mirrors the conversation the resurrected 12th Doctor has later with the 1st Doctor, except the 1st Doctor claims to be the original:

DOCTOR: I'm the Doctor. (The elderly figure in checked trousers, cape, scarf and astrakhan hat comes into view.) 1ST DOCTOR: The Doctor. Oh, I don't think so. No, dear me, no. You may be a doctor, but I am the Doctor. The original, you might say. (Taking hold of his lapels just like William Hartnell used to do.)

Here’s a conflict already of who is The Doctor. So Moffat is playing with the whole imposter theme that’s been so prevalent in Season 10. The irony here, which I’m sure Moffat is playing into, is that David Bradley is not the original actor for the 1st Doctor.

In fact, “The original, you might say” was first said in “The Five Doctors” by the 2nd actor, Richard Hurndall, to play the 1st Doctor, replacing the late William Hartnell. DW loves irony.

In the Next Chapter

We’ll examine the complex symbology of the characters that shows us what really is happening. For example, what does Bill’s illusion mean beyond the obvious? And what do Missy and the Master tell us about the Doctor?

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #first doctor #the doctor falls #meta #analysis #missy #master

3 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Note

I'm finally getting around to reading your analysis-es properly and just wanted to say, thank you so much for writing them and putting in the work and detail. I've been enthralled for 3 hours now (I'm a slow reader T_T and I get distracted going on mini researches when you mention something I don't know about) I need a nap now, but I'll keep reading later on. But yeah thank you, I super appreciate your thoughts!!

Thank you so much for the lovely comment! I’m so happy you are enjoying them! :-)

2 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Photo

Missy… You’ve changed. [And I’ve changed too.]

318 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 1: “The Doctor Falls” Analysis Doctor Who S10.12: The Rescue Is Not Over, Heather & What the Prison Ship Tells Us

NOTE: TPEW = “The Pyramid at the End of the World” TRODM = “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” THORS = “The Husbands of River Song” CAL = Charlotte Abigail Lux, the little girl from the Library

The Rescue Isn’t Over

The long rescue isn’t over yet, which is why the Doctor’s story hasn’t ended. There is a Horse metaphor in the TARDIS at the end to prove it, shown below (red arrow).

Not only that, there are 4 other horses, too, symbolizing the 4 Horses of the Apocalypse, but with added new meaning, which we’ll examine. It’s foreshadowing for Christmas. We have to come back to the ship or a similar setting, and I’ll show you why in the another chapter. In fact, there are several other pieces of subtext that say the rescue isn’t over.

There’s also a mechanical-type horse that we’ll look at.

Not Everything Is As It Appears

Right at the start, we hear birdsong, a sign that we still haven’t gotten back to reality in the Library metaphor. We should finally get to the bottom of the main story in the Christmas Special. There’s plenty of foreshadowing for it in the finale, which I’ll show you throughout this analysis.

However, birdsong is not the only problem that says something is wrong. For example, the cut on the Doctor’s forehead should have healed over the 2 weeks between when Bill brought him back and she woke up. However, it didn’t. In fact, it opened up somewhat as the episode went on. This was going in reverse, just like his timeline.

Additionally, there were plenty of reflections, inverse reflections in the ponds, and other such things to tell us that we shouldn’t believe everything we are seeing.

In another oddity, Bill saw the Doctor’s regeneration energy on the prison ship in “The Lie of the Land,” so why didn’t she know about it in “The Doctor Falls”?

Also, how did the Doctor, CyberBill, Missy, the Master have trouble taking out one Cyberman, who came up in the lift in the forest? Yet at the end, the Doctor was going through the forest taking out numerous Cybermen all by himself, shooting them left and right?

Then, the scene with Bill and Heather in the TARDIS isn’t quite happening the way it looks. This suggests to me that Bill will be back in some form at Christmas, even if it’s a clip. And we’ll examine more subtext, telling us who Heather is. We looked at that before in “The Pilot” analysis, but there’s some additional information now.

We'll examine what's happening with some of these in this analysis.

Showing You the Subtext through a Different Format

Given that we have plenty of time to look at information before the Christmas Special comes out, I want to step back and give you a different format for how to look at what is happening in the finale and the rest of DW.

In the previous analyses, I haven’t concentrated too much on setting and characters. I’ve done more with themes and other important pieces of subtext. However, the setting, characters and themes all foreshadow things for Christmas, besides telling us more about the finale. Therefore, I want to concentrate mostly on these elements.

Another element we need to examine are a few mirrored scenes from other episodes, showing us how this all fits together with previous canon.

Brilliant 2-Part Finale with the Resolution in the Xmas Special

Before I get into the meta, I want to give you my opinion of the finale because I offered my opinion on two-part episodes before the airing of “The Doctor Falls.”

Typically, the subtext story in the 2nd part overtakes the surface story, leaving, for example, plot holes or something tied up too quickly, which takes away the emotional aspect. (This has happened a lot, too, with Season 10 in general, just because everything has to be tied up quickly since Capaldi is leaving.) With so much story left to tell before the final episode, I wasn’t sure how they could finish it adequately except through a cliffhanger.

Therefore, while I was deeply concerned that the 2nd part of the finale would never live up to such a great 1st part, I came away elated at how things turned out. The 2nd part was brilliant and very much lived up to the 1st half.

There was a fantastic mix of subtext story and canon because most of the subtext story prior to this has now become canon.

At the same time, I’m so grateful that Moffat opted to give the story the room it needs by finishing it in the Christmas Special. Still there’s a lot to tell. I have no doubt that the heart of the main story will get told, but many of the details will have to be in the subtext.

The subtext foreshadowed the main points that happened in the finale, and it was beautiful to watch how everything came together, showing us the near resolution of the Doctor’s 3-season character arc, as well as the very long story in the making since Classic Who. Not only that, Missy, too, had a 3-season-ish character arc, turning from the dark side at the end.

Also, I’m elated that the 1st Doctor showed up at the end, as the subtext suggested would most likely happen. We will hopefully see Susan, too.

So we need to see the final rescue story and the Doctor reuniting with his family.

Because the subtext was heavily referencing former cast members, I expected to see some of them show up, and they did. It just wasn’t in the way I imaged, except for John Simm. However, seeing clips of Jack and of all the Doctor’s female companions, including Sarah Jane, Clara, and River was enough to satisfy me until the Christmas Special.

Will Clara show up for Christmas? I’m not sure if her appearance in the finale counts as finishing the Great Work. The subtext in “The Eaters of Light” suggested that he was remembering her. However, does that mean he remembers everything about her? This has a complication, too, which I’ll show you below.

Extending the Library Metaphor: Holo-decks & Some Perception Filters

The brilliant 2-part finale extends the meaning of the Library metaphor in connection with the Eye of Harmony. We know that people in this metaphor typically live in dreams and illusions, like CAL does. The nightmarish situation of reality becomes just a nightmare while dreams seem real. That includes CAL seeing herself as a little girl even though she’s a cyborg. So the terrible truth is hidden.

The people on Floor 507 at the beginning of “The Doctor Falls” don’t even know they are on a ship. Therefore, they are analogous to CAL and Donna in the Library dream being fed lies by Doctor Moon. They are living in a Star Trek-style holo-deck.

Bill, too, mirrors CAL in not knowing she isn’t the person she once was. They both see themselves through memories. According to the Doctor, Bill’s mind is acting like a perception filter. She could easily be in a fugue state, where the mind runs away from the truth. We examined that with Jackson Lake in “The Next Doctor” and Oswin Oswald in “Asylum of the Daleks.”

Therefore, we can add a holo-deck to illusionary possibilities for our Library metaphor, along with some perception filters – when they act like they do with Bill and CAL. Also, we can add fugue states in similar situations.

The Doctor’s 3-season Arc: A Good Man?

The 12th Doctor has been on an amazing journey over the last 3 seasons, wondering at the beginning if he was a good man. He started off grumpy, aloof, and not caring after having helped end the Time War. While his journey isn’t over yet and he’s been taking the “long way home,” we have our answer.

He is both a good and great man. As a good man, he is helping the people on Floor 507 due to his kindness and decency, even to strangers, because it is right not to abandon scared children and adults. Also, as a good man, he is giving his life for them, and that is also part of what makes him a great man. We see the war hero in action, a man who has had a decisive historical impact on Gallifrey and the Time War. It’s now easy to see how he caused so many deaths.

The War Doctor

The BBC put out a promo photo of the Season 10 finale, which is a mirror of the one they put out for “The Day of the Doctor.” Since several analyses ago we examined my hypothesis that the Doctor was really the War Doctor, I was delighted to see them.

Here’s a 50th-anniversary image with the small version of the War Doctor in the middle, along with the 11th and 10th Doctors back-to-back.

Here’s the image the BBC put out for the Season 10 finale with the small version of the 12th Doctor in the middle, along with Missy and the Master back-to-back.

While the 11th Doctor calls the War Doctor “Granddad” in “The Day of the Doctor,” the Master, mirroring the 11th Doctor, calls the 12th Doctor “Granddad” in “The Doctor Falls.”

The Season 10 finale is meant to give us some subtext details of the Time War in a brilliant model of the Library metaphor universe, complete with a sort of, kind of Heaven metaphor, as well as a Hell metaphor. (We’ll examine this more in depth in a bit.) The Doctor is in a desperate, no-win situation, and while he could run, he’s made a choice. This is a retelling of the same choice the 8th Doctor makes: becoming the War Doctor to fight in the Time War.

The difference is that we don’t see the 12th Doctor regenerate. He doesn’t have to. He’s been transforming through the Great Work, returning to what he was born to be. The warrior, a weapon of mass destruction, and a child of war. His newborn consciousness, at least one face, arose from the ashes on Trenzalore. Then, we have a huge gap from there until we see him in “Deep Breath.” Part of events in that missing time can be inferred from what is happening in the finale.

After we examine the setting of the ship, floors, ice, characters, themes, etc., I'll put everything together for you, so you can see the Doctor’s story in a more condensed format, rather than through many analyses.

Problems with the Previous Time War Episodes

There are a lot of problems, oddities, and hand waving with the previous episodes talking about the Time War story. For example, the 9th Doctor said he stopped the Time War by blowing up Gallifrey, as well as all the Time Lords and all the Daleks. How is that possible unless they are all on Gallifrey? Why would the Doctor assume some are not on Skaro or elsewhere? This has never made sense to me. At least until the Season 10 finale, which I’ll explain in another chapter. Also, if he blew them up with the Moment (like what we saw in “The Day of the Doctor”), how did the Doctor survive according to what we think we know about him in canon?

“The End of Time”

In a 2nd example of weirdness, Rassilon and the Chancellor are talking about something really odd in “The End of Time” Part 2:

CHANCELLOR: The signal has been sent. A simple task of four beats transmitted back through time, and implanted in the Master's mind as a child. RASSILON: Then we have a link to where the Master is right now. CHANCELLOR: But we're still trapped inside the time lock, sir. The link is nothing more than a thought, an idea.

Gallifrey is in a time lock here? But the Doctor said he blew up Gallifrey. We didn’t hear about the Doctor putting Gallifrey in a time lock until “The Day of the Doctor,” but then DW doesn’t tell the story linearly anyway. Things are timey-whimey here.

“The Day of the Doctor”

In a 3rd example, in “The Day of the Doctor,” 11 Doctors, the War Doctor, and somehow the 12th Doctor (more hand waving) put Gallifrey in a time lock. Some things don’t add up here, like greenery on the floor of the barn when there’s a desert around them. Something is wrong.

Also, the scene of the War Doctor looking at the barn in the distance (red arrow, shown below) looks like a bad matte painting in relation to other quality images of Gallifrey in this episode and in “Hell Bent.” It isn’t real, and it isn’t supposed to be. The greenery suggests these were the Doctor’s memories of a time long gone.

“Hell Bent”

In a 4th example, there are problems in “Hell Bent.” Gallifrey is back in the universe, but at the end of it. While there’s hand waving here, I can accept that because we are talking about Time Lords.

However, for what we think we know in canon, there are still other problems, which I haven’t previously mentioned with “The Day of the Doctor,” and they still exist in “Hell Bent.” The inside of the barn is shown below, as the Doctor walks in.

First, the yellow arrow points to a big truck tire or, more likely, one from a tractor. That was surprising! I didn’t expect that with such an advanced society, especially in a desert. So something is off. It also looks so human.

Then, the green arrow points to the structure that represents a prison – a 6-sided figure – which is also part of the structure I saw in the 3rd Doctor story “The Ambassadors of Death.” (We examined that story’s significance in “The Empress of Mars” analysis.)

The 3rd arrow (white) points to something really odd. It’s not a normal barn structure but the hull structure of an overturned boat. No one would build a barn with timbers crafted like that.

I figured the ship was supposed to be Viking (or metaphorical Viking) when I saw “The Day of the Day” because the 11th Doctor had a Viking funeral in a boat.

Then, I got my Viking question answered, at least in part, in “Smile.” The Doctor and Bill are in the Vardy building, looking for the original colony ship:

DOCTOR: When the Vikings invaded, they used to pull their longboats out of the water, turn them upside down and live in them as houses until they'd pillaged and looted enough to build new ones.

BILL: So?

DOCTOR: You didn't see a space ship outside, did you? When the settlers first landed, they must have lived in it and built out from it, so it's still here, somewhere inside this building. Ah. (a not-perfectly-smooth-and-white wall) Bits of meteor damage. Flecks of rust. Rivets. Oh, I love rivets. A wall. A real, honest wall. Not made of tiny robots but made of any old iron.

So, does that mean the barn really is a symbol of invasion? Or is it just the symbol of the original colony ship or just a ship that landed on Gallifrey? I’ve been considering these questions.

The Setting Is Driving the Story

At the beginning of the 1st episode of the finale, the Doctor did another bootstrap paradox to go back to near the beginning of his timeline. We are witnessing a brilliant microcosm of an alternate universe and how it operates with the Black Hole of the Eye of Harmony. This setting also allows us to see an example of how the Time War works with one end of the ship in closer proximity to the Black Hole. This microcosm universe, then, shows us how time is a continuum across the ship.

The Black Hole and ship are analogous to the Black Hole and Planet in “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit.” In both the 10th and 12th Doctor episodes, the situations become desperate, and there is a rebellion. However, the rebellion in the 12th Doctor episodes is not so clear-cut.

The Master said that everyone on the ship is dying. The only way the people on Floor 1056 can survive is to rebel against squalid conditions and death by upgrading themselves to Cybermen. They are desperate to break free, building an army through forced upgrades. At least some see evolving to Cybermen as freedom.

However, the people on Floor 507 are desperate to save their children from being turned into Cybermen. They see Cybermen as slavery and death and are rebelling in their own way.

We’re at the root of the ideological war, foreshadowed since Season 2 of nuWho, which we examined in Chapter 16 “Doctor Mysterio Analysis Part 3: Ideological War for Season 10 & the Eye of Harmony.”

Heaven, Purgatory & Hell in the Alternate Universe

The differential of time between Floor 0 the Floor 1056 is an interesting number: approximately 1000 to 1001 years per day. This curious set of numbers recalls 2 Peter 3 in the New Testament:

With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Therefore, Floor 0 is the Heaven Metaphor, and Floor 1056 is the Hell metaphor. Interestingly, the Doctor goes to Hell in “World Enough and Time” to get Bill back, and we saw him in a different kind of Hell in “Heaven Sent” before he brought Clara back. However, the Doctor can’t get back to metaphorical Heaven while he is alive.

The Heaven Metaphor & God’s Names

The Heaven metaphor on Floor 0 looks futuristic, especially in comparison to the rest of the ship. It’s bathed in light colors, too, as opposed to the darkness on Floor 1056. It follows the light and dark patterns that we’ve examined in multiple ways.

Allusions to God come up in several ways regarding this Heaven metaphor. Here are just a few for now.

This ship situation is analogous to the people in “The God Complex,” who don’t realize they are on a prison ship in a Star Trek holodeck-type situation. There, too, we see both a “heavenly” side where people lost their fear of being taken by the Minotaur. They were in a euphoric state, like a dream, while they eagerly awaited death. That’s in contrast to the hellish side of everything before euphoria set in, which is analogous to pre-conversion Cybermen, at least on Floor 1056.

One odd thing about the ship in this Season 10 finale is that the floors have numbers on the sky ceilings.

So I wonder what the people in this bucolic setting think of the sky with a grid, the number 507, clouds, etc. in the heavens? Is that the name of God for them? It’s a fascinating question, especially since God comes up a lot lately in DW, and many religions have multiple names for God: Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism, etc. Therefore, floor numbers as names for God seem apt, given the reference to “The God Complex” and the 1000 years per day between the 2 ends of the ship.

In fact, in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, God is quoted as saying "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End." In “The Zygon Invasion,” the Zygons in human form are in a church that has the symbols for Alpha and Omega, shown below. And between Alpha and Omega is the Sun symbol. Missy talked about the Master burning like a Sun, and we know the Doctor does too. We’ll look at this more in a later chapter.

Baby Melody Pond is associated with Omega. And in fact, River was associated with the Church of the Papal Mainframe in “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone,” which uses an omega and what looks to be the capital Greek letter pi superimposed mostly within the omega.

Besides Christianity, if we count mythological gods, I’ve showed you a few of them, but there are a lot more that the Doctor is associated with in the subtext.

And I believe there is a reference to the Hindu god Shiva in “World Enough and Time.” After the Doctor used Venusian Aikido (a very 3rd Doctor maneuver) on Jorj, the Doctor says something interesting to Nardole’s comment:

DOCTOR: Venusian Aikido. NARDOLE: I thought you needed four arms for Venusian. DOCTOR: I've got hidden talents, as well as hidden arms.

This makes sense because Shiva is the destroyer of the universe, so he can re-create it. He is part of the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity, which includes Brahma and Vishnu. Shiva has 2 to 4 arms (and can have more) and a 3rd eye. The Doctor has a 3rd eye of sorts (red arrow) in the opening credits.

Purgatory Metaphor

Floor 507 isn’t Heaven, per se, but compared to Floor 1056 it’s much more heavenly. So 507 is like the intermediate state, relating to the Purgatory metaphor. Not everyone on Floor 507 or possibly on other floors may be considered to be in Purgatory, although they could be.

I’m using the metaphor for those people who have died previously, like the Doctor and Bill, who are, according to Wikipedia, in an intermediate state after physical death in which some of those ultimately destined for heaven must first, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church "undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven," holding that "certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come."

Afterlife purification is not unique to Catholicism. Other religions, like Judaism, have something similar.

BTW, it's clear to me that DW is using the Purgatory metaphor to apply to several other characters, too. We'll examine them in a future chapter.

The Doctor Earned His Wings With all the allusions to God, Heaven, and It’s a Wonderful Life (“The Eaters of Light” analysis), it’s clear the Doctor really is a mirror of Clarence the Angel, 2nd Class, who was trying to earn his wings. For example, Missy, the Doctor’s project, did turn toward the light at the end.

After the Doctor died, he earned one wing to Heaven, as the image below shows (red arrow). His coat spread out under his right arm showing the red lining serves as a wing.

After Heather and Bill move the Doctor to the TARDIS, we see him lying on the floor, having earned both wings (yellow arrows). There is also a divine-type light (red arrow) near his head. The lining is easier to see in the episode than it is here.

Heather & How the Doctor Earned His 2nd Wing

Before the Doctor died, he and Bill parted without saying much to each other, although they should have. It was a mirror of Clara and the Doctor before she died. Here’s the lack of communication problem again.

However, Bill did say one thing:

BILL: But, hey er, you know how I'm usually all about women and, and kinda people my own age.

DOCTOR: Yeah? BILL: Glad you knew that.

She put in an order, so to speak, for her love interest.

As we examined in “The Pilot” analysis, Heather was the Doctor, so she had to come back.

Either she is a projection of him or she is a part of his being. The Doctor is not just male, so he can project either a male or female being.

In fact, she is wearing a ring, a symbol of the 12th Doctor, around her neck, shown below (red arrow).

There is a precedent for this in Classic Who. Time Lords could project a version of themselves, and we looked at this in the “Knock Knock” analysis with the 3rd Doctor story “Planet of the Spiders.” According to the TARDIS Wikia, Cho Je only existed either as a future projection of K'anpo Rimpoche (the Time Lord abbot of the meditation center) or a creation of his mind, which Rimpoche used as a proxy. At the end, K’anpo died and regenerated into Cho Je.

The other possibility for Heather was put forth in the 5th Doctor story “Kinda,” which we looked at in the TPEW analysis. Since Bill uses “kinda” when talking to the Doctor in the dialogue above, the Doctor’s soul probably passed onto Heather, the way the old blind woman in “Kinda” passed her soul into the young girl who was her companion. They operated like the Holy Trinity where 3 operated as One, but in that case 2 operated as One while the old woman was alive.

Either way, they end up as beings of pure consciousness, who can manifest in human form.

After the Wings While we see Heather as a type of regenerated Doctor, the 12th Doctor has to come back to life because he has not finished the rescue. And he has multiple faces that have to get redemption, which we’ll look at that more in a later chapter.

The 12th Doctor’s face we see at the end of the episode when he is in the icy environment with the 1st Doctor should be back at the beginning, happening earlier in time than what we see on Floor 507. We’ll examine the symbolism on Floor 507, and how this relates to going back to the beginning.

This Doctor’s face hasn’t earned his wings yet. The other did, suggesting that he did remember what Clara meant to him. However, what does that mean for this other version on ice? That’s a question I’m considering.

Hell Metaphor, the Satan Pit & the Time War

We’ve seen more of the hellish side of the ship than the heavenly. Certainly, Floor 1056 represents the Satan Pit and a living nightmare. The squalid conditions and nasty emissions outside the hospital are a reference to “Gridlock” with similar conditions in the New New York Undercity.

And the gridlock has to change in the Library metaphor.

Because conditions in this part of the ship are driving people to desperate measures and time is going faster in Hell, we get to see how beings from the Hell metaphor are going to overtake Heaven, Purgatory, and the children, unless something is done. We have to see a resolution in the Christmas Special, and I’ll talk more about this in another chapter.

DOCTOR: We can't go back to the bridge. We can only go four or five floors up at the most. The further we move up the ship, the slower time moves for us and the faster it moves for the Cybermen. By the time we get to the bridge, they'll have had thousands of years to work out how to stop us. There is no safe way to get back to the Tardis. It's a mathematical impossibility.

The Ood server in “The Impossible Planet” expresses what is happening here:

OOD: The Beast and his Armies shall rise from the Pit to make war against God.

So we have a war against God on Floor 507? Yes, in a way. This is more foreshadowing for Christmas, which we’ll examine.

In fact, Razor said something interesting in “World Enough and Time” when Bill wanted to get back to the Doctor:

RAZOR: You do not understand the dangers. Many years ago, there was an expedition to floor 507, the largest of the solar farms. BILL: And? RAZOR: Silence. They never came back. There is something up there. And we must be strong.

We saw what was on 507, but that doesn’t explain why someone couldn’t get to the bridge. If those Cybermedics could do it to get Bill, they could do it again.

So there’s something else going on, and the subtext shows more. We’ll talk about that in another chapter.

Dante’s Divine Comedy, 9 Circles of Hell, Ice & Foreshadowing

The way this universe is set up, I can’t help but think of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. In fact, it most likely gives us foreshadowing for Christmas. The Divine Comedy comes in 3 parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Wikipedia says, “As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.” Dante’s work, among several others, has influenced the Christian concept of Hell.

Since this Library metaphor universe has become a very hellish place, the Inferno part is rather fitting as it describes the metaphorically fiery place of Hell. Wikipedia continues

The Inferno tells the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".

When I saw Floor 900 being punched through by Cybermen, shown below, I immediately thought of the 9th Circle of Hell.

9 Circles, Satan & Ice

The Master is sitting in Hell at the beginning of “World Enough and Time,” but it’s Floor 1056. While there are 9 circles in Dante’s Hell, the last has a depth. Wikipedia says

Dante’s Hell is divided into nine circles, the ninth circle being divided further into four rings, their boundaries only marked by the depth of their sinners' immersion in the ice; Satan sits in the last ring, Judecca. It is in the fourth ring of the ninth circle, where the worst sinners, the betrayers to their benefactors, are punished. Here, these condemned souls, frozen into the ice, are completely unable to move or speak and are contorted into all sorts of fantastical shapes as a part of their punishment.

Ice is interesting, especially because the 12th Doctor ends up there at the end of “The Doctor Falls” where the 1st Doctor is. And a bunch of subtext shows that this would be the 9th Circle of Hell.

Before we examine part of that in this chapter, I want to show you the other circles because the Doctor, Master, and Missy would fit into quite a few of them. The Master would fit into all of them, including living like a king, being a dictator, and believing Missy’s soul wouldn’t continue on in some other form. According to Wikipedia:

1. First Circle (Limbo) - The first circle contains the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans, who, although not sinful, did not accept Christ.

2. Second Circle (Lust) - These carnal offenders are condemned for allowing their appetites to sway their reason.

3. Third Circle (Gluttony) – This circle contains those who overindulge in food, drink, and other worldly pleasures. At the same time, they have the inability to see others lying nearby, representing the gluttons’ selfishness and coldness.

4. Fourth Circle (Greed) – These offenders are divided into two groups – those who hoarded possessions, and those who lavishly squandered them

5. Fifth Circle (Wrath) – These offenders are here, being furious and sullen

6. Sixth Circle (Heresy) – This circle contains those who say "the soul dies with the body"

7. Seventh Circle (Violence) – There is a Minotaur in this circle that gnaws flesh. Those who commit violence against neighbors, self (suicides), God, art, and nature end up here.

8. Eighth Circle (Fraud) – There are several types of fraudulent and malicious offenders here. Those who deliberately exploited the passions of others and and drove them to serve their own interests; those who abuse and corrupt language to play upon others' desires and fears; those who made money for themselves out of what belongs to God; those who are fortune tellers, diviners, astrologers, and other false prophets; and those who are corrupt politicians. Also, there are hypocrites, thieves, counselors of fraud, sowers of discord, and falsifiers.

9. Ninth Circle (Treachery) – People here are guilty of treachery against those with whom they had special relationships. 1st Ring - Traitors to their Kindred: for example, Cain murdered his own brother 2nd Ring - Traitors to their Country: for example, Antenor, a Trojan soldier who betrayed his city to the Greeks. 3rd Ring - Traitors to their Guests: for example, Ptolemy invited his father-in-law Simon Maccabaeus and his sons to a banquet and then killed them 4th Ring - Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors: for example, Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus

Center of Hell – Satan “In the very centre of Hell, condemned for committing the ultimate sin (personal treachery against God), is the Devil, referred to by Virgil as Dis (the Roman god of the underworld; the name ‘Dis’ was often used for Pluto in antiquity, such as in Virgil's Aeneid). The arch-traitor, Lucifer was once held by God to be fairest of the angels before his pride led him to rebel against God, resulting in his expulsion from Heaven. Lucifer is a giant, terrifying beast trapped waist-deep in the ice, fixed and suffering.”

Heresy came up in “Dark Water” after Danny Pink died. People were getting cremated even though Dr. Chang said people’s souls lived on after death. In fact, Missy is acting like Pluto in “Dark Water” and its sequel, “Death in Heaven,” as keeper of the Matrix data slice, collecting souls.

So Missy would be sitting in the Center of Hell, too, at some point, but she did change.

What about the Doctor? In “The Lie of the Land” analysis, we looked at the concept that a face of the Doctor was a Trojan Horse. In fact, a toy Trojan Horse shows up in “The Doctor Falls.” It’s hard to see, but there is a Trojan Horse on wheels, shown below (red arrow), next to the Doctor.

The Doctor has a lot of sins to atone for, which we’ll examine more in a future chapter.

So the Doctor ends up on ice, most likely symbolizing Dante’s 9th Circle in Hell. He needs rescued.

Also, he would prefer to commit suicide than regenerate. He’s terrified of changing into something unknown, especially after all he’s been through. Those are Steven Moffat’s words. I can certainly understand the Doctor’s sentiment. He’ll lose part of himself and possibly not remember the lessons. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to repeat those lessons, if I were him.

Since he is willing to commit violence against himself, that may be another reason why we keep seeing numerous references to “The God Complex,” referencing the Minotaur from Dante’s 7th Circle of Hell. That would make sense.

Also, since Danny Pink killed his young self in the war (we examined that in Chapter 18: "Doctor Mysterio Analysis Part 5: Rescuing Children & Missy/Master"), that would be the 9th Circle of Hell, which would be another reason the Doctor has ended up on ice. But that may not be all…

“Fire and Ice” & Perishing Twice

Since the Doctor has to die again, the ice motif may also be an inspiration from one of Robert Frost’s most popular poems and may give us some more foreshadowing:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

We saw Hell and the metaphorical fire, so now we get to see the ice. It’s interesting that hate is associated with ice and the Doctor has been described as being fire and ice.

At the end, he certainly hates the thought of regenerating.

So ice is an appropriate setting in more than one way, besides tying in the Mondasian episode from 1966. However, there’s more to the ice part beyond this, and we’ll explore that in another chapter. There are several important tie-ins to the ice and hatred concept that we need to examine because this foreshadows Christmas.

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #the doctor falls #missy #master #meta #analysis

1 note · View note

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Photo

And probably a pig.

986 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Photo

407 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 5: “World Enough and Time” Analysis Doctor Who S10.11: The Twin, the Blue Guy & Daleks, Doctor Who?

<- Read previous chapter

Simulation, Real Threats & Telling a Story

I believe it’s likely that DW is using multiple techniques here at the end to finish this up: simulation with testing, real threats, and telling the story.

Simulation Idea, Testing, Time Dilation

After the opening credits in “World Enough and Time,” we see the odd situation of Missy stepping out of the TARDIS and calling herself Doctor Who. This opening scene is almost exactly like what I was thinking, except I never thought at the time that Missy would be impersonating the Doctor. The important part is that she and the Doctor don’t realize that someone is watching them in the Library metaphor, and there’s a test. So there are nested watchers. We saw that in a previous chapter with the “Time Heist” image of the Doctor looking into the fishbowl at the goldfish and castle.

It’s clear that people have been watching the Doctor, especially in the 1st and 12th Doctor episodes, because of all the Eye metaphors that show up: in shop windows, kitchen sink drains, bathtub drains with Heather’s eye, etc. Also, the Black Hole metaphor with its Eye of Harmony represents yet another Eye that is watching the Doctor. Harmony Shoal hasn’t gone away.

Time Dilation & Two Time Streams: in “Sleep No More” Time dilation or two time streams is actually part of my simulation idea, but it’s DW that gave me that idea in the first place. We first saw that in “The Girl Who Waited,” but I figured that “Sleep No More” with the sleep machines was using 2 time streams or time dilation with Patient Zero, given “Heaven Sent.”

That sounds suspiciously like Prisoner Zero. And considering that this is both a prison and healing, having Prisoner Zero and Patient Zero be one and the same makes perfectly good sense. The patient was in the box for 5 years. And it looked suspiciously similar to the suspended animation chamber in “Before the Flood.”

Time to Wake Up: Nightmares Are Real

I liken this all to CAL putting herself to sleep for 100 years until people show up in the Library. While Doctor Moon tried to keep her dreaming, the Doctor gave CAL a different perspective. Then, the threats came, and Doctor Moon had to tell CAL the truth. Nightmares were real.

Potentially Reading or Telling a Story

I think an elegant way to work through what’s been happening would be to have the Doctor and his family listening to the end of the story of what happened with all of this in the Christmas Special. So we can see them in a much happier setting. It’s just my idea.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like my emotions will be put through the wringer in the finale, and I’ll need to see that the Doctor and Bill and everyone end up happier.

I could be wrong about all of this. Somehow, however, I think the idea of a story has to come up. “It’s a long story” has been a much-used phrase since Classic Who, but even more so in nuWho.

The first time I became aware of the potential telling of a story was in the first 9th Doctor episode, “Rose,” where the Doctor mentions the long story:

ROSE: What, you're on your own? DOCTOR: Well, who else is there? I mean, you lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed, and watch telly, while all the time, underneath you, there's a war going on. ROSE: Okay. Start from the beginning. I mean, if we're going to go with the living plastic, and I don't even believe that, but if we do, how did you kill it?

DOCTOR: The thing controlling it projects life into the arm. I cut off the signal, dead. ROSE: So that's radio control? DOCTOR: Thought control. Are you all right? ROSE: Yeah. So, who's controlling it, then? DOCTOR: Long story.

On a first viewing, I didn’t catch that this dialogue could be taken multiple ways. Rose says, “Start from the beginning.” I started viewing episodes as if this could all be part of some long story of a war. At the same time, I kept in mind that this is sci-fi, so things have to be believable. If they aren’t, then we have to work out why.

I haven’t mentioned the story part up till now because if we start telling ourselves it’s just a story, then we are more likely to miss what really is happening. So please keep believing these events really happened.

Of course, we’ve seen River and Amy writing stories. In fact, the weird Master in the 2nd Doctor story “The Mind Robber” is a mirror of River. That’s the story we examined where the Master and the Doctor had a writing duel, manifesting fictitious characters to fight each other.

Bootstrap Paradox, “The Tenth Planet” & Earth’s Twin

The first time we see the Doctor in “World Enough and Time,” there’ an image of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, meaning we’ve gone back in time again. In fact, we’ve gone back before the setting of “The Tenth Planet,” which is the last 1st Doctor episode. While the episode aired in October 1966, it was set in 1986.

Mondas: Earth’s Twin

Mondas, which comes up on the monitor Missy is looking at, is Earth’s twin Planet. So here’s a reference to a twin. We examined how siblings kept coming up, so here’s why.

Of course, just as Earth is a metaphor for the Doctor, Mondas is also a metaphor for his twin. There are 24 ticks around the Planet, so it represents the 24th Doctor.

The Doctor and Master have to be twins. If one exists, so does the other. nuWho hasn't referenced the White and Black Guardians in canon, but I talked about them a previous analysis, because it's clear to me that the concept is what the Doctor and Master are about. Depending on the situation, the Doctor can be the Master or the Master the Doctor.

In the Shadow World, like we have, the Master is actually the Doctor, trying to save the real Doctor and universe. This exactly matches what I said about the Doctor, depending on the situation. He can be Christ or the Antichrist.

We have to remember, though, that the Doctor has 3 faces, so one is essentially the Master, another a Doctor, and a 3rd is Abraxas. In other terms they can be Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Or Mother, Dauther, Holy Spirit.

According to the TARDIS Wikia:

Mondas developed much more quickly than Earth, but a catastrophe left the twin-planet spiraling out of Earth's solar system.

According to another page in the TARDIS Wikia:

Its inhabitants grew weak, so their scientists created spare parts for their bodies. Limbs and organs were slowly replaced by metal and plastic. Emotions were removed. The Cybermen were born.

This sounds like what is happening in “World Enough and Time.”

The Doctor's TARDIS lands at the Snowcap space tracking station in Antarctica in December 1986. A routine space mission starts going wrong. When the base personnel's suspicions are roused, the Doctor informs them that the space capsule is being affected by the gravitational pull of another planet — a tenth planet in the Solar system.

Antarctica may be where the 12th Doctor with OMG hair landed at the beginning of “World Enough and Time.” This snowy location is also where alien pods landed in an episode we looked at: the 4th Doctor story “The Seeds of Doom.” The Doctor did bring up plants in “World Enough and Time,” the subject of that 4th Doctor genesis story.

The loss of a routine space mission and the appearance of that planet in the sky herald the arrival of the Cybermen, who are intent on the destruction of the Earth and the conversion of all humans into Cybermen. Ben and Polly fight to save the world, but it is a battle that may be the Doctor's very last.

This is the 1st appearance of the Mondasian Cybermen since “The Tenth Planet.”

The Inertial Lifts & the Hybrid

I noticed several odd things about the 3 inertial lifts. First, why are there not 3 lift shafts shown on the monitor? Instead, there are 2 of them with 2 lifts in the same shaft-like column. Are they stacked? Next, I noticed that the lift on the left in the image below had the same floor number as the bottom lift in the column on the right. They were twins! That’s significant. Then, I noticed that something really odd happened. The 2 in the same column started merging. In the image below, you can see that the 2 lifts (white arrow) in the same column have almost merged.

This symbolizes the Doctor and his twin. One gets merged with something else and becomes a hybrid.

The Hand of Omega & the 1st Doctor

I’m going to throw this in here because we are examining things with the 1st Doctor. If I remember correctly, the 1st Doctor initially came to Earth in 1963 to specifically bury the Hand of Omega.

In fact, the TARDIS Wikia says

In late October, the First Doctor made arrangements with a Shoreditch funeral parlour to bury the Hand of Omega in a nearby churchyard. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

The Hand of Omega can also be a metaphor of River or Clara.

Revisiting “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End”

The mention of Earth’s twin and planets moving out of orbit is similar to 2 other episodes we’ve looked at. In fact, there are 24+3 drawers in Razor’s office, so this all points to the 10th Doctor episode “The Stolen Earth” and “Journey’s End,” which we’ve examined in Chapter 15 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.

The Daleks stole the Doctor and The Ghost. I’m reposting part of what I wrote because we’ll most likely have to revisit a few aspects of this in the upcoming episode(s). Here’s what I said

In “The Stolen Earth,” 23 planets plus the Earth are stolen simultaneously, and 3 other planets are stolen much earlier. The 10th Doctor tells Donna that someone tried to move the Earth once before a long time ago. (That first move seems like what we are going back to with the 12th Doctor because that started the whole problem.) After picking up the trail, the 10th Doctor and Donna end up in the Medusa Cascade. He says he was in the Medusa Cascade as “just a kid” of 90 years old.

Earth is a metaphor for the Doctor, and the number 27 is special because (12 x 2) + 3 = 27. There are two 12th Doctors plus the three extra planets refer to the The Ghost and 3 hidden faces of the Doctor. This means the Daleks symbolically steal The Ghost and are going to set off a reality bomb. That’s really interesting since the 12th Doctor represents The Ghost, and he is waking up to reality.

There are three 10th Doctors spelled out in canon in the 2nd part of the season finale, “Journey’s End,” foreshadowing some of what is happening now. Basically, the 2-parter gives us 3 new beings even if they don’t look like it.

· Meta-crisis Doctor – 10th Doctor regenerates into the same face using his preserved Hand as a repository for excess energy – he is supposed to be fully Time Lord

· Donna touches the Hand of the Doctor; she absorbs it’s energy and becomes the DoctorDonna – ½ human and ½ Time Lord – Donna’s body with the Doctor’s Time Lord brain; it’s why she needs her memory wiped of the Doctor in the end

· ½ human and ½ Time Lord version of the 10th Doctor, who is created when Donna touches the Hand; he gets ½ his genes from Donna and ends up staying with Rose because he has 1 heart and would age; according to the 10th Doctor, this version “destroyed the Daleks. He committed genocide. He's too dangerous to be left on his own.” That’s interesting since the fully Time Lord version supposedly destroyed his own people and the Daleks.

Some of what is happening to the 12th Doctor mirrors that of Donna, like the insectoid in “Turn Left” vs. in insectoid in TRODM. Both are being controlled. Also, Donna had a memory wipe vs. the Doctor’s memory block. They both were in Pompeii, albeit Capaldi’s character, Lobus Caecilius, was not called the Doctor. BTW, he put on a gold beetle in “The Fires of Pompeii,” so the beetle was controlling him.

Then, there’s this, referring to the Pyrovile’s in “The Fires of Pompeii”:

So the Doctor as The Ghost has a relationship to Pyrovilia beyond what we saw in “The Fires of Pompeii.” Karen Gillan who plays both Amy Pond and the soothsayer in “The Fires of Pompeii” is turning into a Pyrovilian in the episode, a living rock person. Also, Amy Pond thinks she is turning into a Weeping Angel in the 11th Doctor episode “Flesh and Stone.” There seems to be a theme here. Amy is also one of the hidden faces of the Doctor.

The other 2 Ghost Planets stolen are

· Adipose 3, also known as Breeding Planet One. Donna mentioned she was dieting in the Library dream, which is a reference to Adipose 3 and “Partners in Crime,” where it featured.

· The Lost Moon of Poosh, but we don’t have canon information on that. Is the Lost Moon of Poosh the soothsayer? Caecilius probably represents Pyrovilia. His first name is Lobus, meaning pod. There was an escape pod or something similar that the Pyroviles came in. I believe Caecilius’ DNA is being used to create an army.

Most likely, we will see the 3 versions of the Doctor. Will we see Amy and Donna?

Stopping the Time War, “A Good Man Goes to War” & Gallifrey

This really is all about Gallifrey and stopping the Time War, as we examined before. It comes back to the child created to stop the war. That was Melody Pond (the baby looked like a 3-fold being) in “A Good Man Goes to War,” and it also comes back to Ohila and the Sisterhood of Karn reviving the dead Doctor and turning him into the War Doctor. They are retellings of each other.

As we saw in “The Day of the Doctor,” it wasn’t really real. There was green plant material on the floor in the barn, when the War Doctor came in. Also, if the War Doctor had actually used the Moment to destroy Gallifrey and the Daleks, why didn’t it kill him? Why did he think it would kill all the Daleks when this is supposed to be a different planet?

Things just don’t add up.

As we examined, we had to find the epicenter and destroy that, so that is where we are at in this prison ship, the Library metaphor.

That’s what this has all been about. Throwing off the enslavers, the beings mind controlling the Doctor, so he can wake up to what is really happening and fix things. Ohila said he was the only one who could.

We’ll have to see Gallifrey at some point.

The Master & the War Doctor

We also took a look at how the Master was involved in this. Here’s what I said about the Master & the War Doctor in Chapter 19 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.

What we see with the War Doctor in “The Day of the Doctor” didn’t happen the way it looked like. Check out this image below with greenery (red arrows) in the barn with the Moment, the sentient device that would destroy the Time Lords. Zooming in on the greenery is important. DW is telling us that things didn’t happen this way because there is no greenery for miles. The barn is in a desert. So where did the plant leaves come from? These are memories, regrets of what happened and a turning point of fixing things.

In “The Sound of Drums,” the Master says something surprising about the war:

MASTER: The Time Lords only resurrected me because they knew I'd be the perfect warrior for a Time War. I was there when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform. I saw it. I ran. I ran so far. Made myself human so they would never find me, because I was so scared. DOCTOR: I know.

There are at least 5 important, surprising parts here:

1. According to this, the War Doctor is the Master, a face of him, although not at the same point in time. The War Doctor we saw in “The Day of the Doctor” has lots of regrets, while the Master is young and full of vengeance.

2. The Cruciform has never been defined as to what it means. However, I believe it means the 12th Doctor since crosses symbolize him. This may mean the Dalek Emperor took control of The Ghost. This would make sense since the Daleks stole the Doctor and The Ghost before in “The Stolen Earth,” which goes back to “The Fires of Pompeii.” Again, I want to stress that the 12th Doctor has 3 different faces, so it could be that the Emperor took control of one of the Doctor’s faces, like River or Amy Pond, using them as hostages to get the Doctor to submit. Numerous integrations and metaphors make it difficult to assess if the cruciform would only be the 12th Doctor’s face. We probably will see 3 people, like we did in “Journey’s End.”

3. The Master is so scared of the Cruciform, which causes him to run so far, turn himself human, and hide. Wow! This sounds like the Doctor in “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood,” turning himself human and hiding from The Family. However, this also sounds like what we’ve been talking about with the 12th Doctor and the Hybrid and The Ghost. He ran from Gallifrey because he was scared of himself. He gave away his watch at the beginning of “Deep Breath,” which symbolizes turning himself human. Since then, he’s been on a journey to discover who he really is. However, he’s taking the “long way home.”

4. The sequence in “The End of Time” has a group of women who resurrect the Master. They obviously are metaphors for the Time Lords the Master is talking about. Also, they represent the Sisterhood of Karn, who originally came from Gallifrey. The Sybilline Sisterhood in “The Fires of Pompeii” is a metaphor for the Sisterhood of Karn, so it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out. The Sisterhood on Karn resurrected the 8th Doctor after he died. Then, they turned him into the War Doctor to stop the war. Will the Doctor go after the Sybilline Sisterhood, wanting revenge, showing us his past self? That’s possible. The Sisterhood of Karn would most likely represent his merciful self dealing with them. This is the way DW works, so we have to take these things into account. We have to look at when in his timeline through the subtext he is doing things.

5. The Master’s wife, Lucy, was in prison for killing him, just like River was in prison for killing the Doctor. Lucy is in TRODM because she is the Doctor’s alchemical wife = Mother of God consciousness = Amy => River. The subtext suggests Amy is a Time Lord, living as a human. Therefore, River represents Amy’s regeneration.

Using the Title “Doctor Who,” The Chase & Daleks

The Doctor has never called himself Doctor Who before. He has used it, for example, in signing his name or saying it in a foreign language. However, the 12th Doctor is the first to use that moniker.

It’s a reference to the 1st Doctor story The Chase that we looked at in “The Eaters of Light” analysis, when looking at the reference of the Mary Celeste. As we saw, much of Season 10 is tracking closely with this story. In it, Daleks chase the Doctor through time. It’s hard not to think of Heather in “The Pilot” or the Doctor hiding from The Family in “Human Nature” and “The Family of “Blood.”

The Chase "The Executioners" "The Death of Time" "Flight Through Eternity" "Journey into Terror" "The Death of Doctor Who" "The Planet of Decision"

“World Enough and Time” & “Journey into Terror” The hospital scenes in “World Enough and Time” go right along with the haunted house and nightmarish dreams in “Journey into Terror.” That’s what they are dreams and nightmares, like CAL has in the Library. I’ll talk more about the hospital in a bit.

"The Death of Doctor Who" The Doctor’s use of “Doctor Who” in such a way, is pointing to "The Death of Doctor Who.” The Daleks built a duplicate robot of the Doctor, whom they said was human. They plan on using the robot as an assassin. The Doctor ends up fighting it.

I have to say that I was watching closely to tell who was the real Doctor and who wasn’t. The Doctor pulled out wires of the supposed robot (from it’s shirt, which looked very fake and not up to what I normally see in the 1st Doctor episodes; surprisingly most are technically superior to some later episodes).

All I can say is that it was odd, and I have questions about this. Of course, the episode is in black and white, which makes it more difficult to see details and what is happening. And the video is a little grainy.

Since the Doctor is the imposter in “The Gunfighters,” this The Chase episode gives me pause.

For now, I’ll assume the Doctor here is an imposter because of the inverse reflection.

BTW, the Doctor in the episode is shown in 3 different ways when he is talking to Bill. They refer to his 3 faces. It took 3 generations in the Library episodes to gain access to the facility to get back to CAL and rescue her from the nightmares.

"The Planet of Decision," “Hell Bent” & “The Doctor Falls” Since The Chase is being referenced so heavily, it seems logical to assume the last episode of the 1st Doctor’s story “The Planet of Decision” will be the focus of “The Doctor Falls.” In the 1st Doctor episode, the battle takes place on Mechanus, a planet of machines. When the Doctor and his companions arrive, the Mechonoids take them prisoner.

This episode has similarities to “Smile” in that the Mechonoids are mirrors of the Vardy. The Mechonoids were sent to the planet about 50 years earlier to prepare the landing sites for human colonists, who never arrived.

Once the Daleks arrive to find the Doctor, they have a fierce battle with the Mechonoids. The machines destroy each other.

This will be a retelling of “Hell Bent,” in that the people will be freed from the Library metaphor, like Clara was, and the dystopian prison world will be destroyed, which is the apocalyptic event – Ragnarök.

Can we ever be sure they are free? How much will be in the finale and how much in the Christmas Special, I can’t say.

All I know is that seeing reality will be emotional.

On the Opening Bridge Scenes

The whole testing thing of Missy was odd, but there are some interesting things in the subtext. There are reflections pertaining to Missy, Bill, and Nardole when they step out of the TARDIS, so we can’t believe everything we see here.

Missy is wearing a bird’s wing on her hat. That’s interesting since we have been talking about birds. And we even talked about Clarence getting his wings. Therefore, the one wing could suggest that Missy is halfway to earning her wings.

The Doctor, however, has an inverse reflection on the table when we first see him, so things with him are opposite to what we see. There also is an image of Beethoven’s Fifth, telling us the Doctor created a bootstrap paradox.

Interestingly, Missy is obviously mirroring the Doctor while the 12th Doctor is mirroring the 11th Doctor here. He has the TARDIS monitor upstairs with him. When he brings it down, we see a circle on the back, which is from the 11th Doctor’s TARDIS.

The Janus & the Giant Ship

Missy said the monitors on the bridge were positioned so that one person could see all of them on this giant ship. Here’s another giant reference. Because we’ve gone back in time, this ship really is a giaaaanttttttt.

Anyway, the interesting thing is that if the monitors are positioned so that one person can see all of them, why are there 2 monitors behind the center chair, shown below (white arrows)?

This points to the pilot being a Janus, which is just more evidence of what we’ve examined before. Especially with Heather, which we saw in a previous analysis. The Janus is a face of the Doctor.

Jorj, Nardole & the Doctor

There are some odd things about what happened on the bridge with Jorj. Before I get into most of that, we need to examine a few things.

When Jorj shows up on the bridge wielding a gun, Nardole says he used to be blue. That creates a mirror potential. Jorj is clearly scared, and Nardole scares easily. Therefore, it is quite shocking that Nardole is not scared at all. He is acting the opposite to his normal self. That is odd.

Jorj runs over to the monitor, watching the inertia lifts, and the Doctor watches the lifts from within the TARDIS, mirroring Jorj. As we’ve examined, Nardole, for one thing, represents the child version of the Doctor. If we combine the mirror of the Doctor and mirror of Nardole as a child, Jorj is a child who represents the child Doctor. He may not look like a child, but there is one other thing…

The Name Jorj Refers to George in “Night Terrors”

The name Jorj sounds like a homephone of George, the 8-year-old boy from “Night Terrors,” who wanted someone to save him from the monsters. The title “Night Terrors” is totally appropriate for what is going on in this episode, especially in the hospital scenes. Jorj is a mirror of George.

We’ve examined George a little bit in the past. He has telekinetic powers and can send people subconsciously to the dollhouse, where they are miniaturized and chased around by dolls that want to play. If a human gets caught, they get turned into a doll.

This sounds very similar to Jorj coming in and killing Bill, so the Cybermedics come and turn her into a Cyberwoman.

George, the Doctor & Pigs

We examined somewhere back in the Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who how pigs were metaphors for Daleks and their pig slaves, genetically altered-mutant human-pig hybrids. They showed up in the 2-parter “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks.”

George & the Marionette Interestingly, George has a pig marionette on his wall, shown below, so George is a puppet, a slave to the Daleks. Therefore, we can expect Jorj to be a puppet, too. There’s also a rocket in the image, which is a metaphor for the prison ship end closest to the Black Hole. He represents the Eye of Harmony.

The Doctor & the Pig Reflection We examined this image in Chapter 14. In “Deep Breath,” the half-faced man is holding up a silver platter, shown below, but there is something odd. Looking closely, we can see there is a real pig’s face superimposed over the half-faced man’s hardware side in the reflection. The important thing is that the cyborg is holding the platter up to half the Doctor’s face, suggesting the Doctor’s hardware side is actually Dalek. He is a Dalek slave.

In “World Enough and Time,” the Doctor makes a reference to pigs:

DOCTOR: Enjoying your bacon sandwich? BILL: Why? DOCTOR: Because it had a mummy and a daddy. Go tell a pig about your moral high ground.

The reference to the bacon, Jorj’s name, and his mirror of George and the pig, seriously bolster my hypothesis that the Daleks have control of the Doctor. Daleks can still be a metaphor, which we’ve seen, but I’m betting Daleks will have to come into play.

The Dollhouse, Dolls & Dals

I’ve held the hypothesis for a long time that dollhouse and dolls actually reference Dals.

According to the TARDIS Wikia:

The Dals were a race which lived on the planet Skaro.

After reading the Thals' historical records, the First Doctor claimed that the Dals were the "forebear" of the Dalek race, and that "Dals" was what the Thals called the Daleks at the time of the neutronic war that mutated the surviving Thals and Dalek ancestors. (TV: "The Ambush") According to another account, the Daleks were descended from the Kaleds. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)

The Thal Dyoni said that the Daleks were originally teachers, while the Thal leader Temmosus said they were philosophers. (TV: "The Escape")

George’s Father

There’s a Sun and a doughnut on George’s father’s refrigerator, so he is the 12th Doctor creating Suns and being a Door/Doughnut metaphor. He’s playing an older version of George.

He’s a ghost in the image below, as he has no physical presence, just reflections. He has 2 faces, the doll is hidden behind him, and we can only see it when he moves a little. So the doll probably refers to Dal. This would mirror the Doctor.

Jorj Sort of Kills Bill

Jorj has a shaky hand on the gun. He is scared and doesn’t really want to kill Bill (he apologies afterward), so it’s natural to have a shaky hand. However, we saw Dr. Sim in TRODM with a shaky hand, he obviously was being controlled and didn’t really want to kill anyone. And Jorj is being controlled to kill Bill.

Because Jorj is meant to be a child, this may suggest that the child Doctor is made to kill his mother, although he may not know she is his mother. In contrast, Amy shot at the little girl who was implied to be her daughter. We never got confirmation of this, though.

Because Bill is a mirror of both Clara and River here, this would represent the Raven (the child Doctor) killing Clara. This is similar to CAL in the Library causing River’s death by going into self-destruct mode. CAL is being controlled too.

I haven’t mentioned this before, but the subtext suggests that Amy is Rory’s Mother of God consciousness. This was mirrored in TRODM when Lucy was Grant’s Mother of God consciousness.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest & “Oxygen”

In “World Enough and Time,” the hospital is creepy and surreal, and there is the tyrannical Nurse Ratched mirror from the psychiatric hospital in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The situation here and “Heaven Sent” are living hells.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American film, based on the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey. According to Shmoop.com:

When Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) gets transferred for evaluation from a prison farm to a mental institution, he assumes it will be a less restrictive environment. But the martinet Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) runs the psychiatric ward with an iron fist, keeping her patients cowed through abuse, medication and sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. The battle of wills between the rebellious McMurphy and the inflexible Ratched soon affects all the ward's patients.

Cuckoo is another term the Doctor applied to young George, although it wasn’t meant as crazy. It refers to the cuckoo bird’s habit of laying an egg in another bird’s nest, so it raises the foster bird.

This episode sets things up to go to the epicenter of the bird’s domain to stop it from laying more eggs. That mirrors stopping the Time War at the epicenter.

“Oxygen”

“Oxygen” had to come up again because there was a lot of hand waving in the episode with how Bill and the Doctor survived. (We haven’t seen the end of it, though.)

The Doctor’s words to Bill in “Oxygen” relate to this finale:

DOCTOR: We're going to have to leave you here. BILL: What? I'll die! DOCTOR: You're not going to die. But I won't lie to you, this will not be good. ABBY: We have to go. Now. DOCTOR: You will go through hell, but you will come through it. And I will be waiting on the other side.

In fact, the Doctor repeats words in “World Enough and Time” that he said in “Oxygen.”

Here’s the “Oxygen” dialogue:

DOCTOR: I'm the Doctor. I will do everything in my power to save all your lives. And when I do, you will spend the rest of them wondering who I was and why I helped you. If anyone's offering a better deal, be my guest.

Here’s the “World Enough and Time” dialogue when the Doctor is trying to talk Jorj down from shooting Bill. Metaphorically, it means that he is talking to himself, trying to save Bill. This is similar to Rory trying not to kill Amy in “The Pandorica Opens”:

DOCTOR: I like it. You don't know it yet, but in a short time, you will trust me with your life. And when I save you and everyone on your ship, one day you will look back, and wonder who I was and why I did.

Combining “World Enough and Time” with “Oxygen” and the lack thereof points back to the drowning in the Biblical Flood.

In The Man Who Fell to Earth, which, as we’ve seen is one of the things DW is based on, Newton comes to Earth on a rescue mission for his planet, needing water, so it’s fitting that water comes into play whether it’s metaphorical or not.

Something with the Cybermedics Doesn’t Make Sense

The Cybermedics come up in the inertial lifts from places higher than 507. If Bill is taken to Floor 1056, why does Razor say what he does?

BILL: But I've been up there. There's a friend of mine, he could help.

Razor is obviously lying, wanting to convert Bill. With the lifts, she could get back to the bridge. Later we see Bill in the hospital. Why is she the only one without the sock part over her head? That doesn’t make sense. At one point, we see she has a reflection, so she has a hidden face. Then, in another reflection, the hidden face has a sock over its face.

The Hospital from Hell & the Odd Volume Dial

“World Enough and Time” has a very 1st Doctor feel in many ways, especially when it comes to the hospital from hell.

One of the things I saw in the 1st Doctor subtext was that items that looked similar to some real device, such as the IV bottle in “World Enough and Time,” had some surreal things going on in the subtext.

Case in point is that the IV bottle is more than what it looks like. At a far glance, it does look like an odd IV bottle. Strangely, it has a weird volume dial. When Bill turns it for one of the patients, not only does the patient start repeating, “Pain,” but also his voice gets louder.

Taking a closer look at the image below, the volume dial (white arrow) is in the middle of something odd (yellow arrow). It’s a speaker system, which matches the increase and decrease in sound. What is a speaker system doing on an IV bottle?

Not only does this point to something seriously wrong, but also it points to people waking up to a surreal realism. Outside of the 1st Doctor stories, I’ve never seen this. I was geeking out about the connection, but at the same time, it creeped me out. This episode tops “Midnight” for the scariest episode for me. Marrying people to machines like this is a terrifying prospect.

Many of the 1st Doctor episodes gave me the sense that the Doctor and his companions were prisoners of the Daleks, who were watching them. Also, the Doctor and friends look liked they were miniaturized. This all was in an environment, like the Library, where beings can watch from the outside.

The Realism of “Asylum of the Daleks”

This is a nightmarish situation with the added realism that faces of the Doctor and others are merged with hardware. We also saw this with Oswin Oswald in “Asylum of the Daleks.” In fact, the subtext shows in the next episode, “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship,” that he is forgetting what he already has asked a couple a times. This is a sign of turning into a Dalek. We didn’t see it that way, but neither did Amy and Clara.

In the asylum episode, we also saw how Amy was dreaming of humans dancing, but they were really Daleks on the floor in front of her. That is a great example of the nightmarish situation of waking up to surrealistic realism. We saw that with Oswin Oswald, too. She thought she was human, but she had been converted to a Dalek.

The Master’s Office

Sunflower & “Vincent and the Doctor”

The Master has a sunflower in his office. There are only 3 people, whom I can think of, who are associated with the sunflower. They all show up in “Vincent and the Doctor.” Amy, Vincent (a mirror of the 12th Doctor and Rory), and the girl who was killed by Vincent’s invisible beast. (Ashildr represents the girl who died.)

DNA Model, “Time Heist” & Clara

There’s a model of a double helix, which relates to a strand of DNA. Also, Bill, at one point, is wearing a sweater that has a double helix pattern. This is a reference and a reminder of the promises made in “Time Heist.” We examined those back in the pre-airing analysis of TRODM in Chapter 10 because I knew this was going to get dark. We’ve seen the darkness with Bill, especially.

Saibra, the Doctor & Clara One of the people on the mission to rob the Bank of Karabraxos is Saibra, a mutant human. She is a mirror of the Architect, and she also transforms into Clara when she touches Clara. So she is a mirror of Clara, too.

SAIBRA: Mutant gene. No one can touch me. If they do, I transform. Touch me, Doctor, and you'll be looking at yourself. I am alone.

Saibra also has the curse of the black spot, which comes back to “The Curse of Fenric,” which we’ve looked at. And Clara was the name in the 7th Doctor story of one of those cursed.

The Doctor and Clara both transform in their own ways. Clara actually did transform into the Doctor. It was a statement on how she was split apart and scattered across the Doctor’s timeline. She needs to come back together and heal, too, which was one of the reasons I had put forward as to why Clara had to come back.

The Doctor and Clara get to the Vault and find what Saibra was promised from this rescue mission

DOCTOR: Gene suppressant. CLARA: She wanted to be normal. DOCTOR: Everyone has a weakness. So the big question is this. What did we come for?

The Doctor’s Memories & the Rescue Clara and the Doctor came to restore the Doctor’s memories, so he could finish the rescue of the 2 Tellers – the last of their kind. The Doctor’s missing memories of Clara mirror this.

Psi & the Doctor Psi was the other character, who helped rob the bank. He had computer parts in his mind and was a mirror of the Doctor. The promise for him was that he would get his memories restored of his family. This is the promise for the Doctor

The Admiral TV

There’s a really odd mix of equipment on the ship. The bridge looks futuristic, but some of the equipment in the Master’s office looks like it’s from a time long ago, like from the 1960s.

One of the old things is the Admiral TV. That was surprising because I expected it to be Magpie Electronics, the stealer of souls, which we examined quite awhile ago.

This is a reference to Admiral Nelson, whom we examined in “The Pilot” analysis. The reference to the admiral showed up in the Season 8 episode “In the Forest of the Night,” where the trees grew overnight. We saw Admiral Nelson’s Column fall in Trafalgar Square, which foreshadowed the fall of the Doctor and Clara, since the admiral was a metaphor for the Doctor.

One of the things that I didn’t say that was odd about the Doctor was that not only was he superfluous in that episode, but also the he was not the oldest thing in the universe.

That contradicts the oldest question in the universe: Doctor Who? Therefore, the Doctor must have a parallel world created around him.

Given that, and

TREE SPIRITS: We don't know you. We were here before you and will be here after you.

So the tree spirits or whatever they don’t know the Doctor! Wow, that blew me away! Why do they not know the Doctor? This, in part, gave me the idea that this Doctor was the usurped one.

They go on to talk about the Sun, addressing the Doctor as it:

DOCTOR: Why now? Why are you here now? TREE SPIRITS: We hear the call and we come, as we came before to the great North Forest, where we lie still in a great circle. As we came to the vast Southern Forest. DOCTOR: Who is calling you now?

TREE SPIRITS: The sun that creates. The sun that destroys. You are hurting us. Let us go. DOCTOR: You sent for me. The girl came looking for me. Why? Why me?

The usurped admiral has to fall.

In Conclusion

I could write so much more, but I need a break after getting little sleep this week while trying to get this done. Also, I want to get this out several hours before the episode airs tonight, at least in North America.

We need to hang onto our hats because this finale promises to be an emotional rollercoaster ride. I’ve got my box of tissues ready.

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #river song #clara oswald #eleventh doctor #amy pond #rory williams #tenth doctor #donna noble #missy #master

1 note · View note

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 4: “World Enough and Time” Analysis Doctor Who S10.11: “Heaven Sent,” Floor 507, the Rescue, and More

<- Read previous chapter

First, A Few Thoughts about Expectations in the Finale

Before I get to the meaty part, I want to add a bit of realism to any expectations that I may have fostered unintentionally. Especially because it’s been a dizzying 11 weeks, so far, we’ve examined huge amounts of subtext: fastballs and curve balls coming at us left and right. So I want us all, me too, to take a step back, take a breath, and look at a few things.

I’ve determined that this helps put things into perspective.

Because Peter Capaldi is leaving and there has been so much story to tell, to be fair we can only expect so much. Sadly, we are getting a very condensed version of the story. Most likely, that will automatically leave some areas lacking in the finale. Besides, “World Enough and Time” leaves some big shoes to fill. IMHO, it’s the best episode this season, and one of my all-time favorites.

Since I’ve presented a lot of information, I don’t want to be responsible for bolstering expectations or possibly putting out ideas and hypotheses that aren’t meant to be taken as conclusions (things that I’m sure will happen) and then ruining your viewing because events didn’t play out as you expected.

Personally, in DW I find that the 1st part of a two-part episode tends to promise more than it delivers in the 2nd part from just surface readings. However, it still could potentially be great subtext-wise.

I want you to enjoy the finale, as much as possible. At the same time, I also want you to be aware of the subtext story behind it to help further your enjoyment.

So I feel a personal responsibility to present this. Beyond this, it’s up to you how you take it.

The Big Battle Vs. a More Emotional Side

Because we are down to the finale with a lot of story left to tell, we shouldn’t expect a huge apocalyptic battle, like in a Marvel movie. We know there will be a battle, but that shouldn’t be much of the focus. There has to be a huge emotional side to what has happened and many pieces to tie up. In fact, some things, most likely, will be pushed to the Christmas Special, leaving us hanging.

Conclusions Vs. Hypotheses

I’ve created a couple of lists below that relate to the finale and Christmas Special: one with conclusions that I’m sure have to happen and one with hypotheses that are likely to happen.

These are not necessarily comprehensive lists. My brain is on overdrive trying to get other stuff written, so I’m not devoting much brainpower to these lists. My apologies for potentially leaving out anything:

Conclusions:

· A face of the Doctor, besides Nardole, would most likely be in some type of machine, like a cyborg. (This has already happened with Bill; Is that all, though?)

· Floor 507 contains children

· The rescue of children

· The Doctor will be mortally wounded in battle – that was first foreshadowed in Season 8

· The Doctor has an imposter

· Sibling have to come in somehow; we’ve already seen that through Mondas, Earth’s twin (Is there something else?)

· We are telling the Doctor’s backstory

· Old cast members will show up (this has already come true since we have John Simm; will someone else show up?)

Very likely to happen

· Bill and the Doctor and/or Master are most likely related, especially in a parent-child relationship

· The Doctor and the Master and Missy are sides of the same coin; where one exists, the other is necessary to maintain the balance of the universes. That would make them siblings, and depending on how defines this, twins

· Having Bill be the namesake of William Hartnell and Heather being named after Hartnell’s wife begs to have the 1st Doctor and Susan show up

· Other old cast members will show up, like Clara

“World Enough and Time” Retells the Subtext Portion of “Heaven Sent”

In a similar way that “The Eaters of Light” is a retelling of “Face the Raven” from a different point of view (minus the dramatic death), “World Enough and Time” is a retelling, from the subtext point of view, of “Heaven Sent.”

Because I’ve already spelled out the subtext back in my mini analysis of “Heaven Sent” in Chapter 17 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who, I’ll relate those concepts to “World Enough and Time” to explain what is happening.

I described the Sun metaphor in the pre-airing chapters of TRODM, starting in Chapter 9 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who. The Sun refers to the Sun stage of the Great Work – the stage where one is a being of pure consciousness, which can be described as a ghostly type. We don’t see it that way, though.

CAL in the Library is a great example, where she is a disembodied, living mind of pure consciousness inside a machine. Her body is dead. What we see, for the most part, are her memories and dreams of how she looked before she got uploaded.

We need to look back to “Face the Raven” for a few moments. Before Clara died, the Doctor was at the Sun stage. Once Clara died, he was exploding with rage and heartbreak. He became an enraged, exploding giant Sun.

If you haven’t read Chapter 15 where I explain supporting metaphors, many DW metaphors are based on the Viking concept of anthropomorphizing objects, such as the Earth, Sun, Black Hole, Eye of Harmony, and the Hand of Omega. Therefore, we need to reverse “engineer” an exploding giant Sun (Doctor) in scientific terms: a supernova.

Rassilon and the Time Lords used the energy unleashed by a supernova to generate enough power to travel through time.

Black Hole Metaphor & Supernovas

I’m going to quote relevant parts of what I said in Chapter 15:

The actual definition of a black hole is so interesting, especially when we consider that the Doctor is a Sun.

A black hole is a place in space where gravity is so great that nothing, not even light or time, can escape its pull. At the end of its life, a giant star consumes all of its energy sources; explodes catastrophically in a supernova; collapses due to very strong gravitational forces; and forms a black hole. Black holes distort the space around them and pull neighboring matter into them, consuming planets, stars, and anything else that gets too close.

…

Because supernovas play a significant role in enriching the interstellar medium with the heavier atomic mass chemical elements, I can see Time Lords potentially exploiting this as a metaphor. Furthermore, the expanding shock waves from supernovas can trigger the formation of new stars, so supernovas are a way to breed Suns. (We’ll examine this in a future chapter.)

Well, this is the future chapter. We had to come back to this breeding concept because it had to end up in canon somewhere. We saw it in the subtext in “Heaven Sent.”

The Eye of Harmony

I’m going to quote relevant parts of what I said in Chapter 15:

The simple definition in the TARDIS Wikia is that “the Eye of Harmony, also known as Rassilon's Star, was a power source for the Time Lords from which time travel was possible.” Not only does the Eye supply energy for the Time Lord home world of Gallifrey and their time travel technology, but also it is the heart of a TARDIS.

The 4th Doctor realizes in “The Deadly Assassin” that the Eye of Harmony symbolically describes a black hole contained and balanced against the mass of the planet Gallifrey by Rassilon's engineering.

The Time Lords harnessing the potential energy of a black hole sounds quite impressive.

Here’s what the TARDIS Wikia says about the creation of the Eye:

“The Eye was created by suspending time around an exploding star in the act of becoming a black hole, harnessing the potential energy of a collapse that would never occur. According to the Eleventh Doctor, you would ‘rip the star from its orbit, [and] suspend it in a permanent state of decay.’ (TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS)”

The description of the Eye of Harmony is very metaphorical. Once we apply the Sun metaphor, the Eye of Harmony takes on a whole new, dreadful meaning.

The confession dial was much more than just a prison for the Doctor. He was the exploding Sun that was ripped from his location; transported into the confession dial; suspended in a permanent state of decay, dying over and over again in his prison for 4.5 billion years, mirroring the creation of the Eye of Harmony.

Conclusions about the Subtext of “Heaven Sent”

Here is what I concluded (had no doubt about) in Chapter 17 about the subtext of “Heaven Sent.”:

1. The confession dial castle is much more than a prison

2. Rassilon created an Eye of Harmony, suspending time around the exploding Sun (Doctor) in the act of becoming a Black Hole

3. The Time Lords could easily exploit the Doctor’s regeneration energy, like exploiting the Star Whale, a metaphor of the Doctor and the Eye of Harmony

4. Rassilon created a progenation machine and built an army whether intentionally or unintentionally by putting the Doctor in the confession dial The Doctor was unintentionally creating a plague of ghosts (beings of pure consciousness) because he was alone and very afraid (he’s the Empty Child)

I’m not going to explain number 4 in this analysis, except in terms of “World Enough and Time.” My conclusion involves a complex set of metaphors, along with numerous pieces of information from various episodes. If you want to know how I arrived at this conclusion, you’ll have to read Chapter 17.

Energy Sources

“Heaven Sent” It’s easy to see, then, how the Doctor with unlimited regenerations could be exploited for his power. He just needs to keep dying over and over and adding his energy to the system. We see him apply his energy to the confession dial controls to power the teleporter, printing a new copy of himself. The confession dial is also harnessing his energy, at least in part, to move the cogs.

However, other things are happening, too. For example, Time Lords can use his energy to power Gallifrey, along with powering TARDISes.

There are several anchor episodes that I keep coming back to keep myself focused. One of those is “The Beast Below” with the Star Whale, who is a brilliant metaphor for the Doctor. The Star Whale is the best visual for how this Black Hole (beast) and Eye of Harmony work to provide energy for travel and for the nation above.

“World Enough and Time”

Based on what we’ve looked at in the subtext for “Heaven Sent” here and in the Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who document for the Eye of Harmony, we should expect to see something having to do with solar power and a Black Hole. We have both of those.

Razor told us something about Floor 507. Bill wanted to get back to the Doctor.

RAZOR: You do not understand the dangers. Many years ago, there was an expedition to Floor 507, the largest of the solar farms.

Razor mentions solar farms. How do solar farms work inside a spaceship? Where are the stars? This doesn’t make sense for what it looks like is happening, unless we use Rassilon’s engineering.

Solar Farms & the Meaning of Floor 507

Since we are dealing with the Eye of Harmony, the solar part refers to suspending time around the exploding Sun in the act of becoming a Black Hole. We should not expect to see this. Instead, we are seeing the Black Hole.

The number 507 is the key to understanding what the farm part means.

The number 5, as we’ve seen, is a weapon of mass destruction. The Doctor (as a Sun) and Bill, as a Cyberman, are both labeled weapons of mass destruction.

The Meaning of Number 7, Samson & the Rescue

The number 7 shows up in Amy’s house, so she is associated with it, and this makes perfectly good sense once we look at what it stands for. In the 10th Doctor episode “Smith and Jones,” Floor 7 (the sign shown below) is associated with obstetrics, the labor ward, the obstetrics theater, Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU), ultrasound, the ante-natal clinic, and the post-natal clinic.

Scientifically, solar farms would create stellar nurseries, where the expanding shock waves from supernovas can trigger the formation of new stars.

But in human terms, there have to be children on Floor 507. So that floor, most likely, will be the center of the rescue.

In “A Good Man Goes to War,” eye-patch lady, Madame Kovarian, had kidnapped Amy, who was being used as a breeding tool. Kovarian’s talking to the Doctor:

KOVARIAN [on screen]: I see you accessed our files. Do you understand yet? Oh, don't worry, I'm a long way away. But I like to keep tabs on you. The child, then. What do you think? DOCTOR: What is she? KOVARIAN [on screen]: Hope. Hope in this endless, bitter war. DOCTOR: What war? Against who? KOVARIAN [on screen]: Against you, Doctor.

That’s not all. I wove together Samson’s story because it’s important to see what is coming. But it’s also important for the past…

So I’m revisiting this point from Wikipedia that I used in the previous chapter:

Samson had been dedicated as a Nazirite, "from the womb to the day of his death"; thus he was forbidden to touch wine or cut his hair.

So how can baby Melody Pond be Samson?

Baby Melody is more than she appears. We previously looked at this image in “The Pilot” analysis, when I was comparing an X-ray image from Newton from The Man Who Fell to Earth. They both were multiple people.

Here’s what I said in “The Pilot” analysis:

In “A Good Man Goes to War,” baby Melody Pond, as shown in the image below, is not just one person. She is very distorted and doesn’t look human. Her main form is indicated by the red arrow. She has a small ghostly image (magenta arrow) and then a tall ghostly image (blue arrow).

It looks like there is a triad. I know 2 of River’s hidden faces are Amy and the Doctor. However, they could be metaphors for other people.

Here’s what I said in Chapter 15, referring to one of two Hands of Omega, which are remote stellar manipulators, devices that turn Suns into supernovas:

Here is an image below of one of the Omegas from “A Good Man Goes to War.” Check out Melody Pond’s nameplate information on her crib. She has her own bar code, like an engineered product. Also, not only is there a Greek letter Ω (Omega, yellow arrow) on the nameplate, but also there is a Greek letter β (beta, red arrow). That has to mean that Melody is not the first version.

River’s backstory is very convoluted. While aspects have been implied, we actually don’t have confirmation of any of it. And it’s just like DW to use technique to pull the rug out…

Also, I know we examined this before, but I don’t remember the chapter. In the subtext, River and the 12th Doctor are interchangeable at times. For example, in the previous chapter, I talked about 2 things. First, River and the 12th Doctor both were in prison, and River was playing the 12th Doctor in her first 11th Doctor episode “The Time of Angels.”

While rivers run, ponds are still water. River and Amy represent, in the subtext, the same person but at 2 different points in their lives, like the 10th Doctor regenerating into the 11th. One is running while the other is settled later with Rory. It’s why The Time Traveler’s Wife, which we examined in “The Pilot” analysis, spans both River’s and Amy’s lives.

There are 3 human/Time Lord hybrids that we absolutely know about. River is the 1st. The 2nd is the ½ human version of the Meta-crisis 10th Doctor. In a complicated way, the ½ human version is the son of the 10th Doctor and Donna. The 3rd is Donna, herself, at the end of “Journey’s End.” She is human with a Time Lord brain.

On top of that, we know that Clara and the Doctor, together, make a hybrid.

Rassilon’s Progenation Machine: Building an Army

In “Heaven Sent,” the subtext says that Rassilon created a progenation machine and built an army whether intentionally or unintentionally by putting the Doctor in the confession dial. The Doctor was unintentionally creating a plague of ghosts (beings of pure consciousness) because he was alone and very afraid (he’s the Empty Child).

So how does that compare to “World Enough and Time”? There are 2 parts to this: the Master’s side of the progenation machine and the Sun’s solar farm.

On the Master’s side, he is helping to create an army of Cybermen, so the Master would be a mirror of Rassilon. On the Sun’s side, beings of pure consciousness would be other Suns, which matches the idea of a breeding factory. If they are human, those Cybermen guards would come and take them away. So the Sun is breeding an army.

Anyway, all the main subtext points of “Heaven Sent” have analogous points in “World Enough and Time.” I’ll talk about “The Empty Child” in a different chapter in regards to the hospital.

Torture Before Healing

We’ve examined in several different ways that the Doctor has to go through torture before healing. Interestingly, Bill looks down the hallway and sees some patients

BILL: What are you doing to them? RAZOR: Curing them. Come. (scuttles down the corridor) Psst! In here.

He talks about being strong to go up to Floor 507. They are building an army to fight the solar area, which represents the Doctor and children.

I see this as analogous to trying to break into the Library to heal CAL, who is also a Sun.

“The Girl Who Waited” & the Rescue

The children aren’t the only ones who need rescued, everyone does. More personally, though, how is the Doctor going to rescue Bill? (Her situation brought a few tears to my eyes.) The situation doesn’t seem that different from Nardole’s with Hydroflax.

Regardless, Bill became like CAL, a cyborg, while she waited for the Doctor. She is both mirroring Amy and, as a cyborg, sentient Rorybot in “The Girl Who Waited.”

Time Dilation, Two Time Streams & 2 Choices

Time dilation is a form of two time streams that we first saw that in “The Girl Who Waited.”

On an alien planet in the Two Steams Facility, Amy gets separated from Rory and the Doctor. It’s a hospital-type environment, where loved ones can sit in the slower time stream for 24 hours and watch their loved ones live out their lives in the much faster time stream. We see Amy aging at an incredible rate.

Rory has to choose whether he wants to rescue younger Amy or older Amy. This is a reversal of “Amy’s Choice.” While there may not have been 2 time streams, there were 2 choices. Amy had to choose whether she wanted Rory or the Doctor.

Missy seems to have a similar choice between the Master and the Doctor.

River, Bill, Missy, Cybermen & THORS

River waited in the Library computer for the Doctor, but as her ghost said in “The Name of the Doctor,” he never contacted her.

This does bring up my question I posed a few analyses ago. Missy went up and down the Doctor’s timeline saving people, who sacrificed themselves for the Doctor, to her Nethersphere. Did Missy turn River into a Cyberman? Are we seeing something like that playing out now?

Bill’s dramatic death mirrors Clara’s in “Face the Raven,” so Bill was mirroring Clara in this scene. But she’s also mirroring River, too, in a way.

When the creepy Cybermedics come up to take Bill away, the Doctor says something interesting:

DOCTOR: You're too late, she's dead. Don't you touch her. Don't you lay a finger on her.

This is a reference back to THORS when Hydroflax was trying to kill River in the TARDIS.

DOCTOR: Do not harm her! If you know what's good for you, do not lay a finger on that woman.

Later, River also says something to Flemming, the fish guy, when he takes her diary:

RIVER: Don't touch that. Give that back to me.

In “World Enough and Time,” the surgeon reaches for Bill:

BILL: Don't you touch me. Don't you lay a finger on me.

THORS: River, the Haircut, Darillium & Sunset

THORS really is about a rescue as we’ve examined with the money ball and the cross behind it. River did say the Doctor needed a lot of rescuing and called him Damsel, code for Damsel in Distress.

We’ve examined, in the smallest of ways, that it’s an outline episode. The time covered is a lot more than it seems. From the haircut, I believe that it covers the Doctor’s entire arc. I suspected that before for various reasons, but the meaning of the haircut adds the major piece of evidence.

Regarding the span of time, at the beginning of the episode, the scenery comes toward us, telling us that we are going backward in time from the end of “Hell Bent.”

Then, we end up on a redressed Trap Street for Christmas because Clara, for one thing, represents a younger River. The trap for the Doctor is Harmony Shoal and the Eye of Harmony, which we saw in TRODM and what has been playing out in Season 10. As people are moving more to consciousness, we are seeing more of the reality of the situation, so to speak, like CAL in the Library waking up to the nightmarish situation.

However, Trap Street is meant to take us even further back, which we can determine from the Doctor’s comment:

NARDOLE: We weren't sure where you'd come down. DOCTOR: Sorry? NARDOLE: In your capsule. DOCTOR: I'm never sure. I don't like being sure about things. One minute you're sure, the next everybody turns into lizards and a piano falls on you.

The lizards and piano reference goes all the way back to the first episode of the 12th Doctor. In “Deep Breath,” Vastra knows the Doctor requires sleep after his regeneration. “Lizards and a piano” refers to Vastra and this scene:

VASTRA: Save me time, Doctor. Project an image of perfect sleep into the centre of my mind. DOCTOR: What, do you want a psychic link with me? The size of my brain, it would be like dropping a piano on you.

We examined how the Doctor, Clara, Vastra, and Jenny were imprisoned from the beginning of “Deep Breath.” The dreaming didn’t just start with Season 10. The Doctor has not been conscious of what’s been happening for a very long time. He’s been possessed or unconscious at the beginning stages of the Great Work. It’s the women who have been pushing him to become conscious and throw off the usurper. (However, it’s happening both inside and outside the Library metaphor. This is like the Architect directing people unaware of the bigger plan, who are inside, because they wiped their memories on the outside before going inside.)

When the Doctor doesn’t want to hold River’s hand as she drags him out of the baggage hold of the ship, this is going back to the beginning of Season 8, too. River and Clara are helping him learn to love, and I’ll show you in a few minutes something about that from “World Enough and Time.”

There is also missing time when River is on the floor of the TARDIS. Four years.

It’s a reference to the Library metaphor where we are at right now in the finale.

Then, there’s the Doctor’s haircut. Now, I believe it’s a metaphorical representation of how River and the Doctor escape Hydroflax and Harmony Shoal, which relates to the prison ship and the false universe. Darillium represents the time they get to spend together at the end. That’s not how we’ve seen the episodes flow, but you can’t always go by that. You have to read the subtext.

The interesting thing about Darillium is that the Christmas lights near the balcony look like the inside of the Nethersphere, the Matrix data slice. It’s “Death in Heaven.”

There’s an aspect of THORS that feels very similar to “Extermis,” since they are distorted and going backwards, as shown by the subtext at the beginning of both episodes.

I believe this refers to things happening in both inside and outside the Library metaphor. At the end of THORS, we see the sunset on River’s side. On the inside of the Library, the Doctor is a Sun. On the outside of the Library, River was willing to do anything to rescue the Doctor. She’s the one who was rampaging through the universe.

That’s probably why there are twin Suns in “Smile,” which show up again in “World Enough and Time” in the window that shows the hayfield without the city from “Smile.”

Missy and/or Bill may be mirroring one of the Suns, too.

Teaching the Doctor to Love

“World Enough and Time” helped fuel some hypotheses that I’ve held since “Deep Breath.” We examined how the half-faced man was a mirror of the 12th Doctor, implying the Doctor was a cyborg. Also, we’ve examined other subtext that suggested various things, but let’s step through my cyborg hypothesis.

Here’s why I’ve been thinking that the 12th Doctor started out as a cyborg or Dalek-type at the beginning of his arc. He started out angry and not wanting hugs. He didn’t care about some things, and in “Into the Dalek,” he said of Journey and the man she called Uncle:

DOCTOR: I think he's probably her uncle, but I may have made that up to pass the time while they were talking. This is Clara, not my assistant. She's, er, some other word.

CLARA: I'm his carer. DOCTOR: Yeah, my carer. She cares so I don't have to.

I was so excited to see supporting information show up in “World Enough and Time.” However, it was bittersweet, too.

I believe, through Bill (she is, after all, exposition), DW is showing how the Doctor got to be the way he was at the beginning of Season 8.

Hugs Physically Hurt the Other Person Razor has a negative reaction to Bill’s hugs:

(Bill hugs him.) BILL: Ah, sorry, mate. Guess what I'm about to do. RAZOR: Do not. Do not do this. BILL: I'm going to ask you again. RAZOR: When you hug me, it hurts my heart. BILL: Ah, sweet. RAZOR: No. Your chest unit. It digs right in.

That would make me not want to hug people, if I were Bill.

Not Caring On the prison ship, the pain is constant and excruciating, but there’s something that helps:

BILL: But look at them. They're screaming in pain every second they're alive. SURGEON: But we've got something for that now. (He picks up a handle-like piece. The final visual clue for anyone who didn't already know.) SURGEON: This won't stop you feeling pain, but it will stop you caring about it. It fits over your head.

The pain doesn’t go away, one just stops caring. The Star Whale was screaming in pain, but no one could hear it until the Doctor used his sonic.

Not Getting Close to Women The 10th, 11th, and 12th Doctor have had reservations about getting closer relationship-wise to Rose, River, and Clara. It may have something to do with being Samson.

Clara & “Deep Breath” At the beginning of “Deep Breath,” Vastra reproaches Clara for not accepting the Doctor’s new face and being cynical. I see this as severing 2 purposes. First, Moffat is making a statement to the audience about not accepting the new Doctor due to age-ism. The second reason for this has to do with my cyborg hypothesis.

At the end of “The Time of the Doctor” after the battle on Trenzalore, the 11th Doctor made a call. We see that call at the end of “Deep Breath.”

CLARA: Why? Why would you do this? DOCTOR 11: Because I think it's going to be a whopper, and I think you might be scared. And however scared you are, Clara, the man you are with right now, the man I hope you are with, believe me, he is more scared than anything you can imagine right now and he, he needs you.

I believe Clara is aware of more than we are about the appearance of the Doctor. I don’t believe she was scared of his looks as we see them. It’s just that he had changed much more dramatically than we were aware.

The Doctor got turned into a machine of war, a tool to end it. She sees him as he is and is scared of it and his new personality. However, we know he is terrified, he, himself, confirmed that in the next episode, “Into the Dalek.” He’s questioning who he is and whether or not he is a good man.

At the same time, he feels her rejection and it hurts:

DOCTOR: He asked you a question. Will you help me? CLARA: You shouldn't have been listening. DOCTOR: I wasn't. I didn't need to. That was me talking. You can't see me, can you? You look at me, and you can't see me. Have you any idea what that's like? I'm not on the phone, I'm right here, standing in front of you. Please, just, just see me.

DW frequently uses ambiguity, like this, to hide the truth.

Did you find it strange that Nardole asked the Doctor if he was having an emotion? We've seen it plenty of times, but this is not the same Doctor. We've gone back in time.

We know the Doctor has been changing and learning to love, so this hypothesis seems sound.

Doing Whatever It Takes to Protect Everything You Loved As a Theme

Doing whatever it takes has long been a theme, especially with River. In “The Wedding of River Song,” she wouldn’t kill the Doctor even though she knew she had to in order to restore time. However, the theme also comes up multiple times in different episodes without River.

“Time Heist”

First, there’s the Season 8 episode “Time Heist,” where the Teller is killing people to protect its kin, the last 2 beings of its kind.

CLARA: What exactly are we doing here? That thing killed people. DOCTOR: Well so might you do, to protect everything you loved.

The Teller is a metaphor for the Doctor, and there seems to be an interesting connection in “World Enough and Time.”

“World Enough and Time”

This statement by the Doctor about Missy was quite surprising:

DOCTOR: She's the only person that I've ever met who's even remotely like me.

So the Doctor is saying he is different from regular Time Lords, which matches what we’ve examined before where the 7th Doctor said that he was more than just a Time Lord.

Are they siblings?

Like River, the Doctor, in “Extremis” wouldn’t kill Missy, even though he was supposed to. There’s a lot of hand waving in this episode. We don’t know the details of how the situation even ended up that way. But things are upside down in the episode, anyway.

Being this is true, Missy is most likely a relative of the Doctor, maybe a sibling or a twin. They are both Scottish. And Missy, River, and the Doctors are mirrors.

“The Eaters of Light”

I ran out of time to mention this theme in “The Eaters of Light” analysis. The Doctor offers some tough “love.”

DOCTOR: Okay, kids, pay attention. She slaughtered your legion. You slaughtered everything that she loves. Now, you all have a choice. You can carry on slaughtering each other till no one is left standing, or you grow the hell up! Because there's a new war now. I think these creatures are light-eating locusts, looking for rents and cracks between worlds to let themselves into dimensions of light. Once they break through, they eat. They will eat the sun, and then they will eat the stars. And they will keep eating until there are no stars left. So, whose side are you on now? Because as far as I can see, there's only one side left.

Here is another reference to Time Heist: “slaughtered everything that she loves.”

Also, the Doctor likens the Eaters of Light to insects, so here’s another insect reference.

“Knock Knock”

The landlord, as a child, watched his mother’s life slipping away. He found something to save her, and from his child’s point of view, she was the most important thing in his life. Being a loving child, he put his mother’s life over others. He never grew up normally and continued to do whatever it took to protect everything he loved.

“The Beast Below”

In a different way, “The Beast Below” also exemplifies the doing-whatever-it-takes theme. The angry Sun scorched Earth causing terrible destruction, so humans evacuated the planet. The people of in the UK trapped the Star Whale and enslaved it for their Starship UK, even though the whale came voluntarily. They even tortured it, which actually slowed its propulsion, opposite to what they really wanted. There was no reason to torture it, unless they feared it.

Of course, they did fear it since the Doctor was the one causing the angry Sun devastation in the first place.

Child Saving a Parent Theme or Parent Saving a Child Theme

I mentioned the Patriarchal cross in the previous chapter, regarding a parent-child relationship, but I neglected to mention several things, including that a parent and child saving one another is a theme. It is showing up in Season 10 in multiple ways. But the 1st example goes back to the 9th Doctor. To be inclusive, I’m going to put the Patriarchal cross information here.

“The Empty Child” & “The Doctor Dances” Certainly, there is a big reference in “World Enough and Time” to “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” episodes, especially with the creepy hospital scenes, which I’ll get to in the next chapter.

Anyway, as we’ve examined before, the mother didn’t want to claim her out-of-wedlock son, especially because it was during WWII. Also, she was little more than a child herself. She kept calling him her brother.

Once he died and became a zombie with a gas mask, she feared him. However, until she claimed him, the plague continued.

“Knock Knock” “Knock Knock” is the exemplary episode of Season 10, showing a child saving a parent. We saw above that the landlord did whatever it took to protect his mother. However, I want to draw attention to the apparent ages and relationships vs. reality.

Because the mother looked young, due to preservation by the space wood lice, the older-looking landlord ended up becoming like a father to her. She had lost her memories and accepted that relationship.

The mother had to stop the plague by claiming her son with an embrace.

“The End of Time” In “The End of Time,” the Doctor’s Mother is trying to save him through Wilfred, Donna’s grandfather. She says she was lost a long time ago. The 12th Doctor also said that he was lost a long time ago to Ashildr. We’ve seen that the Doctor is also associated with the Mother of God consciousness.

“Father’s Day” In “Father’s Day,” we saw how Rose saved her father but changed time. He had to die to stop the plague of people disappearing due to the Reapers trying to fix time.

“The Lie of the Land” In “The Lie of the Land” analysis, we looked at the woman with the son at the beginning, who was taken away with the shoebox. The subtext showed she was a mirror of Bill. And the boy had a rabbit, a symbol of redemption. This suggests to me that the boy is trying to save his mother. Bill actually is associated with the Patriarchial cross, as we saw in the previous chapter. By the metaphors, that would make Bill the parent of the Doctor. I’m just interpreting the subtext here for you.

“World Enough and Time” In “World Enough and Time,” we saw that Razor said something interesting:

RAZOR: You are dear to me. You are my dearest person. You are like BILL: I know. RAZOR: A mother to me. BILL: Definitely not a mother. RAZOR: Or an aunt.

Razor is trying to heal people in the long run (since we are in a dystopian universe), although as we’ve seen it involves torture.

RAZOR: You were sick, very sick. Broken. Heart broken. New heart. Good, is it?

Here’s another misdirection by DW. Instead of broken heart, Razor says, “Heart broken.” Clever! This refers to the Doctor’s broken heart, too, after Clara died. This is all meant to heal him.

In “Mummy on the Orient Express,” the Doctor told Clara:

CLARA: So you were pretending to be heartless. DOCTOR: Would you like to think that about me? Would that make it easier? I didn't know if I could save her. I couldn't save Quell, I couldn't save Moorhouse. There was a good chance that she'd die too. At which point, I would have just moved onto the next, and the next, until I beat it. Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose.

1st Doctor & Susan It was back in “The Pilot” analysis that I talked about the 1st Doctor’s and Susan’s relationship. While she calls him “Grandfather,” it looked to me like he was a devious, petulant child, and she was the adult. I got the impression that Susan and the 1st Doctor’s other two companions (Ian and Barbara) were not as they appeared.

I believe they are all Time Lords, but hiding out. They took on roles, like we saw in “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood,” because they had to.

We saw a form of this in “Knock Knock” when Bill called the Doctor “Granddad.”

The Next Chapter

I’m not sure what I’ve got time for, but I hope to finish up with and more mirror explanations, tying in “Hell Bent,” “Journey into Terror,” “Oxygen,” the significance of the Doctor using the title “Doctor Who,” some really creepy subtext in the Hospital metaphor, and Mondas.

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #world enough and time #eleventh doctor #river song #amy pond #clara oswald #rory williams #meta #analysis

2 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 3: “World Enough and Time” Analysis Doctor Who S10.11: Doctor’s OMG Hair, Meet Delilah’s Mr. Razor & More

<- Read previous chapter

Samson & Delilah: Doctor’s OMG Hair, Meet Mr. Razor

OMG, I could not believe how long the Doctor’s hair had gotten at the beginning of “World Enough and Time.” From now on, to distinguish Doctors, I’ll refer to the Doctor’s hair that we saw at the beginning of the episode as “OMG hair.”

In fact, it was even funnier that I had mentioned it in the previous analysis with my sudden revelation about Samson & Delilah, where River was Delilah.

Yes, DW is playing out this Old Testament story.

Due to time, I didn’t get to talk about the entire Samson & Delilah story and how it fits in. But I’ll show you in a few minutes how this fits together with River.

Funny: “A Thing Happened…”

First, though, a funny thing happened while watching the episode. I was so intent on getting subtext and trying to pick up dialogue that I wasn’t looking for John Simm. I’m not sure I would have recognized him under the makeup anyway. However…

Once he said

RAZOR: People, people, people, people, people! People, they are people.

I knew he was John Simm because only his Master has spoken this way before.

However, here’s the funny part: I didn’t catch his name on the first viewing. Once I watched with subtitles, I had another OMG moment when I realized his name was Mister Razor!

Wow! Ha..ha!

Mr. Razor & Delilah Will Give Samson a Haircut

There’s some additional information about the story of Samson & Delilah that’s quite important, so I’m going to weave it together here from different sources, including the razor part I mentioned from the previous analysis:

Wikipedia says

Samson had been dedicated as a Nazirite, "from the womb to the day of his death"; thus he was forbidden to touch wine or cut his hair.

While the 11th Doctor did abstain from alcohol, he had a shaved head in his last episode “The Time of the Doctor” and was wearing a wig for most of the time. Now, I see that the Samson and Delilah story was playing out then with Clara metaphorically asking God to restore Samson’s powers to defeat the Philistines.

The 12th Doctor drinks alcohol.

According to BibleStudyTools.com:

The summary from Scripture starts with Samson's birth was announced by an angel during a dark time for the Israelites. Israel was under the rule and oppression of the Philistines. Samson was born a Nazirite and was set apart with supernatural strength from God to do His work in the nation of Israel. Samson became great in his own eyes and began to pursue women outside of God's plan for his life. During his wedding sermon to a Philistine women, Samson was so humiliated by her and the wedding guests that he sought revenge by killing 1,000 Philistine men.

We’ve certainly seen the Doctor’s pride and ego take over, at times.

Anyway, regarding Samson, Wikipedia says

He then falls in love with Delilah in the valley of Sorek. The Philistines approach Delilah and induce her with 1,100 silver coins to find the secret of Samson's strength so they can get rid of it and capture their enemy.

We saw this money scene playing out with River in THORS. However, as we also saw how not everything was as it looked. We saw the Roman cross behind the money ball with access to all the banks, as River is really trying to save the Doctor from this alternate universe.

Delilah keeps trying to figure out the source of his strength, and Samson keeps telling her different sources, which she tries to exploit. But they are all lies.

This is mirrored with River. She said the Doctor’s name in “The Name of the Doctor,” which would have led to his torturous death, except Clara saved him. River knows this alternate universe has to die.

Eventually after much nagging from Delilah, Samson tells Delilah that he will lose his strength with the loss of his hair. God supplies Samson's power because of his consecration to God as a Nazirite, symbolized by the fact that a razor has never touched his head. Delilah calls for a servant to shave Samson's seven locks, then woos him to sleep "in her lap" (either literally or figuratively). With this, Samson has finally broken the last tenet of the Nazirite oath; God leaves him, and Samson is captured by the Philistines, who blind him by gouging out his eyes. After being blinded, Samson is brought to Gaza, imprisoned, and put to work grinding grain by turning a large millstone.

Here’s where the Doctor is blinded by eyes being gouged out, like we heard and saw in multiple ways with other characters and references in “The Empress of Mars” analysis.

Ohila, in “Hell Bent,” told the Doctor that he had broken every code he ever lived by, and we see his fall in one way, kind of sort of, in that episode. We’ll see it from a different angle in this last upcoming episode of the season. So Missy may be playing Delilah, or will it be River or Clara? Or is there something else?

I’ve often wondered about Missy’s 3W Institute in the finale of Season 8 where we see Danny Pink die. While the episode suggest 3W stood for “I love you,” I also saw it potentially as being Missy, River, and Clara, where 3W stands for “3 Women.” Vastra and Amy fit in here, too, but that is beyond this right now.

Anyway to finish Samson’s story, according to BibleStudyTools.com:

The Philistines brought Samson out before a great crowd of rulers and thousands of people gathered in the temple to celebrate his capture. Samson's hair had begun to grow back and as he leaned against the pillars of the temple, he prayed to God for strength once more to defeat the Philistines. Samson used all of his might and pushed down the temple, killing himself and thousands of Philistines and rulers.

God forgave Samson and still accomplished great things through Samson. It was through Samson's destruction of the temple and his death that the Israelites were freed from Philistine rule.

So Mr. Razor is the metaphorical symbol of the razor in this Old Testament story.

And this is foreshadowing the rescue and the Doctor’s fall and death. This is just more evidence of what we’ve examined over and over. While he’s not supposed to fall in love, as we examined before, it is necessary for the rescue.

Wow, how cool is that!?

Anyway, there’s a lot more to this. It’s a truly epic love story that spans all of DW, but I’ll save this for later…

Operation Exodus & Genesis of the Cybermen

Wow, I’ve been geeking out, since the airing of the episode, about all the cool things that are coming together!

Operation Exodus explains why we saw all those robots in Season 8, including the half-faced man in “Deep Breath” wanting to go to the Promised Land – Heaven. However, that’s the wrong Book. We’re not in the 2nd Book of the Old Testament right now. Before that, we have the Fall of Man and the Doctor.

We’re back in the 1st Book: Genesis.

As we’ve examined in various chapters, we are, indeed, going back in time and telling the backstory of the Doctor.

This is the epicenter of the Time War.

Don’t Make the Doctor Angry: “The Unicorn and the Wasp” & 1056

We keep seeing Floor 1056 come up in “World Enough and Time.” But what does it mean? It has a connection to “The Unicorn and the Wasp” and is from The Devastator series of Doctor Who: Battles in Time trading cards, meaning the Vespiform sting.

I’ve been wanting to talk about “The Unicorn and the Wasp” since the very 1st episode of Season 10 aired. However, I ran out of time to put it in “The Pilot” analysis. I would have put it in “Knock Knock,” but I ran out of time there, too. Anyway, this is the 10th Doctor story with Agatha Christie in 1926 (yet another 1926 reference) where a murder takes place after the Doctor and Donna crash a garden party. The odd thing is that later we see a giant wasp that turns out to be the murderer.

The Hybrid

Well, it’s not quite that simple because it turns human, and the Doctor can’t figure out whodunit right away. The wasp is actually a hybrid, who doesn’t realize he is a hybrid for 40 years of his life because he grew up in an orphanage. Normally, he lives the quiet life as Reverend Arnold Golightly, the vicar of a small English village until his death in 1926. He is the son of a human mother and Vespiform father. Vespiforms are an ancient and wise insectoid species.

In 1926, some time after his 40th birthday, his church had a break in. His temper flared when he caught the bandits in the act, discovering he had the ability to change from a humanoid appearance into a wasp-like alien.

The thieves are associated with a Greek Cross, meaning they represent Doctors. From all the subtext story, this suggests to me that the Doctors intentionally are driving the Doctor over the edge, so he has something to fight for. We saw that with Missy using Clara to push him over the edge and go hell bent through the universe.

As far as insects go, Clara has called the 12th Doctor a stick insect. Of course, there’s the insectoid shadow that we looked at prior to the airing of TRODM.

The Unicorn

The Unicorn refers to Scotland. In fact, according to Wikipedia, “The Lion and the Unicorn are symbols of the United Kingdom. They are, properly speaking, heraldic supporters appearing in the full royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. The lion stands for England and the unicorn for Scotland.”

Why the Wasp? & What’s “Knock Knock” Got to Do with It?

In 1991, Peter Capaldi appeared on the TV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot with David Suchet who played Poirot. Suchet also played the landlord in “Knock Knock.” These appearances by both actors are important.

Capaldi played Claude Langton, who was being set up for murder by someone who wanted to commit suicide in the episode “Wasp’s Nest.” Therefore, having David Suchet in “Knock Knock” was a strategic move to bring in a bunch of subtext.

The Patriarchal Cross

The connection to “The Pilot” comes in with the Patriarchal cross, which I haven’t talked about before since I have yet to post my Religious metaphors chapter. Due to lack of time, I’m going to skip the images. However, there are crosses on the university building that match the cross the reverend’s mother is associated with. Bill actually is associated with the Patriarchial cross. By the metaphors, that would make Bill the parent of the reverend, the Doctor. But there’s more pointing to this…

In “The Lie of the Land” analysis, we looked at the woman with the son at the beginning, who was taken away with the shoebox. The subtext showed she was a mirror of Bill. And the boy had a rabbit, a symbol of redemption.

Also, interestingly, Mr. Razor says

RAZOR: You are dear to me. You are my dearest person. You are like BILL: I know. RAZOR: A mother to me. BILL: Definitely not a mother. RAZOR: Or an aunt.

Mr. Razor is playing the 24th Doctor.

I have no doubt that Bill and the Doctor are related. She is playing, among other things, various Doctor’s faces. And she is the namesake of the 1st Doctor, William Hartnell, while Heather is the name of Hartnell’s wife.

Episode Title References: a Poem, a Book, the Apocalypse & Rescue

The title “World Enough and Time” is a brilliant reference, and obviously DW has had this reference in mind for a long time. The title references multiple things, but it initially alludes to a line from the 17th-century poem, "To His Coy Mistress," written by English author and politician Andrew Marvell. The bolded words are ones that I want to give more information about.

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust;

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

So world enough and time is about the poet wishing he had more time with the coy lady. There are 4 other references that I highlighted worth mentioning here. We’ve seen lots of birds of prey lately. There’s the mention of the sun: the Doctor running with his companions to avoid the sunset and the passage of time.

Wow, how interesting the poet uses “My vegetable love”! That’s interesting when compared to the normal “animal love.” This most likely refers to a couple of things in DW. First, since we are talking about the Garden of Eden, garden goes along with vegetables. In fact, the Doctor mentions “garden”:

DOCTOR: Short version. Because of the black hole, time is moving faster at this end of the ship than the other. It's all about gravity. Gravity slows down time. The closer you are to the source of gravity, the slower time will move. (Jorj looks blank) If you're standing in your garden, your head is travelling faster through time than your feet. Don't they teach you this stuff at space school?

However, vegetable love may also come back to something we looked at with the “Heaven Sent” analysis in Chapter 17 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who the 4th Doctor story “The Seeds of Doom,” where 2 alien pods land on Earth. One opens and creates a jungle-like environment. They can possess animals and take revenge on animals eating them. Plants and trees have an important place in the story. The basic plot is playing out in this finale. Just substitute people for plants.

The other reference in the poem is much bigger – “before the flood” – and alludes to multiple things.

Genesis & Noah, “Before the Flood,” & a Rainbow

With all the talk of the Book of Genesis, the line with “before the flood” takes on new meaning in DW. It’s a flood on a grand scale – an apocalyptic event, a Ragnarök of sorts. Of course, it refers to the story of Noah’s Ark, where God instructs Noah (a righteous individual) to build an ark to spare him and his family, along with some animals from the flood that will destroy the world before its rebirth.

The poem’s line also alludes to the Season 9 episode “Before the Flood,” where we see the Fisher King creating ghosts. So this flood is meant to destroy the source of the ghosts, the Fisher King, who actually puts his arms out and makes himself into a cross before he dies. He’s being crucified. The Fisher King, as we’ve examined, is supposed to be a good character from Arthurian Legend.

Because the flood was so devastating and people would fear rain, God made a promise to Noah and all Earth that he would never send another flood to destroy all life again. The visible sign he sent was a rainbow.

We saw a rainbow at the end of “The Eaters of Light,” just before everyone got in the TARDIS. While the episode was mostly about another view of “Face the Ravens,” it showed the outline for this week’s “World Enough and Time” (with people united together, pawns in the Chess game), and the rainbow to show the results of “Hell Bent” and the upcoming final episode.

The Flood & “The Unicorn and the Wasp”

The flood and waters relate to “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” too. Golightly’s mother Clemency told the story of how she had had an affair. When she came back to England, she locked herself away, saying she had malaria, to hide the pregnancy, even from her husband.

CLEMENCY: It was forty years ago, in the heat of Delhi, late one night. I was alone, and that's when I saw it. A dazzling light in the sky. The next day, he came to the house. Christopher, the most handsome man I'd ever seen. Our love blazed like a wildfire. I held nothing back. And in return he showed me the incredible truth about himself. He'd made himself human, to learn about us. This was his true shape. (A giant wasp.) CLEMENCY: I loved him so much, it didn't matter. But he was stolen from me. 1885, the year of the great monsoon. The river Jumna rose up and broke its banks. He was Taken At The Flood. But Christopher left me a parting gift. A jewel like no other. I wore it always. Part of me never forgot. I kept it close, always.

ROBINA: Just like a man. Flashes his family jewels and you end up with a bun in the oven. AGATHA: A poor little child. Forty years ago, Miss Chandrakala took that newborn babe to an orphanage. But Professor Peach worked it out. He found the birth certificate.

There is a geographical connection with the poem, as both have aspects set in India: Delhi and the Ganges, respectively. The poem, therefore, is meant to relate to Clemency and Christopher, the hybrid’s parents. Since we have multiple faces of the Doctor, who is whom?

Also, Golightly’s father died in a great monsoon, and the son, himself, drowned. The 2 characters who have drowned or nearly so, are Rory in “The Curse of the Black Spot” and the 12th Doctor in “Heaven Sent.”

The Poet & the Daughter

There’s even more to glean from this title reference. The poet and his tutoring give us some very important subtext, too. According to Wikipedia:

"To His Coy Mistress" is a metaphysical poem written by the English author and politician Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) either during or just before the English Interregnum (1649–60). It was published posthumously in 1681.

This poem is considered one of Marvell's finest and is possibly the best recognized carpe diem poem in English. Although the date of its composition is not known, it may have been written in the early 1650s. At that time, Marvell was serving as a tutor to the daughter of the retired commander of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax.

Sir Thomas Fairfax Gives Us Information about the Rescue & Apocalypse

The Doctor is mirroring Marvell, who is tutoring Sir Thomas Fairfax’s daughter, played by Bill. According to Wikipedia, Sir Thomas Fairfax’s nicknames are “Black Tom” and “Rider of the White Horse.”

We’ve examined the Rider and the White Horse in connection with the New Testament Apocalypse in “The Lie of the Land” analysis. The White Horse symbolizes Conquest and there is a debate by some on whether the Rider is Christ or the Antichrist. DW is playing both sides of the war, which comes back to what we’ve examined in multiple ways: the Horse and Rider, along with the name Lucifer, CAL’s world and “Turn Left.”

In one universe, the Doctor is seen as the savior of the universe. However, in the other universe, he would be the Antichrist, the Destroyer of Worlds. According to Wikipedia,

Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron (17 January 1612 – 12 November 1671), also known as Sir Thomas, Lord Fairfax, was an English nobleman, peer, politician, general, and Parliamentary commander-in-chief during the English Civil War. An adept and talented commander, Fairfax led Parliament to many victories, notably the crucial Battle of Naseby, becoming effectively military ruler of the new republic, but was eventually overshadowed by his subordinate Oliver Cromwell, who was more politically adept and radical in action against Charles I. Fairfax became unhappy with Cromwell's policy and publicly refused to take part in Charles's show trial. Eventually he resigned, leaving Cromwell to control the republic. Because of this, and also his honourable battlefield conduct and his active role in the Restoration of the monarchy after Cromwell's death, he was exempted from the retribution exacted on many other leaders of the revolution. His dark hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion earned him the nickname "Black Tom".

In the DW world, it sounds like Bill’s father (the Rider of the White Horse) is trying to rescue her. With the gender change, it could be her mother. Since Bill is a face of the Doctor, the Doctor’s Mother metaphor would apply to her. The Doctor, himself, has to be rescued, too.

This all foreshadows redemption and rightful restoration after the DW revolution.

Robert Oppenheimer & the Righteous War in the Bhagavad-Gita

I can’t get this relevant quote out of my head, so I’m adding it:

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” – Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer, according to Wikipedia, was an

American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

…

Oppenheimer later recalled that, while witnessing the explosion, he thought of a verse from the Bhagavad Gita [shown above]

The Bhagavad-Gita is Hindu scripture in Sanskrit, which Oppenheimer could read. It is often just referred to as Gita. This is very appropriate to the Doctor and what is happening.

The Gita is set in a narrative framework of a dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Lord Krishna. Facing the duty as a warrior to fight the Dharma Yudhha or righteous war between Pandavas and Kauravas, Arjuna is counselled by Lord Krishna to "fulfill his Kshatriya (warrior) duty as a warrior and establish Dharma." Inserted in this appeal to kshatriya dharma (chivalry) is "a dialogue ... between diverging attitudes concerning methods toward the attainment of liberation (moksha)".

This passage reminds me of the Ice Warriors and the Doctor in “The Empress of Mars,” pledging their duty as warriors.

Science & World Enough And Space-Time

Being that we are talking about Black Holes, space-time science is important. DW is using real science on the spaceship, when talking about time dilation. Time would be slower closer to the Black Hole due to the immense gravity. However, I do question the almost negligible space distance of 400 miles against the force of gravity of a Black Hole. I’m no expert and I’ll leave it at that.

Having said that, this is all metaphorical, and we know we are in the alternate universe, so it doesn’t matter. There’s plenty of other stuff that tells us other things aren’t right. The 400 miles, refers to the Library, once again.

I actually do see this spaceship-Black Hole relationship in the episode as brilliant. I’ll show you why in a bit.

Anyway, the title of the episode relates to a 1989 book by the American physicist John Earman called World Enough And Space-Time: Absolute vs. Relational Theories of Space and Time.

Goodread’s description says

Earman introduces and clarifies the historical and philosophical development of the clash between Newton's absolute conception of space and Leibniz's relative one.

It leads into Einstein’s theories on relativity.

BTW, I do love the title World Enough And Space-Time in relation to DW. It’s so appropriate.

Black Holes & the Eye of Harmony

Since we are touching on science and relativity, it seems appropriate to examine the Black Hole metaphor here, which includes the Eye of Harmony. The existence of the Black Hole metaphor in “World Enough and Time” is a reference to “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit,” so we know, from our previous examinations, that slavery and the Beast are involved. These last 3 Season 10 episodes have been about facing one’s beast.

The Doctor, Nardole, Missy, and Jorj are looking up at the Black Hole, which really is the Eye of Harmony. And it’s a djinni with an octagon. From “The Impossible Planet,” we learned that people could go mad by looking at it.

We need to revisit the definition of the Eye from the Wikia because it tells us what can happen. According to the TARDIS Wikia, regarding the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS Cloister Room in the Doctor Who movie in 1996:

It was a stone structure shaped like a hemisphere which appeared to open outwards like an eyelid. While inside the Cloister Room of the TARDIS, the Master described the Eye as "the heart of this structure". The Doctor said it was "[t]he power source of the heart of the TARDIS." Both the Doctor and the Master claimed to Chang Lee that it belonged to the Doctor; the Doctor referring to it as "my Eye" and the Master saying that "now it belongs to him". The Eye responded to a physical linking device. The particular structure of a human eye had the effect of opening it.

Opening the Eye allowed the Master and Lee to see a visual projection of the Doctor's past and present forms and let them see what the Doctor saw so that they could find him. It also assisted in returning the amnesiac Doctor's memories. The Doctor claimed that if he looked into the Eye, his "soul" would be destroyed, and the Master would be able to take over his body. Leaving the TARDIS' Eye open for too long would result in space-time distortion, and any nearby planets would be "sucked through it".

Here’s where I find this situation with the Black Hole and the spaceship brilliant. From the movie, opening the Eye allowed the Master to see a visual projection of the Doctor’s past and present forms. This is exactly what is happening due to time dilation. On his TV, the Master has found the Doctor and is viewing him and others in their past and present forms at the same time, due to time dilation near the Black Hole in the Eye of Harmony. This is such a brilliant way to do this! It’s so elegant.

The Eye of the Black Hole is most likely the Doctor’s, as the movie suggests. That means the Master can take over the Doctor. There are multiple Doctors, so things aren’t the way they may seem. The Doctor has been taken over, but I’ll talk about that in another chapter.

Is the Doctor in the Opening an Imposter?

The Doctor in the opening appears different than we’ve ever seen him. OMG hair and fierce look. He also does something strange.

The Tardis materialises in a snowstorm. The Doctor steps out, falls to his knees and starts to regenerate. He cries out in pain.) DOCTOR: No. No. Nooooo!

The Doctor not wanting to go is a big red flag to me, especially for a Doctor who has been suicidal. I could possibly see that this is really him if he were in the middle of saving someone.

However, this is very much a Master thing to do. We know the Doctor has been usurped, so chances are that this is not the real Doctor.

BTW, the Doctor is wearing his raggedy 11th Doctor-type jacket again.

In the Next Chapters

We’ll take a look at how “World Enough and Time” is applying concepts set up in “Heaven Sent,” along with “Face the Raven.” Also, we’ll look at the meaning of “Doctor Who” as the Doctor’s title, how. We’ll also look at the Master, some really creepy subtext in the Hospital metaphor, the meaning of solar farms, Mondas, and more.

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #river song #clara oswald #eleventh doctor #missy #master #world enough and time #meta #analysis

2 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 2: “World Enough and Time” Analysis Doctor Who S10.11: Fish Metaphor Foreshadows Doctor’s Fall & Hope for Future

<- Read previous chapter

Fish Have Many Meanings

I’m sorry about not getting this chapter finished before Season 10 started because, as you’ll see, fish foreshadow so much of what the 12th Doctor is about. In fact, they show up in surprising places, like the Library, because all roads and Fish lead to the metaphors of the Library, Rome, and Vikings. For the 12th Doctor, they also lead to prison, Library metaphors, Hospital metaphors and more.

I started putting Religious symbology related to fish in this chapter, like the Christian fish a.k.a. ichthys here before Season 10, along with the symbolism of water, which is mostly what I didn’t finish. For the most part, I’m going to skip the symbology for lack of time.

I didn’t get a chance to talk about the Fish in “The Eaters of Light,” so we’ll examine it below.

Since Fish hold a lot of meaning, it’s no wonder that fish, fishing, eating fish, representations of fish, or mentions of fish and shoals are common throughout DW. In fact, live goldfish show up in at least one episode of each of the nuWho Doctors. Also, fish people are either mentioned or show up multiple times in 11th and 12th Doctor episodes, along with some Classic Who episodes.

Here is an image showing an example of a live goldfish with Dr. Moon and CAL’s dad from “Silence in the Library.” This is in CAL’s virtual reality.

In fact, fish are so important that they show up 3 times in the Library in 3 different ways. We’ll look at this more in depth in a bit.

Fish As a Metaphor

Fish and other sea and river creatures (which I’ll collectively refer to as “Fish”) are one of the most important metaphors of the 12th Doctor. They can symbolize, among many other things, mystery, transformation, and the unconscious, which we’ve looked at in depth in the pre-airing chapters of TRODM, starting at Chapter 9 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.

However, Fish represent so much more. Because they hold great significance across many cultures, groups, mythologies, and religions, DW is tapping into a rich set of metaphors for these normally watery creatures. For example, they can represent the following: knowledge, wisdom, eternity, creativity, femininity (we’ve also looked at how the Doctor, through integration, is both male and female), and fertility (we’ve looked at the plague associated with the 12th Doctor in Chapter 17). We’ll revisit this.

Note that some representations may seem contradictory, such as good luck, happiness, and freedom. Fish are contextual, depending on how they are used. I see Fish as good luck and happiness symbols for the Doctor once he is freed. Right now, they are promises for the future. Bill represents a face of the Doctor, so I am also referring to her.

In the meantime, they represent the undoing of the 12th Doctor: prisons, hospitals, universities, and libraries, important themes for him.

Because Fish are so important, we had to see more than the Harmony Shoal scar-faced people in Season 10. I’m betting, because they are so significant, that we should see more in either the finale or Christmas Special.

The 12-step Great Work: Transformation, Projection & Pisces

We’ve examined how the Doctor’s transformation follows the original 4-step process of the Great Work. However, the Great Work can involve additional steps. Since we are dealing with the 12th Doctor, the 12-step process, describing 12 chemical operations of the Great Work, becomes ever more important.

Tip: Matching up numbers, like the 12-step process, 12 chemical operations, and the 12th Doctor, is an important part of making connections and reading subtext.

Projection & the 12-step Great Work

The 12th step is projection – the ultimate goal of Western alchemy. Once the Philosopher's stone or powder of projection has been created, the process of projection can transmute a lesser substance into a higher form, which tends to be lead into gold. In fact, this is why the Doctor could be called Living Metal. This was a term used in “Silver Nemesis” a 7th Doctor story, although “Living Metal” was never defined.

And we know from our look at the 4-step process, the Doctor is a being of pure consciousness and is returning to be what he was born to be. The question is what does that mean? That’s where the 12 steps begin to help us tie a lot of things together to answer.

Great examples of projections are the Cloister Wraiths in “Hell Bent.” The Time Lords are quite scared of them, so the ghostly Wraiths have real power. I see the Raven, the Quantum Shade, in “Face the Raven” as the same thing.

Watch Marvel’s Dr. Strange for an understanding of fighting on a ghostly level. We most likely won’t see it that way, but that’s the way I envision it because this is what projection means. It’s pure consciousness – ghostly beings. Also, it refers to CAL in the Library metaphor and Morbius. She uses tools in her dream. However, she has great power and can move things with her mind in the projection.

12 Steps & Pisces

The 12 steps not only have a chemical operation, but also they have a Zodiac designation. And Pisces, the fish, which is the 12th Zodiac sign, represents it. This is why the symbol for projection, shown below, is the symbol for Pisces, which represents 2 fish. In fact, there is a symbol of Pisces in the Doctor’s office in “The Pilot.” I know I mentioned it, but it might be in a later analysis

In fact, Pisces also represents self-undoing: being one’s own worst enemy. That certainly describes the 12th Doctor. But that’s not all. According to Wikipedia, Pisces represents the House of Undoing, which includes

· Places of seclusion such as hospitals, prisons and institutions, including self-imposed imprisonments

· Mysticism and mystery

· Things which are not apparent to self, yet clearly seen by others

· Elusive, clandestine, secretive or unbeknownst matters

· Privacy, retreat, reflection, and self-sacrifice

· Unconscious/subconscious

· Unknown enemies

This all sounds like what has been happening with the Doctor.

Pisces = Prison & the Library Metaphor

Pisces, among several things, is associated with prison. After all, fish have to live in water, or they will die, unless they have developed special survival skills and have become amphibious fish, like mudskippers.

12th Doctor & Prison

Here’s an image of half of one of 12th Doctor’s faces. Below we see that he is looking into Clara’s fishbowl in “Time Heist” that contains a castle, a goldfish, and some water plants. Because the setting of “Heaven Sent” was a castle within the Doctor’s confession dial, and the Doctor spent 4.5 billion years imprisoned, tortured, and dying there, the castle and prison are metaphors for him. The fishbowl, itself, is a metaphor for prison.

So the Doctor being imprisoned in a castle was foreshadowed before the mid-point of Season 8. That also goes along with the island castle factory issues we saw in the “The Eaters of Light” analysis.

But he’s also looking into the bowl in the image, so one of his faces is watching himself.

But that’s not all. Check this out. In this image below, the Doctor is looking into Clara’s dryer. Because his face is spinning around in the reflection at the beginning, he represents all Doctors. However, check out the 2 different Eye symbols (red and yellow arrows) that represent beings watching him. Who is watching the Watcher? That’s the subject of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Anyway, there is also an open door (white arrow), representing the Door metaphor, and foreshadowing the future of being a Door.

Most Fish Need Water The problem with being a Fish is that most of them need water to survive. River, Amy Pond, and even Clara, since she is associated with a lake, provide the Water metaphor that Fish need.

This is why the 12th Doctor has been having such problems. He hasn’t wanted to live without the women he cares about and loves, in whatever capacity that is. We’ve seen how this has been driving, in part, his self-destructive behaviors. In “Heaven Sent,” he sacrifices himself over and over, dying over and over. He almost let himself drown after he jumped from the castle into the sea. It was only thoughts of Clara who kept him going.

The Mudskipper I’m fascinated by mudskippers, amphibious fish, so I was really happy but surprised to see one at the beginning of “The Lie of the Land” with a Monk’s foot next to it. This image, shown below, is making a statement that the Monks no longer need the Water metaphor to live. This foreshadows that the 12th Doctor will be able to live without the Water metaphor, at least for long periods of time. Mudskippers can spend a lot of time out of water. This is a sign of healing.

Prison & River

Prison is also associated with River, who, as we looked at early on, is a mirror of the Doctor. She spent a lot of time locked up in Stormcage for killing him.

The first time we saw River in an 11th Doctor episode was “The Time of Angels.” She was associated with the 12th Doctor, as shown by the timer in the image below. She is from the 12th Doctor’s timeline and is a face of the 12th Doctor. Please keep in mind that people, including Doctors, can take on numbers of other Doctors temporarily. We’ll look at this quite a bit in “World Enough and Time.”

Fish, Pisces & the Library Metaphor

Religious symbology shows up a lot in DW, especially with the Doctor because he was born to save the universe.

Christian Fish & Projection (Pisces) Symbols in the Library One of the symbols associated with the Doctor is the Christian fish or ichthys, colloquially known as the “sign of the fish” or the “Jesus fish.” It has 2 intersecting arcs with extended arcs at one end for the tail.

Check out this image below from “Silence in the Library.” Not only is there a Pisces symbol on the 2 doors, but also there are the additional arcs to create an ichthys on each of the 2 Library doors. In fact, the Dr. Strange movie uses almost the same projection symbol that is on the doors.

The Doctor, alone, doesn’t equal 2 fish, though. It takes at least 2 people to pilot the Boat. An integration. It’s why the puddle in “The Pilot” was looking for a pilot and got Heather. Here’s where Clara came in and Bill, too. We examined Clara with the Boat metaphor at the beginning of “Deep Breath.”

The 3rd fish reference in the Library is in Donna’s dream. Donna and her dream husband go fishing, shown below.

Prison & the Library Metaphor Mean Djinn Traps

While I’ve mentioned the Library being a prison, I never showed you the 2 djinn traps. The first, shown below, is very close to the beginning of “Silence in the Library” before we see the 10th Doctor and Donna enter the Pisces doors above. As you can see by the patterns on the floor with patterns in circles inside other patterns and circles, it’s a complicated symbol. There are 2 concentric circles. However, if we count the inside and outside borders of circles of the outermost circle because it has a multiple of an 8-pointed star, the extra circle gives us 3 generations and 3 Doctors.

Looking back to the prison ship in “World Enough and Time,” we can see in the image below that is much less complicated. This means the Doctor is close to breaking free from all of this.

In case, the Library didn’t catch enough djinn, it has a second trap, shown below. CAL is represented by the floating security ball, which has shut itself down, and dropped to the center of the smallest circle. She is deeply trapped. We get confirmation of that when we realize she is really a child cyborg, the control node of the Library computer.

Fish, a River Metaphor, “Human Nature” & “The Family of Blood”

Episodes with lots of wall hangings and items in scenes scream subtext objects. So it’s no surprise that “Human Nature” and “The Family of Blood” have so many connections to other episodes and are outline episodes for the larger story.

Here’s the 10th Doctor, who is playing the 24th Doctor (a multiple of 12). Behind the Doctor are 2-framed fish on the wall. I think they are probably paintings or prints/copies, rather than dead, preserved fish, which could change the meaning of the subtext. The Doctor, Martha, and Joan are all associated with the fish at points in the episode as they stand near or cross the path of the fish.

Being human is a form of prison for the Time Lord part imprisoned in the watch.

We also see Joan with a pocket watch, shown below. Like the Doctor, she has hidden her identity and is living as a human, so we know she represents an imprisoned Time Lord.

And “The Family of Blood” shows us who Joan represents. Below, she is outside the little Library area, but inside is a picture of a river. The painting of the river is best viewed not in this image below but from the next one, which doesn’t have Joan. The odd thing about this scene with Joan was that Joan had her eyes closed for several seconds, even though she was talking to Martha. That most likely is significant, given we’ve seen that the Doctor has had vision issues and that River is a mirror.

Below is a better view of the river painting. Joan, in the above painting, is being associated with this river painting. Therefore, Joan is a mirror of River.

BTW, River didn’t realize why she needed separate bathrooms from Hydroflax in THORS, so I’ve been wondering, given the mirrors, if River is visually impaired, too.

Fish, Romans & Slavery

Fish, Romans, and slavery come up in 3 different episodes that I can think of off the top of my head in addition to Rory’s imprisonment in an android body.

“The Eaters of Light” In “The Eaters of Light,” there is a carved fish in a rock, shown below, although it’s hard to see. Simon tells Bill the Romans are close to the rock with the fish. The Romans, then, are associated with the Fish, and so is Bill. Since the Fish represents imprisonment, the Romans, themselves, are imprisoned.

“The Fires of Pompeii” We saw previously that Peter Capaldi’s character, Caecilius, in “The Fires of Pompeii” has a chain around his neck, so he’s a happy slave.

The first words of the episode take on new meaning, knowing that fish equate to the Doctor.

VENDOR (OC): Fish! Get your fresh fish!

Pompeii is not what it appears to be even beyond the surprises in the episode. The fish vendor is selling bodies and body parts, which is consistent with the half-faced man and the butcher/pig metaphor. It’s consistent with all the brains in the big “C” room that are enslaved in TRODM.

The fish vendor isn’t the only one involved in the slave trade. Another vendor sold Caecilius the TARDIS, which is the Doctor’s wife metaphor.

When we first see him, he is admiring the TARDIS in his home.

CAECILIUS: Modern art! Out of the way, that's it. Oh, Rombus, I'm a little bit peckish. Get me some ants in honey, there's a good lad. Ooo, maybe a dormouse?

Caecilius is admiring the TARDIS as art in a similar way that Vastra admires her wife, Jenny, in “Deep Breath,” when she has Jenny pose as a living statue while Vastra works.

Caecilius is peckish, which is interesting, especially since we see him eating snacks in TRODM and now even more in Season 10. That mirrors the Master. The only time I’ve seen the Doctor eat a lot is in “The Two Doctors,” when the 2nd Doctor was mutating temporarily.

Rombus is an interesting name. Besides being an equilateral quadrilateral, it also means flatfish, magician’s circle, or spinning top, all of which have been in the text and subtext in various episodes.

The dormouse was considered a delicacy in ancient Rome. The most interesting thing about it is that Elizabethans believed Dormouse fat could induce sleep since the animal put on fat before hibernating. Since unconsciousness is a huge factor with the Doctor, the dormouse seems to suggest he wants to sleep or continue sleeping maybe because he doesn’t want to give up his human family in the dream or because he is being controlled.

Caecilius’s son and daughter are slaves, too. His daughter, who is part of the Sybilline Sisterhood, is wearing gold and turning to stone like the rest of the sisterhood. She is a mirror of the Doctor in that she can see into the past and future. And his son is wearing, what looks like a gold pocket watch around his neck, and he has a chain pattern on his sleeves. His tunic is purple with gold accents. The son is a mirror of the Doctor because we learn at the end of the episode that he is studying to be a doctor.

BTW, there is a lot of subtext that says the Doctor is trying to free himself and the other slaves. Here’s an example, and we’ll look at more in the future. The 10th Doctor and Donna introduce themselves to Caecilius.

CAECILIUS: Who are you?

DOCTOR: I am Spartacus.

DONNA: And so am I.

CAECILIUS: Mister and Mrs Spartacus.

Spartacus, a former gladiator and an accomplished military leader, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major failed slave uprising against the Roman Republic.

The 1st Doctor, Slavery & Fish in “The Romans” The 1st Doctor is involved in the slave trade in the shocking subtext of the 2nd season 4-episode story called the “The Romans.” Nero is his mirror, and Nero is the one who gives Barbara the gold bracelet that enslaves her to the Animus’s control in the next story. Is this planned by the Doctor? Or is he also mind controlled? I haven’t seen enough of the 1st Doctor to tell.

Near the end of “The Romans,” the Doctor sets fire to the map of Rome (says it’s by accident, but it’s not. The 10th Doctor mentions it in “The Fires of Pompeii.”), and Nero decides that it’s a good idea to burn Rome. Later, Vicki, a companion, tells the Doctor that he should get credit for the fire in Rome. The Doctor likes that idea, and once Vicki leaves, the Doctor laughs maniacally. This morphs into Nero’s maniacal laughter, as Nero plays the lyre while Rome burns.

Backing up to the beginning of the first episode of “The Romans,” there is an exchange reminiscent of Caecilius’s exchange above. However, the 1st Doctor mentions a goldfish when he, Barbara, and Ian are discussing the Roman meal. Like “The Fires of Pompeii,” ant’s come up in the conversation, which is interesting because the next 1st Doctor story is about ant-like beings and living larval weapons, controlled by the Animus, who are fighting butterfly-like beings.

BARBARA: Ant's eggs in hibiscus honey. DOCTOR: Oh, absolutely. What did you say? IAN: Ant's eggs, Doctor. DOCTOR: Yes, that's what I thought she said. Ant's eggs. What do you think I am, a goldfish, hmm?

BTW, the insectoid war symbolizes what’s happening with the 12th Doctor.

Pisces, Season 10 & the Library Metaphor at the University

Since Pisces represents a prison and other institutions, the university represents a prison, too. In fact, the Vault is a representation of the prison, the Library metaphor, and the Doctor’s mind, which we’ve examined, so the Vault also represents his own prison.

Season 10 has been playing out in the Library metaphor since “The Pilot.” In fact, in the opening scene in the Doctor’s office, shown below, the clock (white arrow) says it’s 4 o’clock. We’re in the Library. But that’s not all the evidence…

In “World Enough and Time,” at the beginning of the episode, we see various windows go by. This window, shown below, is from “Smile” with the hayfield and 2 sets of tracks (white arrow) in the foreground. The strange thing about this is that there is no city in the background. So how can the hayfield be there? Where are the Vardy? This is another item that says something isn’t right. Also, it tells us that we’ve been in the Library metaphor the whole time.

There Doctor being a professor and teaching at a university has quite a few similarities to a 4th Doctor story “Shada,” written by Douglas Adams, but was never completed due to a labor situation. There have been quite a few references in Season 10 to Adams. According to the TARDIS Wikia:

The story revolves around the lost planet Shada, on which the Time Lords built a prison for defeated would-be conquerors of the universe. Skagra, one such inmate, needs the help of one of the prison's inmates. He finds nobody knows where Shada is anymore except one aged Time Lord who has retired to Earth, where he is a professor at St. Cedd's College, Cambridge. Luckily for the universe, Skagra's attempt to force the information out of Professor Chronotis coincides with a visit by the professor's old friend, the Fourth Doctor.

I nearly mentioned this in “The Pilot” analysis, but I forgot about this. Thanks to Difficat for mentioning “Shada” in the comments on a past analysis.

Pisces & the Hospital Metaphor

Being that Rory is a mirror of the 12th Doctor, it’s not surprising that he is connected to prison (being imprisoned in a Roman android body) and a hospital, which we saw him first working in during “The Eleventh Hour.”

Now, Bill, a face of the Doctor, is also associated with the Hospital.

Hospitals, though, can be both negative and positive. We saw how Bill was in a hospital nightmare.

However, in the long run, it is meant to heal. In “The Pilot” analysis, we looked at how the St John Ambulance symbol was both a symbol of torture in DW and healing. Therefore, it’s not surprising that a face of the Doctor is in both a torturous situation and one that is healing.

Femininity

We’ve seen how the Doctor in TRODM was a male on the outside but female inside. In fact, we examined how his watch in “Human Nature” had a woman’s voice as part of his Time Lord consciousness. She said she was hiding among men.

He gave us more information in “World Enough and Time”:

(Night. Sitting on a bench, eating the chips from polystyrene trays.)

DOCTOR: She was my first friend, always so brilliant, from the first day at the Academy. So fast, so funny. She was my man crush.

BILL: I'm sorry?

DOCTOR: Yeah, I think she was a man back then. I'm fairly sure that I was, too. It was a long time ago, though.

BILL: So, the Time Lords, bit flexible on the whole man-woman thing, then, yeah?

DOCTOR: We're the most civilised civilisation in the universe. We're billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes.

Fish = Fertility While a Sun

Being a Sun metaphor, the Doctor is very fertile, which we’ve examined, especially in relation to “Heaven Sent.” There are Y-shaped symbols, meaning plague crosses, all over the castle. Nearly every time he moves gears, he is unconsciously creating more ghostly beings. He is powering a factory, creating an army. We’ll look at this more in depth in another chapter and how it relates to the factory of Cybermen in “World Enough and Time.”

Fish: Food for the Soul

This is the section I really had to update since we hadn’t seen the Doctor eating much, except TRODM. He eats a lot in Season 10. Anyway, in TRODM, the 12th Doctor was eating sushi. Eating fish is a 12th Doctor metaphor for self-sacrifice and self-destruction.

However, Fish is also food for the soul. For the 12th Doctor, it is both deathly and healing.

In contrast to the sushi, the Doctor’s burger snack represents unhealthy food since it is wrapped like a fast food burger. One hallmark of the 12th Doctor is that he represents duality (healthy/unhealthy, sushi/burger, “Heaven Sent”/”Hell Bent,” life/death)

Of course, fish are especially prominent in 11th and 12th Doctor episodes as food. How can we forget the 11th Doctor’s favorite food: fish fingers and custard? And I loved seeing the 12th Doctor eating sushi, upscaling his consumption to purer food. This exemplifies, for one thing, his own purification through the Great Work, at least that was true in TRODM. (We’ve gone back in time since I wrote this.) BTW, fish fingers, because of “fingers,” represent body parts. Eating fish does too.

Fish People

Of course, eating fish isn’t the only prominent thing in in 11th and 12th Doctor episodes. We heard mention of fish people, like Jim the Fish, in both 11th and 12th Doctor episodes. Also, Clara and the 12th Doctor went to visit the fish people in Clara’s dizzying excursions with the Doctor at the beginning of the “The Caretaker.” However, we didn’t actually see them.

However, we actually saw fish-like people in “The Husbands of River Song.” Here’s the maître d' of the Harmony & Redemption restaurant, shown below. He actually was going to ask the chef to prepare the Doctor for River to eat. River gave the Doctor the advice to try the fish.

Fish, Vikings, and Ashildr

Even though we’ve talked about this, to be inclusive to the Fish metaphor, I’m leaving this in.

The Fish metaphor gives us part of the connection to the Vikings, who shows up in at least ½ the 9th season episodes of the 12th Doctor, whether it is Ashildr or other subtext.

The image below shows an example of the Fish metaphor/Viking connection in the 12th Doctor ghost episode of “Under the Lake,” and it shows up again in the second part “Before the Flood.” The sea creature is Jörmungandr, the sea creature of Norse mythology, and is a symbol of Ragnarök. In the ship, under the Roman cross are 3 Star Trek crewmembers from the original series. They look like Captain Kirk, Spock, and a poor red shirt, who will probably die.

Anyway, the Viking connection goes back to Classic Who. It hasn’t showed up much in nuWho, except one time I can think of outside of the 12th Doctor. Rory gave the 11th Doctor a Viking funeral after River killed him in “The Impossible Astronaut.”

Much of DW is based on the Viking concept of anthropomorphizing objects.

Neptune, Roman Mythology & Fish

According to Wikipedia, “divine associations with Pisces include Poseidon/Neptune, Christ, Aphrodite, Eros, Typhon and Vishnu.”

The Season 9 episode “Sleep No More” had a reference to Neptune.

According to Wikipedia,

Neptune (Latin: Neptūnus [nɛpˈtuːnʊs]) was the god of freshwater and the sea in Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune was the brother of Jupiter and Pluto; the brothers presided over the realms of Heaven, the earthly world, and the Underworld. Salacia was his wife.

Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics, especially those of North Africa, are influenced by Hellenistic conventions. Neptune was likely associated with fresh water springs before the sea. Like Poseidon, Neptune was worshipped by the Romans also as a god of horses, under the name Neptunus Equester, a patron of horse-racing.

Neptune is the creator of horses and is the god of the sea as well as the owner of a powerful weapon, the Trident. Poseidon is the Greek Neptune and is one of the big three gods Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. He accidentally created horses when he had an affair with Medusa, and also created a boy who roams the seas as a pirate past the pillar of Hercules.

We’ve seen that horses, water, and Medusa, among other things, have been important.

Danny (Doctor mirror) was associated with Neptune’s trident, shown below, on the flag of Barbados after he integrated with Clara.

Also, the 11th Doctor also was associated with Neptune. He’s playing a face of the 12th Doctor here because Neptune is associated with the Pisces. We’ve already seen how the 12th Doctor has been associated with Jupiter/Zeus.

It could be that the 11th Doctor could be Neptune, while the 12th Doctor could be Jupiter, and Missy with her relationship to the Nethersphere and the dead would be Pluto. They would all be faces of the Doctor. River might represent the dead, too, being in the Library.

It’s interesting that Clara was wearing seaweed in “The Caretaker.” While we didn’t get to see the fish people, she met Danny in a taxi for a date with seaweed on her shoulder, shown below.

Neptune’s wife had a crown of seaweed. While Clara doesn’t wear a crown of it, seaweed is symbolic. Clara represents all companions, including River. I’m mentioning all of this, too, because of the significance to the title “World Enough and Time,” which we’ll examine in the next chapter. It could go along with what Wikipedia says about Salacia:

The god Neptune wanted to marry Salacia, but she was in great awe of her distinguished suitor, and to preserve her virginity, with grace and celerity she managed to glide out of his sight, and hid from him in the Atlantic Ocean. The grieving Neptune sent a dolphin to look for her and persuade the fair nymph to come back and share his throne. Salacia agreed to marry Neptune and the King of the Deep was so overjoyed at these good tidings that the dolphin was awarded a place in the heavens, where he now forms a well known constellation Delphinus.

Salacia is represented as a beautiful nymph, crowned with seaweed, either enthroned beside Neptune or driving with him in a pearl shell chariot drawn by dolphins, sea-horses (hippocamps) or other fabulous creatures of the deep, and attended by Tritons and Nereids. She is dressed in queenly robes and has nets in her hair.

Next Chapters

We’ll look at the meaning of the episode title; the Doctor’s OMG hair; the significance of the Doctor using the title “Doctor Who”; the Master and other mirrors; how “Face the Raven,” Heaven Sent,” and more fit in; the hospital from hell and various aspects of it; various references, and much more.

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #world enough and time #bill potts #nardole #meta #analysis

4 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 1: “World Enough and Time” Analysis Doctor Who S10.11: Important metaphors & Don’t Believe Everything You See

All links below go to my AO3 analyses. For Tumblr, check out my Meta Archive.

Catching Up with Metaphors & Supporting Information

This is a really short chapter. I want to get this out to give you, if you are inclined, a chance to either read or reread some chapters from my pre-Season 10 document, Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who. They lay out what is happening in this finale.

If you haven’t read my post analysis of TRODM, starting in Chapter 14 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who, I suggest, if you have time, you read it to further shed light on what is happening. I’ll translate “World Enough and Time” to show you how we saw this coming. However, the many details are in those chapters.

If you have read those chapters, it’s good to refresh memories. It was for me. There’s so much to think about in order to pull all these concepts together. These chapters have a much more in-depth look at the supporting metaphors and information. I’ll do my best to give you the most important points, in case you don’t have time to read those chapters.

If you only have time for 2 chapters from that document, you should read Chapter 15, which sets up most of the metaphors you’ll need and Chapter 17. It examines “Heaven Sent,” which is very important to “World Enough and Time, and while it’s not a full analysis, it comes close. I’ll be heavily referencing that chapter.

Because I had to set up the foundation of the complicated meaning behind TRODM, it took quite a few chapters. Here’s the really quick outline, in case you want to go back and see how the subtext has foreshadowed all of this.

Sadly, since this was my first time doing a meta, I didn’t break out TRODM from my pre-Season 10 document Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who. For those of you who haven’t read it, I did a TRODM pre-airing analysis starting in Chapter 9. The Post-airing analysis starts in Chapter 14.

Post-airing analysis of TRODM:

Chapter 14:

· Shows the major reveal in dialogue that the Doctor was battling himself, along with foreshadowing for it where I give examples that go all the way back to the 9th Doctor. (Skip this for now if you haven’t read it.)

Chapter 15:

· Talks about several metaphors, including Black Holes, Earth, Brains, the Eye of Harmony, and the Boat metaphor. I also gave a quick look at the Library metaphor, which I’ve never fully posted because I never finished it. However, I have talked about parts of it throughout Season 10.

Chapter 16:

· Talks about Black Holes being metaphorical beasts. We examined “The Beast Below” and the Star Whale metaphor, which is a type of Boat metaphor.

· There’s an important promise in the episode that I highlighted because this all was going to get really dark, which it has. And it will get worse. What we need to keep in mind is that there is a greater love behind all of this, which will heal everyone in the end, at least in many ways. The Doctor is the Star Whale, so not everything may go back to the way it was before starting, at least not in the story, which I’ll explain. However, it does mean people will wake up, and the Star Whale will no longer be tortured and enslaved. We are seeing this play out with Bill (a face of the Doctor), and we’ll examine this more in a bit.

· Gives examples of the Black Hole and the Eye of Harmony from “The Impossible Planet” & “The Satan Pit.” Exploitation and slavery were themes. They actually tie into a concept in TRODM.

· Shows how Vikings, love, poison, and a curse are involved.

· Compares “The Satan Pit” to TRODM

· Talks about “Planet of the Ood” and slavery, along with what the Beast really is

· Talks about why I believed we were headed for the coming apocalypse in an alternate universe.

Chapter 17:

· Talks about how “Heaven Sent” is so much more than it appears. The episode was already very complicated, so the details of what was really happening have to be left to subtext. I tie in many episodes in this chapter, and this chapter is the main one playing out right now in “World Enough and Time.”

· Examines the prison, energy source (Mr. Razor in “World Enough and Time” mentions solar panels), building an army (which is where the plague comes in), the Door/Doughnut metaphor, how this connects to “The Unquiet Dead,” the invisible monster and “Vincent and the Doctor,” a quick look at the gender change, pods and the plague tying in multiple episodes, what pods and drawings tell us about the Library.

Chapter 18:

· Talks about exploiting children, along with the significance of the age of 8, which comes up again in “World Enough and Time.” Also, it talks about the Master’s madness and Rassilon’s part in this. This madness shows up in the Library, “The Empty Child,” as well as the 2-part story “Under the Lake” and “Before the Flood.” Additionally, I examine why the Time Lord Academy was more than it appeared and how turning oneself human was a problem.

· Shows how “A Town Called Mercy” and its minisode prequel are really important. And I show how that also connects to “Face the Raven.” I wanted to make that point in “The Eaters of Light” analysis, but I ran out of time.

· Talks about how the Doctor’s Mother, the Legend of the Blue Box, and “A Town Called Mercy” are tied together. I didn’t get to reiterate this point either in “The Eaters of Light” analysis.

· Examines how we are turning back time and rescuing children. I also talk about how much more pain and misery is in the subtext. “World Enough and Time” is giving us a small taste in canon of what has been in the subtext for a long time.

· Looks at how Danny Pink’s “heavenly” experience foreshadows the rescue and why the Doctor doesn’t need to regenerate.

Chapter 19:

· Talks about the Doctor’s Mother and her rescue plan, along with what Rassilon and the Master wanted, Wilfred and the Doctor taking up arms.

· Examines what it means when the Doctor shoots the general and what the subtext suggests about the War Doctor and Master.

· Talks about what looking at the Eye of Harmony, the Black Hole, means and who Prisoner Zero is. We examined the Doctor’s potential blindness before TRODM aired. We’ll take a look at it from another point of view in the “World Enough and Time” analysis.

· Examines the Architect from “Time Heist” and relates it to the meaning of the poems in “The Beast Below.” I also link this to the Doctor’s mother. Here’s where I first talk about the Horse metaphor, as well as the Vault in relation to the Library.

TRODM is extremely important to the subtext story, even though it doesn’t look like it on the surface.

I believe that Moffat and DW will make history with the reveal of what really has been happening to the Doctor in this upcoming last episode of Season 10 or the Christmas Special.

He’s pulling the rug out…

Things Are Not as They Appear & the Library Metaphor

It’s the standard mantra: don’t believe what you see. There are several problems that show this, but here are a few:

They Are in the Library Metaphor

When we see the end of the ship close to the Black Hole metaphor, we get some important information.

In the image below, the Black Hole (red arrow) is on the right while the ship on the left has several important symbols. This ship’s end is cylindrical, showing us a container circle encompassing various markings. There are 4 white lines around the outside of the center white circle, and I’ve marked one (white arrow). These 4 represent the compass directions which pertain to the Library metaphor. There are 8 darker lines, and I’ve marked one (yellow arrow). This is a djinni symbol. It’s a trap for djinn, symbolized with a container circle. This is a prison ship.

Please note that when I took this image, the compass points had rotated. The ship is spinning, which provides artificial gravity.

The Doctor on Ice

At the beginning of the episode, the Doctor (with OMG really long hair for him!) stumbles out of the TARDIS, falls to his knees, and starts to regenerate. That he screams, “Nooooo!” is a big red flag. In a bit, we’ll examine what this suggests. Also, we’ll examine the OMG hair and how it supports the Samson & Delilah hypothesis, along with what additional information this all suggests.

The Ship’s Width Doesn’t Match

The ship is reaaaaallllly long. Nardole gives us the dimensions, but there is a problem:

NARDOLE: Oh, it's a big one. Ship reads as four hundred miles long

[Tardis]

NARDOLE [OC]: And a hundred miles wide.

DOCTOR: It's big, even for a colony ship.

There is no way the width of the ship is ¼ of the length. The width is tiny in comparison.

The Next Chapters

I’ve got a lot to cover, but here are a few things. More insight on the Doctor’s OMG really long hair. How the title fits in, the meaning of the Doctor using “Doctor Who” as his title, the Fish metaphor (finally!) and what they have to do with the Library metaphor and Hospitals. The Master and lots of mirror explanations, tying in “Face the Raven,” “Heaven Sent,” “Hell Bent,” “Journey into Terror,” “Oxygen,” and much more.

Read next chapter ->

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #world enough and time #bill potts #nardole

1 note · View note

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Photo

14 Promos for The Doctor Falls have been released.

Blog: http://who-natic.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/promo-images-series-10-episode-12.html

Full size images in the gallery: http://gallery.hiddenshallows.co.uk/thumbnails.php?album=290

25 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Photo

Brilliant job! Loved John’s portrayal.

I’m in complete disguise,down to the teeth and you know, they did a brilliant job. Everytime i walked past a mirror i nearly had a heart attack.I was like ‘Eugh’ - you forget it’s on! Well, you can’t really forget it’s on, but you know, you don’t see yourself very often.

306 notes · View notes

tardisgirlepic · 7 years

Text

Ch. 3: “The Eaters of Light” Analysis Doctor Who S10.10: Growing Up, Love & Separation, the Doctor’s Fall

<- Read previous chapter

Growing Up as a Theme

One of the themes of “The Eaters of Light” was about growing up, which can be tied to the cowardice theme from last week’s episode, “The Empress of Mars.” Growing up can be metaphorical or literal.

Coming of age, facing fears, taking responsibility have all been part of the growing up theme. In “The Eaters of Light,” we have Roman soldiers who are no older than 18 years. The Picts were children, too. Where were all the adults? While 2nd century Roman Britain had different standards of age and fighting in wars, I’ll apply the coming of age, facing fears, and taking responsibility to them.

Last week, we had Colonel Godsacre stepping up and facing his fear of leadership to take responsibility.

“Amy’s Choice”

Amy and Rory had an interesting conversation in “Amy’s Choice.” Rory, Amy, and the Doctor are dealing with the Dream Lord and the dream in the TARDIS. However, Rory wants the life where they are settled and have a baby. He was happy in the dream where he was a doctor and Amy was pregnant, but she wasn’t. Rory’s feeling insecure that Amy wants to stay with the Doctor in the TARDIS.

RORY: You ran off with another man. AMY: Not in that way. RORY: It was the night before our wedding. AMY: We're in a time machine. It can be the night before our wedding for as long as we want. RORY: We have to grow up eventually. AMY: Says who?

I did not expect Amy’s answer about growing up.

“Human Nature” & “The Family of Blood”

The 10th Doctor, playing the 24th turned himself human to hide, and now he doesn’t want to go back to being a Time Lord. At the end of “The Family of Blood,” the Doctor wants to give the beings who are after him the watch with his Time Lord consciousness, so he can remain human:

DOCTOR: I should have thought of it before. I can give them this. Just the watch. Then they can leave and I can stay as I am. MARTHA: You can't do that!

DOCTOR: If they want the Doctor, they can have him.

MARTHA: He'll never let you do it.

DOCTOR: If they get what they want, then, then

JOAN: Then it all ends in destruction. I never read to the end, but those creatures would live forever to breed and conquer, for war across the stars for every child. Martha, Timothy, would you leave us alone, please?

(Martha and Latimer leave. Joan hugs a sobbing Doctor. The bombardment on the village continues as Martha and Latimer sit outside, then she hugs him.)

JOAN: If I could do this instead of you, then I would. I'd hoped. But my hopes aren't important.

DOCTOR: He won't love you.

The Doctor wants to stay human, so he can love Joan, marry, and have a family. This suggests the 12th Doctor is having this problem. In fact, in the Doctor’s living quarters, there is a bowl of apples (yellow arrow) and a snake (white arrow) in the background, showing the temptations of the Doctor as a human in the Garden of End metaphor. The Roman crosses represent the 12th Doctor or multiple, thereof. The human is the imposter and must fall. And that foreshadows what is coming.

The 12th Doctor

Missy and the Master are examples of what the Doctor can become, and with the mirrors, that’s a scary thought. The Doctor needs to face his fear of himself, which resulted in his memory wipe.

The 1st Doctor & Susan

Susan represents a coming of age. She was becoming a young woman and developed a relationship with David Campbell. Wanting to see her have a normal life, the 1st Doctor left her with David in the 22nd century with a promise.

DOCTOR: Believe me, my dear, your future lies with David, and not with a silly old buffer like me. One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, Susan, goodbye, my dear.

Love & Separation as a Theme

Love and separation come up in “The Eaters of Light” with Kar leaving her brother behind to guard the gateway to another dimension and fight the Eaters of Light. However, love and separation has been a theme for a long time. There’s Rose with the 9th Doctor and then the 10th. Sarah Jane, too, complained to the 10th Doctor, how he as the 4th Doctor just dropped her off in Aberdeen and never came back.

Regarding River, we first heard about her feeling of separation back in “The Name of the Doctor.” Of course, there is THORS, TRODM, and the 12th Doctor losing both Clara and River. Season 10 is no exception. Not only is Clara’s absence still a problem, but Bill, too, lost Heather, and then there’s Penny.

There’s also the open question of Bill’s mother.

And there are other examples.

We saw above how love and separation goes all the way back to the 1st Doctor and Susan. I’m betting with the theme coming up so much that we will see her, either in the finale or the Christmas Special. This seems like such a great family-oriented reunion, which would be fantastic for Christmas.

I especially believe this theme will come up in the finale and maybe Christmas special because Kar and Ban aren’t the only references in the episode to love and separation. There are several important external allusions, which lead to the expulsion from paradise.

The Opening: Visions of Outlander with Its Doctor Who Connection

The opening of “The Eaters of Light” seems so similar to the series Outlander, where Claire goes to Scotland and encounters ancient Celtic, stone monuments, called standing stones that broadcast sound, reminiscent of the Celtic music we hear in “The Eaters of Light.”

If you are not familiar with Outlander, it’s a series of novels that has been turned into a British-American TV series. While I watch the TV series, I’ve only read the 1st novel. Wikipedia says of the novels:

Outlander (published in the United Kingdom as Cross Stitch) is the first in a series of eight historical multi-genre novels by Diana Gabaldon. Published in 1991, it focuses on the Second World War-era nurse Claire Randall, who travels through time to 18th century Scotland and finds adventure and romance with the dashing Jamie Fraser.

From the beginning of the plot summary:

In 1946, after working apart during the Second World War, British Army nurse Claire Randall and her husband Frank, a history professor, go on a second honeymoon to Inverness, Scotland. Frank conducts research into his family history and Claire goes plant-gathering near standing stones on the hill of Craigh na Dun. She faints when investigating a buzzing noise near the stones; upon waking, she encounters Frank's ancestor, Captain Jack Randall.

When Claire, an Englishwoman, investigates the buzzing noise, she touches one of the ancient Celtic stones and gets transported back to Scotland in 1743. She finds herself in the middle of a skirmish between rebel Scottish Highlanders and Redcoats.

After various events and several hardships, she marries Jamie. While she still wears Frank’s ring on one hand, maintaining hopes of getting back to him, she wears Jamie’s on the other. Because Frank’s ancestor the captain was a rapist and sadist, who treated the Scots as sub-humans, it does color Claire’s situation. Encountering the captain on several occasions, she witnessed his behavior first hand. Jamie has had several encounters, too, some showing the captain in a most sadistic light.

Claire embraces most of the Scottish culture and comes to see the British as occupiers, another form of usurpation. At one point, we did see her back in the present with a daughter by Jamie. So Claire is living in 2 worlds. She loves both men, but love has split them apart.

Gabaldon really liked DW’s 2nd Doctor companion Jamie Frasier, so she named her romantic lead character after him. Doing extensive historical research for the series, she has become a noted expert on 18th century Scotland. Her novels center on the time period of British occupation of Scottish lands, along with the skirmishes and events leading up to the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Outlander gives us another usurpation reference, too.

According to HistoryExtra.com:

The 1745 Jacobite Rebellion was a turning point in British history. Believing the British throne to be his birthright, Charles Edward Stuart, aka ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, planned to invade Great Britain along with his Jacobite followers and remove the Hanoverian ‘usurper’ George II. Yet, argues Dr Jacqueline Riding, the reality of the ’45 continues to be obscured by fiction and fables.

…

In June 1745, Charles Edward Stuart (b1720) had one key aim: regaining the thrones his grandfather, the Roman Catholic convert James VII of Scotland and II of England and Ireland, had lost in 1688–90 to his nephew and son-in-law William of Orange (who reigned as William III). This ‘glorious’ revolution had confirmed a Protestant succession, in a predominantly Protestant Great Britain, which, from 1714, was embodied in the Hanoverian dynasty.

The term “usurper” depends on which side of the rebellion one is on. The English called Charles “The Young Pretender.” The problem comes back to religion, the English Reformation, and Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church.

Clearly, there is a theme of love and separation, as well as occupation, in both “The Eaters of Light” and in Outlander.

In fact, Kar pours out her heart out about the usurpation by the Romans, which in some sense reminds me of River in THORS:

KAR: Let me tell you about the Romans. They are the robbers of this world. When they've thieved everything on land, they'll rob the sea. If their enemies are rich, they'll take all they have. If their enemies are poor, they'll make slaves of them. Their work is robbery, slaughter, plunder. They do this work and they call it empire. They make deserts and they call it peace.

The Doctor, having both Roman and Scottish connections, gets another ear full. Clearly, the usurpation applies but most likely the 2 worlds for the Doctor are represented by the 10th Doctor’s dilemma of human vs. being a Time Lord.

We saw the dilemma with Bill and Heather no longer being human.

The Subtle Knife

When I watched “The Eaters of Light” with my daughter, she mentioned that it seemed similar to The Subtle Knife, a young-adult fantasy novel, written by British author Philip Pullman and published in 1997. I’ve never read the book, or any of the 3 books in Pullman’s series His Dark Materials. However, from what my daughter said, “The Eaters of Light” referenced it, so I checked it out.

It’s much like the Outlander series in that someone jumps into a portal and enters a different world, so to speak. According to Wikipedia, in the second novel in the series:

Twelve-year-old Will Parry cares for his mentally ill mother in Oxford. When he accidentally kills an intruder, he runs away and discovers a portal to a parallel universe. In the seemingly deserted city of Cittàgazze, he encounters 12-year-old Lyra Silvertongue and her dæmon Pantalaimon, who arrived via a bridge in the sky created by her father, Lord Asriel.

The editorial review on Amazon says

As the novel opens, Will's enemies will do anything for information about his missing father, a soldier and Arctic explorer who has been very much airbrushed from the official picture. Now Will must get his mother into safe seclusion and make his way toward Oxford, which may hold the key to John Parry's disappearance. But en route and on the lam from both the police and his family's tormentors, he comes upon a cat with more than a mouse on her mind: "She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will." What seems to him a patch of everyday Oxford conceals far more: "The cat stepped forward and vanished." Will, too, scrambles through and into another oddly deserted landscape--one in which children rule and adults (and felines) are very much at risk. Here in this deathly silent city by the sea, he will soon have a dustup with a fierce, flinty little girl: "Her expression was a mixture of the very young--when she first tasted the cola--and a kind of deep, sad wariness." Soon Will and Lyra (and, of course, her dæmon, Pantalaimon) uneasily embark on a great adventure and head into greater tragedy.

Will and Lyra are forced to retrieve a special knife that has the ability to cut into other worlds and through any material. So here’s another reference to a doorway and a world ruled by children, like we saw in “The Eaters of Light.” Will and Lyra fall in love, but staying in a parallel universe that isn’t their own threatens the destruction of that universe. So Will can’t stay in the end.

This sounds similar to what happened with Bill and Heather at the end of “The Pilot.” And the song from the episode “Love Will Tear Us Apart” seems highly appropriate.

Will’s father being a soldier and explorer may give us some information about the Doctor, but not having read the series, I’m going to leave it at this. If you’ve read the book and have some ideas, let me know.

The Doctor’s Fall: Paradise Lost & His Dark Materials

Pullman took the title of the series, His Dark Materials, from English poet John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, first published in 1667. According to Wikipedia:

The poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men."

Pullman’s series, from what I gather, is a reimagining of Paradise Lost for teenagers. In fact, His Dark Materials comes from Paradise Lost, along with the title of his first book of the series, The Golden Compass.

The continuing theme of expulsion from paradise, which we’ve seen multiple times in Season 10 regarding the Doctor, is foreshadowing the Doctor’s fall.

Anyway, His Dark Materials is a really interesting phrase, especially since we saw the record label in “The Pilot” that the Doctor had is a famous trademark: His Master’s Voice, shown below.

Tip: When 2 pieces of subtext sound similar, especially with odd spellings or phrasing, they may very well be related. This is an exception to our rule requiring 3 occurrences to make a pattern.

I didn’t have time in “The Pilot” analysis to explain more about the label because it’s part of a complicated set of metaphors. The metaphors were very relevant to the “Smile” analysis, so I explained more about the label there. Long story short, it leads to the parody of the painting The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise.

Since this all lines up in various ways, I have no doubt my daughter is right about The Subtle Knife connection to “The Eaters of Light.” There’s much more that connects that we’ll examine below.

The Fallen Angel Theme & the Legend of the Blue Box

I’ve wanted to talk about the fallen angel theme for a long time, but I haven’t because of time. However, I need to now, especially because this comes up in multiple ways in “The Eaters of Light.” And it ties back into several other things we’ve examined. The Vestal Virgin 2nd Class and the angel reference, as well as the demon and sainted physician from the Legend of the Blue Box.

The big reference to Satan in DW is in the 10th Doctor Ood story “The Satan Pit.” However, it’s Satan’s name “Lucifer” that is of interest here. I want to draw a distinction between Satan and Lucifer, which I’ll explain in a few minutes.

The Name Lucifer & DW Characters with Derivative Names

Lucifer literally is "the morning star, bearer of light," derived from luc-, lux "light" and -fer "bearing."

According to Merriam Webster’s Word Central,

What we sometimes call "the morning star" is really the planet Venus. The Romans called it Lucifer, meaning "bearer of light," because it appeared in the sky just before sunrise. So when, in the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah says, in describing the downfall of the king of Babylon, "How are you fallen from heaven, O Morning Star, son of dawn," the "Morning Star" became Lucifer in the Latin translation. Early Christians thought that Isaiah was also referring to the devil, who had likewise "fallen from heaven." Thus the word Lucifer came to be applied to the devil.

Lucifer was not always seen as the devil. In fact, according to Wikipedia, 2 bishops of the early Christian Church bore the name Lucifer. It goes on to say

In Latin, the word is applied to John the Baptist and is used as a title of Jesus himself in several early Christian hymns. The morning hymn Lucis largitor splendide of Hilary contains the line: "Tu verus mundi lucifer" (you are the true light bringer of the world).

In fact, it’s only later that Lucifer came to be used as a proper name:

Later Christian tradition came to use the Latin word for "morning star," lucifer, as a proper name ("Lucifer") for the devil; as he was before his fall. As a result, "'Lucifer' has become a by-word for Satan / the Devil in the church and in popular literature", as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer and John Milton's Paradise Lost. However, the Latin word never came to be used almost exclusively, as in English, in this way, and was applied to others also, including Jesus. The image of a morning star fallen from the sky is generally believed among scholars to have a parallel in Canaanite mythology.

I’m making a distinction, and I can best show you why with an example. The Doctor going hell bent through the universe and causing its destruction could easily be seen as Satan. However, what if the Doctor is in a universe, like alternate-Donna in “Turn Left,” that needs to die to restore the real universe? He could be seen as Satan in one and a savior in another.

Because DW uses derivative names with the Latin roots luc- and lux, they relate to the name Lucifer. For now, I don’t want to apply judgment of good or evil to these characters. I can’t think of any instance where people with the Latin roots luc- and lux in their names are not also mirrors or dark mirrors of the Doctor.

Here are just a few examples of characters related to Lucifer.

Lucius in “The Eaters of Light” Lucius, for example in “The Eaters of Light,” comes from the Latin root lux and the Latin verb lucere "to shine." So he has a connection to Lucifer. In fact Lucius was also called “Granddad,” which Bill questioned

THRACIUS: Why are you even listening to her, Grandad? LUCIUS: Because no one else is saying anything. We need a plan. A real commander would have a plan. BILL: Why did he call you Grandad? LUCIUS: They always call me Grandad. I'm in command. I'm the oldest one left. BILL: How old are you? LUCIUS: Eighteen.

“Granddad” is a metaphor for the Doctor, so Lucius is a mirror of the Doctor. He is foreshadowing what is going to happen.

He integrates in a way with Kar to stand together to fight the bigger monster, although it’s a losing battle. It’s the Doctor joining his duality together.

“The Fires of Pompeii” & Lucius Petrus Dextrus Lucius Petrus Dextrus was the Chief Augur of Pompeii in 79 AD, shown below, along with Peter Capaldi’s character Lobus Caecilius and his wife Metella. He supported the Cult of Vulcan, who wanted to convert the population of the world into more Pyroviles.

Lucius has the gift of prophecy, so he is a dark mirror of the Doctor.

BTW, I’m not sure if I mentioned a wolf connection regarding Caecilius. Lobus, while meaning lobe, pod, or husk in Latin, is very close to the Spanish word for wolf: lobo.

CAL: Charlotte Abigail Lux, “Silence in the Library” & “Forest of the Dead” We know CAL is a mirror of the Doctor, and her last name tells us this, too. Not only that, but Charlotte Abigail Lux’s father, Felman Lux, built the Library for her. Felman is an interesting name, especially when we are talking about the Fall of Man and the fall of the Doctor.

Strackman Lux was the grandson of Felman Lux, and the person who led River’s expedition into the Library. He said it took 3 generations to figure out how to get into the sealed Library. He represents the 3rd, which corresponds to a triad of Doctors. Strackman, shown below from a TARDIS Wikia image, reminds me of Strax with that suit, and the name is really close.

“The Rebel Flesh” & “The Almost People”

Jennifer Lucas in “The Rebel Flesh” and “The Almost People” has luc- in her name. In fact, Lucas is a cognate of Lucius.

In Conclusion

There is a lot of overlap of themes in this chapter of growing up; taking responsibility, which means getting kicked out of paradise; and falling. I’m hanging onto my hat for the wild ride of how all of this foreshadows the finale.

#doctor who #twelfth doctor #bill potts #nardole #clara oswald #river song #eleventh doctor #amy pond #rory williams #the eaters of light

3 notes · View notes