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chicafrom3I'm not sure I can handle waiting until August.
Okay, first let me get the big question out of the way: Did they bring Karen Gillan back to shoot the regeneration scene or did they shoot that while she was still main cast? Moffat does like his long games (THAT FREAKING CRACK IN SPACETIME). Although that did not look like Caitlin Blackwood, tbh.
And now on to the rest.
I want to make this a post full of insightful thoughts and observations but honestly my brain is still churning, so instead have some random musings on the nature of regeneration, Eleven and Matt in general, Moff's run so far, Twelve, and other rambling topics.
The thing is all the Doctors get boiled down in popular memory. For example everyone remembers the First Doctor as the grumpy old one, even though this is not, strictly speaking, true -- see his cuddling with Susan and Vicki, or the genuinely affectionate friendship he strikes up with Barbara and Ian, or his paternal attitude toward Ben and Polly -- but that's how he's remembered. Six is remembered as the loud one in the awful coat. Eight is remembered as the one who only had a TV movie. Etc.
(That's speaking generally. Obviously individually people remember Doctors differently, and everyone will argue that their favorite Doctor isn't just X, as I just argued about One. But popular memory.)
It's hard with the New Series Doctors to judge how they'll be remembered in the long run, because we don't have enough distance yet. Well, Nine tends to get simplified as the broody one in the leather jacket. But decades from now, will people remember Ten as manic grins and snogging, or as crying in the TARDIS "I don't want to go"? Will Eleven be remembered as the children's Doctor, Amelia Pond's Raggedy Man, or as fish fingers and custard, or as the old man with the young man's face, or the one who got married? Who knows?
(On a tangent, as far as meta dialogue goes, I much prefer "You're the Doctor" "And I always will be" to "I don't want to go". Yes, Matt. You always will be the Doctor. ♥)
The appearance of Amy, both as little Amelia (whether that was Caitlin or not) and as grown Amy, was note-perfect, by the way. Both because Amy has been so vitally important to Eleven's character development and because it's a reminder: Amy was the first face Eleven saw, the one he imprinted on; for Twelve, that face is Clara's.
AND CLARA. Can I talk about Clara for a minute? Because she ought to go down in Who history as one of the companions with the greatest influence on the Doctor, alongside Barbara Wright, Sarah Jane Smith, and the Brigadier. She won't let go of him, even if means clinging to the outside of the TARDIS through the Time Vortex. (And it extended its force field to protect her. Take that, Jack Harkness.) (I still love you, Jack, sorry.) And "You've got it wrong. His name is the Doctor. Everything you need to know about him." She gets it: anyone asking "Doctor Who?" has missed the point. And she not only gets it, she forces others to get it, and by doing so she saves him.
(Another tangent: I am mildly disappointed that she didn't recognize what was happening to Tasha (sp?) and that she reacted to the regeneration with "please don't change". I mean, I get them both; Day Of The Doctor made it clear that she remembers only fragments of her journey through the Doctor's timeline, and even though she's okay with regeneration as a concept that doesn't mean she's ready to lose Eleven, who until now has been her Doctor. But I'm still mildly disappointed.)
Also, this makes Eleven only the second time the Doctor has died of old age, doesn't it? Unless that's what killed Hurt!Doctor, that's not very clear.
Which brings me to the next topic, which is the way Moffat has structured almost all of Eleven's run, with huge gaps and missing pieces where more adventures can be slipped in. Aside from the specials in Ten's run, this is pretty new in NuWho; there's space for a few adventures here and there, but for the most part they're limited by the companions, who are there pretty continuously. There's gaps -- between The Doctor Dances and Boomtown, for example -- but they can't be long gaps, because no one's aged significantly. But for Eleven, Moff's left space wide open; after The God Complex, the Doctor starts leaving Amy and Rory for years in their time, and when he comes back decades or centuries have passed for him, and that dynamic is present from the very beginning with Clara. She goes and lives her life and goes adventuring with the Doctor when it's convenient for her, and when it's not he goes and has his own adventures and there's no telling how much time or how many adventures have passed for him, because there's no companion there to mark the time.
And then you get this episode, where centuries pass again, and again, and again.
Moffat really likes playing with time travel, that's no secret, but he doesn't always use it just to be clever with plotting; he also uses it to leave space for others to play in. (Imagine what Big Finish could do with those gaps in the timeline once they get license to use the Eleventh Doctor. IMAGINE IT.)
Staying on the topic of Moffat, I've been convinced since series five that he's been working at resetting the Who universe to his tastes and also trying to make his mark as permanently as possible. You will not convince me that that isn't the reason he introduced Hurt!Doctor. (Okay, you could convince me if you had any viable proof that he wanted to do the same story with Nine, but Eccleston couldn't make it.) BUT. By introducing Hurt!Doctor he gets to hit two birds with one stones: he gets to reintroduce Gallifrey and the Time Lords back to the universe, and he gets to play with the Doctor's regeneration limit. By counting Ten's clone/regeneration/plot device to give Rose an awkward "happy ending"/thingy as a full regeneration, he gets to tackle the 13 incarnations limit NOW instead of leaving it for another writer to play with. And what does he do? He resets it. (Which, let's be honest, any Who writer tackling the twelfth regeneration would do. Nobody's willing to permanently kill Doctor Who. That's why we get fifteen-year hiatuses instead.) He gets to be the writer who solved the problem of the regeneration limit, and all the writers who come after him get to play with a little more breathing room.
AND NOW I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT TWELVE.
I'm delighted by the way the actual regeneration was handled. No long, drawn-out glow-y transition. I mean I love those, don't get me wrong, but the "Matt starts glowing" "the audience blinks" "HELLO HERE IS PETER CAPALDI COMPLAINING ABOUT HIS NEW KIDNEYS" thing was excellent. Just a blink-and-you'll-miss-it transition.
I don't know what kind of Doctor Twelve is going to be. I know what I secretly and not-so-secretly hope for (and I know that I'm hoping now that he's regenerated onscreen we'll get a pic of him in costume as Twelve), but Moffat seems pretty good at giving me a mix of what I wanted and what I didn't know I wanted and what I didn't actually want but can learn to live with, so it's not like I'm an accurate predictor of characterization. And I know that Moffat has said in an interview that we won't get an accurate idea of Twelve right away, because he's going to be channeling Eleven for a bit longer.Which means not only waiting until August for new canon but waiting even longer to find out his real characterization, dammit. I don't know how he's going to be remembered years from now when the general populace's memories have blurred him into a caricature.
But I know I'm a little in love with him already. The delighted look he gives Clara right before he asks if she knows how to fly the TARDIS! Fantastic.
And I know I'm excited to find out more.
Is it August yet?
Okay, first let me get the big question out of the way: Did they bring Karen Gillan back to shoot the regeneration scene or did they shoot that while she was still main cast? Moffat does like his long games (THAT FREAKING CRACK IN SPACETIME). Although that did not look like Caitlin Blackwood, tbh.
And now on to the rest.
I want to make this a post full of insightful thoughts and observations but honestly my brain is still churning, so instead have some random musings on the nature of regeneration, Eleven and Matt in general, Moff's run so far, Twelve, and other rambling topics.
The thing is all the Doctors get boiled down in popular memory. For example everyone remembers the First Doctor as the grumpy old one, even though this is not, strictly speaking, true -- see his cuddling with Susan and Vicki, or the genuinely affectionate friendship he strikes up with Barbara and Ian, or his paternal attitude toward Ben and Polly -- but that's how he's remembered. Six is remembered as the loud one in the awful coat. Eight is remembered as the one who only had a TV movie. Etc.
(That's speaking generally. Obviously individually people remember Doctors differently, and everyone will argue that their favorite Doctor isn't just X, as I just argued about One. But popular memory.)
It's hard with the New Series Doctors to judge how they'll be remembered in the long run, because we don't have enough distance yet. Well, Nine tends to get simplified as the broody one in the leather jacket. But decades from now, will people remember Ten as manic grins and snogging, or as crying in the TARDIS "I don't want to go"? Will Eleven be remembered as the children's Doctor, Amelia Pond's Raggedy Man, or as fish fingers and custard, or as the old man with the young man's face, or the one who got married? Who knows?
(On a tangent, as far as meta dialogue goes, I much prefer "You're the Doctor" "And I always will be" to "I don't want to go". Yes, Matt. You always will be the Doctor. ♥)
The appearance of Amy, both as little Amelia (whether that was Caitlin or not) and as grown Amy, was note-perfect, by the way. Both because Amy has been so vitally important to Eleven's character development and because it's a reminder: Amy was the first face Eleven saw, the one he imprinted on; for Twelve, that face is Clara's.
AND CLARA. Can I talk about Clara for a minute? Because she ought to go down in Who history as one of the companions with the greatest influence on the Doctor, alongside Barbara Wright, Sarah Jane Smith, and the Brigadier. She won't let go of him, even if means clinging to the outside of the TARDIS through the Time Vortex. (And it extended its force field to protect her. Take that, Jack Harkness.) (I still love you, Jack, sorry.) And "You've got it wrong. His name is the Doctor. Everything you need to know about him." She gets it: anyone asking "Doctor Who?" has missed the point. And she not only gets it, she forces others to get it, and by doing so she saves him.
(Another tangent: I am mildly disappointed that she didn't recognize what was happening to Tasha (sp?) and that she reacted to the regeneration with "please don't change". I mean, I get them both; Day Of The Doctor made it clear that she remembers only fragments of her journey through the Doctor's timeline, and even though she's okay with regeneration as a concept that doesn't mean she's ready to lose Eleven, who until now has been her Doctor. But I'm still mildly disappointed.)
Also, this makes Eleven only the second time the Doctor has died of old age, doesn't it? Unless that's what killed Hurt!Doctor, that's not very clear.
Which brings me to the next topic, which is the way Moffat has structured almost all of Eleven's run, with huge gaps and missing pieces where more adventures can be slipped in. Aside from the specials in Ten's run, this is pretty new in NuWho; there's space for a few adventures here and there, but for the most part they're limited by the companions, who are there pretty continuously. There's gaps -- between The Doctor Dances and Boomtown, for example -- but they can't be long gaps, because no one's aged significantly. But for Eleven, Moff's left space wide open; after The God Complex, the Doctor starts leaving Amy and Rory for years in their time, and when he comes back decades or centuries have passed for him, and that dynamic is present from the very beginning with Clara. She goes and lives her life and goes adventuring with the Doctor when it's convenient for her, and when it's not he goes and has his own adventures and there's no telling how much time or how many adventures have passed for him, because there's no companion there to mark the time.
And then you get this episode, where centuries pass again, and again, and again.
Moffat really likes playing with time travel, that's no secret, but he doesn't always use it just to be clever with plotting; he also uses it to leave space for others to play in. (Imagine what Big Finish could do with those gaps in the timeline once they get license to use the Eleventh Doctor. IMAGINE IT.)
Staying on the topic of Moffat, I've been convinced since series five that he's been working at resetting the Who universe to his tastes and also trying to make his mark as permanently as possible. You will not convince me that that isn't the reason he introduced Hurt!Doctor. (Okay, you could convince me if you had any viable proof that he wanted to do the same story with Nine, but Eccleston couldn't make it.) BUT. By introducing Hurt!Doctor he gets to hit two birds with one stones: he gets to reintroduce Gallifrey and the Time Lords back to the universe, and he gets to play with the Doctor's regeneration limit. By counting Ten's clone/regeneration/plot device to give Rose an awkward "happy ending"/thingy as a full regeneration, he gets to tackle the 13 incarnations limit NOW instead of leaving it for another writer to play with. And what does he do? He resets it. (Which, let's be honest, any Who writer tackling the twelfth regeneration would do. Nobody's willing to permanently kill Doctor Who. That's why we get fifteen-year hiatuses instead.) He gets to be the writer who solved the problem of the regeneration limit, and all the writers who come after him get to play with a little more breathing room.
AND NOW I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT TWELVE.
I'm delighted by the way the actual regeneration was handled. No long, drawn-out glow-y transition. I mean I love those, don't get me wrong, but the "Matt starts glowing" "the audience blinks" "HELLO HERE IS PETER CAPALDI COMPLAINING ABOUT HIS NEW KIDNEYS" thing was excellent. Just a blink-and-you'll-miss-it transition.
I don't know what kind of Doctor Twelve is going to be. I know what I secretly and not-so-secretly hope for (and I know that I'm hoping now that he's regenerated onscreen we'll get a pic of him in costume as Twelve), but Moffat seems pretty good at giving me a mix of what I wanted and what I didn't know I wanted and what I didn't actually want but can learn to live with, so it's not like I'm an accurate predictor of characterization. And I know that Moffat has said in an interview that we won't get an accurate idea of Twelve right away, because he's going to be channeling Eleven for a bit longer.
But I know I'm a little in love with him already. The delighted look he gives Clara right before he asks if she knows how to fly the TARDIS! Fantastic.
And I know I'm excited to find out more.
Is it August yet?
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I already knew Capaldi would be there.no subject
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Because this debate could go on forever, aka "Did DT actually play two incarnations of the Doctor because of the "Mostly regenerated" moment or was it just 10 and 10.5?"
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But I'm still just going to call him 12 for simplicity's sake. Or we'll all end up identifying all the Doctors by actor. Capaldi!Doc!
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100% agreed.
And I'm looking forward to all the fic, books, and (eventually) audio dramas that should spring up to fill in the gaps!
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And then we find out 11 is actually "the last" and if anything, it made him more willing to die if it meant saving the universe (TWoRS).
Doctor <3