FINALLY I can come into this thread...

I just watched the last episode on the telly.


I must say this has been a roller coaster for me this season. 11 was 'My doctor' and I actually took it pretty hard when he left last year... So I had been extremely nervous about the new doctor, and if I could 'forgive' him for not being the Doctor I knew an loved... 

I found it hard at first, and I suppose the writers played on that too... I just couldn't get into it I felt... but eventually I really got back to my love for the show!

Despite my humany woomany emotions this was a fine series, the effects were awesome, the pictures beautiful and the stories were awesome! 

Part one of the end I actually got on my feet and pointed at the telly and screamed "OMG!!" at a point... I guess that is when you know it's been a good one.

I can't wait for the Christmas special! Unless they are cheating me again I might not have to wait ages this time. It's on the programme for Friday! 

In the UK I think it's on the 25th? But I'm not sure...

It's programmed for the 27th here in Denmark... but the channel has cheated me before 

Thanks. 

Oh. my. word what in the heck was that insane twisty christmas magic heart-stabby mind-explodey Alien Inception doozy of a special?              

It was a really good Christmas special, but I felt mildly disappointed - I think just because I'd been so looking forward to it and the rest of the series has been so good!  

And I actually really, really liked the ending with old Clara, so it felt as if the endings should have been changed around - young Clara first (the Doctor thinks he has a chance to put things right), then old Clara.   But of course, Clara is still in it so that wouldn't work - and I do feel a little bit manipulated over all the lead up to her leaving!   I never feel films/TV about dreams actually get dreaming right - and that includes Inception, even though I loved the film.   Actually I think this episode did dreaming better than Inception!  Loved the Alien references.  And I was kind of touched by the very sweet, cuddly version of Danny that Clara's dream created.   I thought Shona was great - I thought from what she was saying that she was going to go back to some awful reality, and I really wanted to know what happened to her. 

But I kept thinking things like "why didn't they just keep going until they didn't have the icecream pain?" and "shouldn't Clara know that she's young Clara and not old Clara, if she's really awake?" and also "why didn't she just look at her hands to guess her age?"  But I suppose that's the influence of having a cynical teenager watching it with me!

I get lost with all the twists and turns of the story, but doesn't Clara still have to have Danny's descendants (Orson Pink from Listen)?  So she must be pregnant now with Danny's child?    If she'd left at the end of the series, I thought we were just meant to assume that, but now are we going to have another pregnant companion and a baby to deal with?  Or have I just got lost with the plot?

Last edited by Liberty (December 27, 2014 9:02 am)

Titania wrote:

I loved the special....it gave me a good "christmas feeling"

:D

Just wanted to say a belated Joyeux Noel
 

I LOVED the Christmas special, twists at every turn. For me a good episode is when I have said "OMG, wait what??" a few times...

The firecracker scene put a tear in my eye...
 

I've been avoiding this thead like the plague because I recorded the special. Now I finally got to watch it. Wow. Just loved it. (Apparently you can't use quotes within a spoiler tag. Sorry person I was quoting.)

Really loved this one, it was better than I expected. It reminded me of Listen, my favorite episode of this series. It had the same playing with realities (only now it was dreamy weamy instead of timey wimey), strong sense of theme, proper chills and lots of fun. (It's bigger on the inside, I bet that line had been laying around for a while. I could totally see Doctor loving parents use that line to their kids.)

To be fair, I did work out almost immediately that they would be in a dream when they described the monster but it seemed that the writer knews this and used it for suspense. The story still works whether you work it out or not.

I too loved the Alien reference (my fav. horror movie) and the fact that it's on Shona's to do list. No wonder she's got a dream about facehuggers and Santa. The grabbing through the television screen I thought was a reference to Stephen King's 'It', (my other fav. horror movie) or it could just be a coincidence. I loved the dream within dream structure even though there's a certain predictability about it (let me guess, we're still in a dream?). And of course the time travel, of course the Doctor would time travel in his dreams. The Christmas cracker scene was beautiful. 

Then the theme OMG, it made me cry. 'Every Christmas could be last Christmas'. BTW, the scene with the Clara and the Christmas light and the words around her 'you're dying, you're dying...' also seemed to illustrate that. Is that what it's like growing older? Every year you're reminded that you're closer to death than last year. 

Basically, I got my favorite monster and my favorite type of storytelling for Christmas. Thank you Santa.

Russel said: "Moffat said in a chat that "Everything except the very last scene is a dream.” Moffat added: “The [last shot of the] tangerine represents the fact that Santa Claus obviously stage-managed the whole thing to get the Doctor and Clara back together"."
Someone has been playing Santa. Honestly, when I finished I just thought of Moffat and thought 'This is his JOB. Life isn't fair. ' It's actually almost the same ending as Inception with the spinning toll (also a twist you could see from a mile away). It's as if that kind of end twist is almost obligatory for this type of story. I blame 'The Twilight Zone' a horror series that was quite popular in the sixties or something. They all had twists like that and it seems that modern horror writers are influenced by it.

Wondered about the 'how' with the Orson Pink descendant too. Erf… is she pregnant, then? Or.. dun dun.. does she have nothing to do with that line of relatives?

She could be pregnant, or they'll find a way to bring Danny back to life, or it was an alternative timeline that died with Danny, or it's a descendent of a cousin of Danny's, or the Vulcano scene was where the dream started and the whole cyberman invasion was a dream, or they never woke up. And if all else fails: a Silence made sure that Clara forgot that she had a child. The Doctor Who universe has an uncanny ability to get writers out of script problems.
"]What happened to the remaining dream crab, that was on the guy who died? Were there any other dream crabs? How did that all get started in the first place, if so random?"
They're still around. That means that we could all be dreaming whilst being eaten by alien monsters. Next time you see Santa think about that. Maybe he's trying to tell you something.

Last edited by silverblaze (December 31, 2014 11:35 am)

Yes, well the tangerine and the volcano together seem to give the message that it's still a dream - a bit of a wish-fulfillment one.   I wonder if that will be dealt with in the next episode, or if they're just going to leave it to us to wonder?  I suppose that if they've resolved everything and got back together in a joint dream, there's no need to have to do it again in real life - they both know they're together again?  But they'd need to show them finally getting rid of the mind crabs eventually in the next series.

I had a terrible thought - wouldn't it be absolutely awful if they made out it was ALL a dream?  I mean, all of Doctor Who, since the 60s?   They could do that, couldn't they?  I don't think they would - but they might hint at it.  I hope not! 

And another thing I was thinking - I didn't used to give my son a sugar mouse or a tangerine at Christmas, and I was asking him about it - it really doesn't seem to be a "thing" any more amongst young people.   Steven's writing about "our" generation (the ones who grew up with Jon Pertwee, etc.).  I liked tangerines! 

Last edited by Liberty (January 1, 2015 9:43 am)

I think the ending with the tangerine was just a little tease. Almost all stories that play with reality like that tend to end on such a thingy.