Further Doctor Who/"End of Time" discussion, now with added Medievalist geekery.

[dameruth]

A lot of people have been speculating about the identity of a certain piece of armor to be seen in both segments of "End of Time." Naturally, since I play with the stuff on a regular basis, I was looking pretty carefully at both items ("oooh, shiny!"), and have organized a small compare'n'contrast picspam under the cut.

Comments

[phantomcranefly]

Seconding the love for "Fit of Pique of Rassilon".

One thing I only noticed afterward is that he's wearing what looks like some sort of fatigues and combat boots under the fancy robe. I'm not sure whether I prefer the interpretation of "he's just been on the front and didn't have time to change" or "he's choosing his fashion statements as a morale/PR thing to identify with the army" (like the Barrayaran Emperor using a camp stool?) but either way it's fascinating. (Also, I've decided my personal workaround for The Hair Thing is that serving soldiers had to cut their hair short to keep people from grabbing it/getting it caught in machinery, and it caught on as a fashion statement. :) )

I wasn't fond of the Visionary in the first episode, because my impression of the Time Lords was that they were way too attached to dignity to a) let themselves go that visibly crazy in the first place or b) let someone else who was already crazy show up in public, let alone on the Council, babbling and with their hair in disarray. Then when we saw how far they'd gone in the second half, I thought, "oh, okay, that makes more sense now." I'm harboring a crack theory that they purposely enhanced her ability to sense timelines at the expense of her sanity, maybe during her initiation (although I'm not sure whether that would count as "inspired" or "mad") and probably without her knowledge. Also, we have a sort of explanation for why Ainley!, Delgado!, etc Master never mentioned the drums: the signal was sent back in time, so there is/was a timeline where he wasn't hearing them, and the drumbeat just sort of got overlaid on that. (Gah, timey-wimeyness. And here I was hoping we'd get some sense out of the Time War actually being dealt with in canon.)

[dameruth]

I figure Rassilon's choice of clothing was at least somewhat along the lines of: "Lookit me, I R badass Tiem Lord!"

RE: the Hair Thing, if you're referring to Bliss, hell, I rationalize it away with an, "It's my AU, neener, neener; la, la, I can't hear you!" But your idea works, too. XD (I originally thought of the Bliss Knot as a way for hair to be tucked up under a ceremonial skullcap, FWIW, wihtout really paying attention to matching the rest of canon). :)

Yeah, I figure the Visionary might very well be another product of TL tinkering to try and get whatever advantages they could in the War. I *like* your explanation of why previous Masters never seemed to have the drums-thing going on; after all, Time is mutable in this universe.

I kinda like the War not really being dealt with here. It means one can have fun freely imagining/writing fic/theorizing/etc. But I'm like that. ;)

[phantomcranefly]

Yup, referring to Bliss. The Hair Thing has invaded my mental canon, along with split tones. :) (Also, the woman on Rassilon's left has her hair done up really fancy, so that's a piece of evidence in favor.)

That is a good point, that it's better for the sake of the fandom to leave it vague than to have one explanation that josses everyone else's, especially if the canon explanation turns out to have plotholes.