DW 9.05. The Girl Who Died
Sorry this is so late, and scattered/basic. But it’s been a busy week... Mostly I'm just skimming the surface, picking out the main things I can see, without delving below in any kind of detail.
OTOH then Vikings/Norse mythology is stuff I am good with. (Nordic girl here.)
The Girl Who Died
The first thing to note is that we are in a world where stories and dreams have power:
ASHILDR: You're back! All of you! Are all of you back?
NOLLARR: I suppose so, I haven't counted.
HASTEN: I'm back!
(Another, younger Viking hugs the girl.)
ASHILDR: I had a dream you'd all died. It was so real, I thought I'd made it happen.
NOLLARR: Well, if it ever does, I'm sure you'll a find some way to blame yourself.
I'm honestly not sure how to structure this. I want to do subheadings, but everything is connected... If I could contruct my posts in 3D, so I could show you how the connections look in my head, I would.
Ashildr
Her name means ‘Odin’s Valkyrie’ - or, to pick that apart a bit more:
Ashildr combines ‘As’ (god) and ‘Hildr’ (now ‘Hildur’ - it’s a common name in the Faroes), meaning ‘battle’. Hild, a Nordic-German Bellona, was a Valkyrie who conveyed fallen warriors to Valhalla. Warfare was often called Hild's Game.
The Norse gods were known as ‘Asar’ - that's where the 'As' comes from, and it’s the word that’ll mutate to ‘Os’, thus tying Ashildr in with Oswin (= god’s friend), Oswald (= god’s power) and Osgood:
Osgood comes from ‘Asgautr’ - composed of the elements ás ‘god’ + the tribal name Gaut (or Goth). (Gautr can also mean ‘creator’. Which would men that Osgood’s name would be ‘divine creator’. No wonder she doesn’t need a first name!)
So we have these three women, all tied together - and tied to the Doctor - by a shared name. And all of them hybrids in some way... Osgood of course has/had a Zygon double, Ashildr is now part-Mire and Clara... Well, she's probably Dalek-y and also somewhat Time Lord-y (nanobots in the Dalek; jumping into the Doctor's time stream probably left a mark somewhere etc.). We had the image of Ashildr with the Mire head seeing through their eyes, changing what they saw - definitely echoes of Clara inside the Dalek, although much more powerful parallels when we go back to Oswin.
Also, talking about hybrids, then Ashildr was one already:
ASHILDR: 'I've always been different. All my life I've known that. The girls all thought I was a boy. The boys all said I was just a girl. My head is always full of stories. I know I'm strange. Everyone knows I'm strange.'
But the most important part of that speech might be these words:
'But here I'm loved.'
She is strange, and odd - but accepted. Loved. And that is vital, and a lesson more people need to learn.
Tell a different story that's how you win.
('“As above, so below,” the injunction goes - a declaration that manipulating symbols and manipulating objects is, in some sense, the same thing. That a symbol and a thing are in some sense interchangeable.' Phil Sandifer)
Part of me wants to write a ton about Ashildr. The other parts of me are conscious of the fact that a) we only know half her story so far and b) there are only 4 hours until the next episode... So I'll leave it here.
Mind you, the very title 'The Girl Who Died' is all-over Clara.
Clara
First of all, Clara as Hanged Man (for the second time - she's up-side down in the opening shot), once more marking her as someone thinking through life, working out where they're at. ('This is the archetype to meditate on to help break old patterns of behaviour and bad habits that restrict you. The Hanged Man reflects a need to suspend action, and as a result, a period of indecision may be indicated. Decisions or actions that need to be implemented will be postponed, even if, at the time, there is a sense of urgency to act.') Her deep intent on travelling should maybe be seen in the light of this? An overt focus on her 'hobby' as she figures out what she actually wants.
Second, her mirroring. We can see the move from Magician's Apprentice to Witch's Familiar. Missy nearly gets her killed through ruthlessness/insanity, but Clara is a good pupil. We can see how she's absorbed the lessons in her little 'Work out how you're going to win' speech.
She is beginning to work very much like River - trusting him completely to find a way out. Clara's Missy-prompted: 'Because he always assumes he's going to win. He always knows there's a way to survive. He just has to go and find it.' is just another way of stating River's perfectly assured 'There's always a way out'.
(Also see my 'Missy & River are her Evil Stepmother/Fairy Godmother' thoughts in my previous meta.)
Third - spacesuit. It's the 'Waters of Mars' spacesuit again. (I'll get back to this in my Doctor section.) Last it appeared was 'Hide', which had all the mirrors ever. There, Eleven was showing it off, and Clara said it made her eyes hurt. (This time she shows it off herself.) Then, she grasped something fundamental about the Doctor as he stepped through human history ('We're all ghosts to you'), but now she has - a) scattered herself over his time line, and b) in many ways learned to see the world through his eyes. ('Oh, Clara Oswald what have I made of you?' the Doctor asks.) There's a fascinating short post here, looking at how the Doctor and Clara have almost swapped places here, when it comes to the Dr/companion dynamic.
I think abossycontrolfreak is onto something with her idea that Clara is going to become some kind of mythical figure. She is still human, yes, but there is all this talk of hybrids, and her mirrors are (have always been) the Doctor, Missy, River. She is a quantum creature, a hybrid [symbolically] from the start, a Companion apart.
Also, speaking of the spacesuit, her whole speak & spiel was pure Doctor, talking her way out of the situation. She claimed to *be* him in Death in Heaven, and she does a pretty good job...
The Doctor
So, Odin. First of all, this, because I realised that maybe not everyone has seen 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and thus would not get the reference...
Also, I want to just briefly acknowledge the pure and utter craziness of the plot, and its resolution. <3 <3 <3 Darcy was spluttering going 'Electric eels don't do that!' and I was laughing, saying how this is the show that reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, AND THEN THE DOCTOR SAID THAT EXACTLY AND I NEARLY DIED.
Please take as a given that I loved all the silliness, the daftness, all the little touches. Instead of flailing I shall focus on mythology and mirrors.
Because oh, Odin... The two fake Odins. Except one wasn't a fake - or rather, his lie had layers. They both pretended to be a Norse god, but in reality the Mire leader was merely a warrior, whereas the Doctor can - in many ways - lay claim to god-hood of his own...
I like this website's summary of Odin:
Odin is one of the most complex and enigmatic characters in Norse mythology, and perhaps in all of world literature. He’s the chief of the Aesir tribe of deities, yet he often ventures far from their kingdom, Asgard, on long, solitary wanderings throughout the cosmos on purely self-interested quests. He’s a relentless seeker after and giver of wisdom, but he has little regard for communal values such as justice, fairness, or respect for law and convention. He’s the divine patron of rulers, and also of outcasts. He’s a war-god, but also a poetry-god, and he has prominent transgender qualities that would bring unspeakable shame to any traditional Norse/Germanic warrior. He’s worshiped by those in search of prestige, honor, and nobility, yet he’s often cursed for being a fickle trickster.
[...]
Whatever their social stature, the men and women favored by Odin are distinguished by their intelligence, creativity, and competence in the proverbial “war of all against all.” Whether such people become kings or criminals is mostly a matter of luck.
I'm sure the Doctor-y parallels are pretty obvious. ;) Also his wife, Frigg, is described as a goddess associated with foreknowledge and wisdom - which is so delightfully River-y that I'll just leave it here. :)
There is the one-eyed thing (I finally love the sunglasses!) - the 'real' Odin gave up an eye in exchange for wisdom. (Whole story here. We can also see this as another parallel to Davros, with his Third eye, giving up conventional sight. Plus, Dorium Moldovar as Mimir is amusing me now.)
Over 170 names are recorded for Odin. These names are variously descriptive of attributes of the god, refer to myths involving him, or refer to religious practices associated with the god. This multitude of names makes Odin the god with the most names known among the Germanic peoples. Here are a few that I picked out as particularly fitting with the Doctor:
- 'Father of men' (or of the age/world)//'Allfather'. Again, we see him as a father figure, this ties in with how he steals Davros’ seat in the opener, where of course Davros is ‘the father of all Daleks’.
- 'Delight of Frigg'/'Dweller in Frigg's Embrace' (just ‘cause I like it. River. <3)
- 'Father of Magical Songs'
- 'Wise One', concealer
- Wanderer or Wayweary
- Deceiver/Riddler
- Swift in Deceit, Swift Tricker, Maddener, Wise in magical spells
- God Protector
- Hooded, Masked One
There are so many! Also lots about war. But the name thing is important. (See A Good Man Goes to War and every instance of 'Doctor Who?')
However, as people know, he's also the god of the dead, his Valkyries collecting the [most worthy] warriors fallen in battle, bringing them to Valhalla. Also:
His mastery of necromancy, the magical art of communicating with and raising the dead, is frequently noted.
(This makes Under the Lake/Before the Flood relevant! Dead/resurrected people are a theme. Hurrah. It also ties in with Missy's storyline & the Nethersphere, and Danny. Bringing people back is not a good thing.)
Here, however, he literally becomes Odin; a god, raising the dead...
And of all the things I was expecting this season, this wasn't it:
You can see the Pompeii episode as foreshadowing for Water of Mars, if you like (the Doctor and Donna end up as literal 'household gods' to the Roman family they save), but to revisit the Doctor's Victoriousness now? Oh, I'm THRILLED. (RTD themes revisited by Moffat are like my favourite thing in the world.)
Because although people grow and learn, their flaws do not change. And oh, these two scenes echo each other beautifully:
CLARA: You did your best. She died. There's nothing you can do.
DOCTOR: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. But I'm not supposed to. Ripples, tidal waves, rules. I'm not supposed to. Oh. Oh!
[...]
DOCTOR: To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people.
(He shouts at the sky - at the Time Lords?)
DOCTOR: And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you!
~
ADELAIDE: But you said we die. For the future, for the human race.
DOCTOR: Yes, because there are laws. There are Laws of Time. Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realise the Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!
[...]
ADELAIDE: Is there nothing you can't do?
DOCTOR: Not any more.
But the difference is that this time the Doctor knows enough, has come far enough to see himself clearly.
(x)
He's not going to go off like Ten did... But he still made the same kind of mistake.
Going back to the idea of hubris as one of the key-words for this season, and Clara & Twelve as Ten and Rose, we can see Twelve 'saving' Ashildr very much in the light of Rose saving Jack. Done out of the best of motives, but using power not quite within their control... And it looks like Ashildr will not be as forgiving as the good Captain. (I've tried to stay away from spoilers, so please don't tell me everything that'll happen tonight!)
OTOH then Vikings/Norse mythology is stuff I am good with. (Nordic girl here.)
The Girl Who Died
The first thing to note is that we are in a world where stories and dreams have power:
ASHILDR: You're back! All of you! Are all of you back?
NOLLARR: I suppose so, I haven't counted.
HASTEN: I'm back!
(Another, younger Viking hugs the girl.)
ASHILDR: I had a dream you'd all died. It was so real, I thought I'd made it happen.
NOLLARR: Well, if it ever does, I'm sure you'll a find some way to blame yourself.
I'm honestly not sure how to structure this. I want to do subheadings, but everything is connected... If I could contruct my posts in 3D, so I could show you how the connections look in my head, I would.
Ashildr
Her name means ‘Odin’s Valkyrie’ - or, to pick that apart a bit more:
Ashildr combines ‘As’ (god) and ‘Hildr’ (now ‘Hildur’ - it’s a common name in the Faroes), meaning ‘battle’. Hild, a Nordic-German Bellona, was a Valkyrie who conveyed fallen warriors to Valhalla. Warfare was often called Hild's Game.
The Norse gods were known as ‘Asar’ - that's where the 'As' comes from, and it’s the word that’ll mutate to ‘Os’, thus tying Ashildr in with Oswin (= god’s friend), Oswald (= god’s power) and Osgood:
Osgood comes from ‘Asgautr’ - composed of the elements ás ‘god’ + the tribal name Gaut (or Goth). (Gautr can also mean ‘creator’. Which would men that Osgood’s name would be ‘divine creator’. No wonder she doesn’t need a first name!)
So we have these three women, all tied together - and tied to the Doctor - by a shared name. And all of them hybrids in some way... Osgood of course has/had a Zygon double, Ashildr is now part-Mire and Clara... Well, she's probably Dalek-y and also somewhat Time Lord-y (nanobots in the Dalek; jumping into the Doctor's time stream probably left a mark somewhere etc.). We had the image of Ashildr with the Mire head seeing through their eyes, changing what they saw - definitely echoes of Clara inside the Dalek, although much more powerful parallels when we go back to Oswin.
Also, talking about hybrids, then Ashildr was one already:
ASHILDR: 'I've always been different. All my life I've known that. The girls all thought I was a boy. The boys all said I was just a girl. My head is always full of stories. I know I'm strange. Everyone knows I'm strange.'
But the most important part of that speech might be these words:
'But here I'm loved.'
She is strange, and odd - but accepted. Loved. And that is vital, and a lesson more people need to learn.
Tell a different story that's how you win.
('“As above, so below,” the injunction goes - a declaration that manipulating symbols and manipulating objects is, in some sense, the same thing. That a symbol and a thing are in some sense interchangeable.' Phil Sandifer)
Part of me wants to write a ton about Ashildr. The other parts of me are conscious of the fact that a) we only know half her story so far and b) there are only 4 hours until the next episode... So I'll leave it here.
Mind you, the very title 'The Girl Who Died' is all-over Clara.
Clara
First of all, Clara as Hanged Man (for the second time - she's up-side down in the opening shot), once more marking her as someone thinking through life, working out where they're at. ('This is the archetype to meditate on to help break old patterns of behaviour and bad habits that restrict you. The Hanged Man reflects a need to suspend action, and as a result, a period of indecision may be indicated. Decisions or actions that need to be implemented will be postponed, even if, at the time, there is a sense of urgency to act.') Her deep intent on travelling should maybe be seen in the light of this? An overt focus on her 'hobby' as she figures out what she actually wants.
Second, her mirroring. We can see the move from Magician's Apprentice to Witch's Familiar. Missy nearly gets her killed through ruthlessness/insanity, but Clara is a good pupil. We can see how she's absorbed the lessons in her little 'Work out how you're going to win' speech.
She is beginning to work very much like River - trusting him completely to find a way out. Clara's Missy-prompted: 'Because he always assumes he's going to win. He always knows there's a way to survive. He just has to go and find it.' is just another way of stating River's perfectly assured 'There's always a way out'.
(Also see my 'Missy & River are her Evil Stepmother/Fairy Godmother' thoughts in my previous meta.)
Third - spacesuit. It's the 'Waters of Mars' spacesuit again. (I'll get back to this in my Doctor section.) Last it appeared was 'Hide', which had all the mirrors ever. There, Eleven was showing it off, and Clara said it made her eyes hurt. (This time she shows it off herself.) Then, she grasped something fundamental about the Doctor as he stepped through human history ('We're all ghosts to you'), but now she has - a) scattered herself over his time line, and b) in many ways learned to see the world through his eyes. ('Oh, Clara Oswald what have I made of you?' the Doctor asks.) There's a fascinating short post here, looking at how the Doctor and Clara have almost swapped places here, when it comes to the Dr/companion dynamic.
I think abossycontrolfreak is onto something with her idea that Clara is going to become some kind of mythical figure. She is still human, yes, but there is all this talk of hybrids, and her mirrors are (have always been) the Doctor, Missy, River. She is a quantum creature, a hybrid [symbolically] from the start, a Companion apart.
Also, speaking of the spacesuit, her whole speak & spiel was pure Doctor, talking her way out of the situation. She claimed to *be* him in Death in Heaven, and she does a pretty good job...
The Doctor
So, Odin. First of all, this, because I realised that maybe not everyone has seen 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' and thus would not get the reference...
Click to viewAlso, I want to just briefly acknowledge the pure and utter craziness of the plot, and its resolution. <3 <3 <3 Darcy was spluttering going 'Electric eels don't do that!' and I was laughing, saying how this is the show that reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, AND THEN THE DOCTOR SAID THAT EXACTLY AND I NEARLY DIED.
Please take as a given that I loved all the silliness, the daftness, all the little touches. Instead of flailing I shall focus on mythology and mirrors.
Because oh, Odin... The two fake Odins. Except one wasn't a fake - or rather, his lie had layers. They both pretended to be a Norse god, but in reality the Mire leader was merely a warrior, whereas the Doctor can - in many ways - lay claim to god-hood of his own...
I like this website's summary of Odin:
Odin is one of the most complex and enigmatic characters in Norse mythology, and perhaps in all of world literature. He’s the chief of the Aesir tribe of deities, yet he often ventures far from their kingdom, Asgard, on long, solitary wanderings throughout the cosmos on purely self-interested quests. He’s a relentless seeker after and giver of wisdom, but he has little regard for communal values such as justice, fairness, or respect for law and convention. He’s the divine patron of rulers, and also of outcasts. He’s a war-god, but also a poetry-god, and he has prominent transgender qualities that would bring unspeakable shame to any traditional Norse/Germanic warrior. He’s worshiped by those in search of prestige, honor, and nobility, yet he’s often cursed for being a fickle trickster.
[...]
Whatever their social stature, the men and women favored by Odin are distinguished by their intelligence, creativity, and competence in the proverbial “war of all against all.” Whether such people become kings or criminals is mostly a matter of luck.
I'm sure the Doctor-y parallels are pretty obvious. ;) Also his wife, Frigg, is described as a goddess associated with foreknowledge and wisdom - which is so delightfully River-y that I'll just leave it here. :)
There is the one-eyed thing (I finally love the sunglasses!) - the 'real' Odin gave up an eye in exchange for wisdom. (Whole story here. We can also see this as another parallel to Davros, with his Third eye, giving up conventional sight. Plus, Dorium Moldovar as Mimir is amusing me now.)
Over 170 names are recorded for Odin. These names are variously descriptive of attributes of the god, refer to myths involving him, or refer to religious practices associated with the god. This multitude of names makes Odin the god with the most names known among the Germanic peoples. Here are a few that I picked out as particularly fitting with the Doctor:
- 'Father of men' (or of the age/world)//'Allfather'. Again, we see him as a father figure, this ties in with how he steals Davros’ seat in the opener, where of course Davros is ‘the father of all Daleks’.
- 'Delight of Frigg'/'Dweller in Frigg's Embrace' (just ‘cause I like it. River. <3)
- 'Father of Magical Songs'
- 'Wise One', concealer
- Wanderer or Wayweary
- Deceiver/Riddler
- Swift in Deceit, Swift Tricker, Maddener, Wise in magical spells
- God Protector
- Hooded, Masked One
There are so many! Also lots about war. But the name thing is important. (See A Good Man Goes to War and every instance of 'Doctor Who?')
However, as people know, he's also the god of the dead, his Valkyries collecting the [most worthy] warriors fallen in battle, bringing them to Valhalla. Also:
His mastery of necromancy, the magical art of communicating with and raising the dead, is frequently noted.
(This makes Under the Lake/Before the Flood relevant! Dead/resurrected people are a theme. Hurrah. It also ties in with Missy's storyline & the Nethersphere, and Danny. Bringing people back is not a good thing.)
Here, however, he literally becomes Odin; a god, raising the dead...
And of all the things I was expecting this season, this wasn't it:
You can see the Pompeii episode as foreshadowing for Water of Mars, if you like (the Doctor and Donna end up as literal 'household gods' to the Roman family they save), but to revisit the Doctor's Victoriousness now? Oh, I'm THRILLED. (RTD themes revisited by Moffat are like my favourite thing in the world.)
Because although people grow and learn, their flaws do not change. And oh, these two scenes echo each other beautifully:
CLARA: You did your best. She died. There's nothing you can do.
DOCTOR: I can do anything. There's nothing I can't do. Nothing. But I'm not supposed to. Ripples, tidal waves, rules. I'm not supposed to. Oh. Oh!
[...]
DOCTOR: To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor, and I save people.
(He shouts at the sky - at the Time Lords?)
DOCTOR: And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of a problem with that, to hell with you!
~
ADELAIDE: But you said we die. For the future, for the human race.
DOCTOR: Yes, because there are laws. There are Laws of Time. Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realise the Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!
[...]
ADELAIDE: Is there nothing you can't do?
DOCTOR: Not any more.
But the difference is that this time the Doctor knows enough, has come far enough to see himself clearly.
(x)
He's not going to go off like Ten did... But he still made the same kind of mistake.
Going back to the idea of hubris as one of the key-words for this season, and Clara & Twelve as Ten and Rose, we can see Twelve 'saving' Ashildr very much in the light of Rose saving Jack. Done out of the best of motives, but using power not quite within their control... And it looks like Ashildr will not be as forgiving as the good Captain. (I've tried to stay away from spoilers, so please don't tell me everything that'll happen tonight!)