She Said, He Said: Prequel Meta
Doctor Who Meta
She Said, He Said: Name of the Doctor Prequel
Spoilers *only* *for* *the* *prequel*
No other spoilers! Promise! Not even the trailers.
Wherein Janie makes wild speculation on the upcoming episode based on the structural mirroring of the prequel... and importantly, where that mirroring breaks down...
Who are you?
Is everybody seated? Good. Then we can begin.
Now, for anyone who's seen the prequel, it should be obvious that the Doctor and Clara are mirroring each other. They share much of the same dialogue, and the direction of their scenes is almost spot on, shot for shot.
Almost.
The thing is, the synchronicity of the scenes is so stellar, the dissimilarities stick out like a missing toe. It would have been easy -- well, maybe not easy, but entirely possible -- for the mirroring to be flawless. And it's not.
So, this is what I've discovered, why it terrifies me, and why this Doctor is The Doctor Who Waited.
CLARA: (VO) One day, you meet the Doctor.
DOCTOR: (VO) From the beginning, she was impossible.
We begin with their names. Clara, and The Doctor. But already there's something different here. Clara's name blurs into focus, and back out again -- kind of like the opening titles to LOST. The Doctor's name fades in, and then fades out, but it's always clear. Clara's name means "clear" but it's reflected in The Doctor.
Cut to black, and the opening dialogue begins as voice-over. The dialogue is a mirror, of course, of their beginnings with each other. Of when they first met. Notice the word the Doctor uses: Impossible. That's the same word used for the Astronaut -- for Melody, before she was River -- as part of a plot to keep the Doctor from ever reaching Trenzalore.
CLARA: And of course, it's the best day ever.
DOCTOR: The Impossible Girl.
The synchronization here is flawless. Run the two scenes side-by-side, and the camera movements are exquisitely matched. So let's consider that the dialogue is similarly matched. The "best day ever" for the Doctor, in this case, is meeting an Impossible Girl.
CLARA: It's just the best day of your life.
DOCTOR: I met her in the Dalek Asylum.
The first real difference begins to emerge -- in the Doctor's scene the cut to him walking across the room happens before the cut in Clara's scene, but by the time they pass the diagonal thingy they are perfectly synchronized again. There other thing that stands out is that the arrangement of the props isn't quite the same. There's a Box stage right to Clara, and a round Hatch for the Doctor.
This is also where the first irony comes to light. The best day of your life is in the Dalek Asylum?
CLARA:
DOCTOR: I never saw her face, and she died.
This is interesting. The props stage right are the same props, but they've been reversed; obviously, they've taken *care* to arrange the props. Clara's got a Square before a Circle, while the Doctor's got a Circle before the Square. If these scenes were superimposed, we'd have the Circles and Squares aligned.
In the field of mathematics and geometry, there was a problem called Circling the Square, or Squaring the Circle. The idea was to construct a square and a circle with the exact same area, using a finite number of steps with only a compass and straightedge. It was later proved that this was impossible.
"Squaring the Circle" has an esoteric meaning of some interest. In The Meaning of Masonry, by W.L. Wilmshurst (1922), this expression refers to "Deity, symbolized by the all-containing circle, has attained form and manifestation in a 'square' or human soul. It expresses the mystery of the Incarnation, accomplished within the personal soul." Specifically, this phrase is likened to "regeneration" -- an "ascension into heaven" that accompanies the "necessity of self-dying-not, we repeat, the physical death of the body but a mystical death-in-life of everything except the body-is the first and fundamental fact to be grasped before one may hope to realize or even to understand the mystery of The Royal Arch Degree."
With that in mind, the accompanying dialogue of the scene is telling. The Doctor speaks of Clara's death. Clara says nothing.
CLARA: Because, because he's brilliant--
DOCTOR: I met her again in Victorian London and--
Here we get some weird juxtaposition. While Clara muses at the Rocket Console into which she threw a Chair back in the Victorian-era Crimson Horror, the Doctor approaches a mannequin bearing a Victorian dress.
The mannequin is Headless. Set somewhat behind it, there's a disembodied Head on a table -- from the Emperor's statue this latest Cyberman episode, I believe. Notice how the Doctor's head is cut off by the framing of the camera.
CLARA: --and he's funny and mad, and best of all--
DOCTOR: --she died!
The asynchrony continues. At this point we cut to a close up of the Doctor as he's saying Clara died again, a line that falls on "mad and best of all." So, dying is both mad, and somehow the "best."
It's a very strange juxtaposition.
CLARA: --he really needs you.
DOCTOR: Saved my life both times...
CLARA: The trick is--
This is the first point that terrifies me. Once again, the Doctor is addressing the headless mannequin. On the other side, Clara's flipping the switch on Castle Power -- and her head is cut out of the frame. Ouch!
According to the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, the castle is a place of inner refuge, protecting the privileged intercourse between the Soul and God. It is the home of the Spirit, the "natural self," a place of Oneness that not only defends from invasion, but prevents the premature escape of the "volatile stuff" that becomes the Golden Substance -- the Red Elixir of the alchemists, the Philosopher's Stone, the ticket to ride.
Clara turns the Castle Power off. Now, in Nightmare in Silver, they took a silver cord and dropped it into the moat, and turned the power on, creating an alchemical barrier, a mixture of electricity (fire) and water. So why is Clara turning the power off just as she "loses her head?"
CLARA: --don't fall in love. I do that trick a lot. Sometimes twice a day.
DOCTOR: ...by giving up her own. But now she's back, and we're running together,
The end of the asynchrony. Clara's saying the trick is not to fall in love -- something she does twice a day. Mind you, she's the Woman Who Died Twice, and her admonishment to not fall in love (to turn off the alchemical power) is juxtaposed with the Doctor's admiration of her self-sacrifice.
I'm always interested in the juxtaposition of Love and Death, but the Doctor and Clara are out of sync here -- the Doctor's still talking about Asylum/Victorian Clara, the girl who saved his life twice (he is ruminating on the past) while Clara's speaking from the present, her reserved self who can't let herself fall for this man.
The implication is still one of Love and Death, then, as indicated by River's Weddding, or Clara's mother's Leaf. The headlessness is important in this context, because it indicates a loss of Ego, and the self-sacrifice from which springs forth the revelations of divine love.
CLARA: Once you start running,
DOCTOR: and she's perfect, perfect in every way for me,
The Doctor's a bit ahead of Clara, he's already walked up to the camera and already said his "running" line... Clara's still lingering behind. At this point the dialogue starts to synchronize, as the Doctor waits for her to catch up.
Running is perfect, by the way.
CLARA: you start to forget,
DOCTOR: except she can't remember that we ever met.
Clara approaches the camera, and the dialogue starts to merge. Both now speak of memory, and forgetting, one of the long-running themes of the current era.
CLARA: slowly...
DOCTOR:
I love this bit. Clara's line of "slowly" in this context serves as a reminder to the Doctor to slow down a bit for the synchronization to complete. She has "breached" his scene, and he is The Doctor Who Waited.
CLARA: ...after a while...
DOCTOR: Clara. My Clara.
Their heads turn and they go stage right in perfect harmony...
CLARA: ...you just stop asking.
DOCTOR: Always brave. Always funny.
...passing a big round Hatch thingy again, not exactly in the same position, but synchronized...
CLARA: Who are you?
DOCTOR: Always exactly what I need.
Who is the Doctor? Exactly what Clara needs. And vice-versa. Interesting that these avatars are frozen in place. And I love the fact that Clara asks the real question, the question that's asked almost every episode: Who Are You?
But these shots line up only briefly. Over the next pair we'll linger:
CLARA: Where are you from?
DOCTOR: Perfect.
Side by side, it's clear that the Doctor is like a mirror, the space between a living Clara and a Doll-like Clara. The camera positions are reversed, both focused on Clara over the Doctor's shoulder, one pointing left and the other pointing right.
The focus of their dialogue has gone out of sync again. Clara wants to know who the Doctor is, but all she gets is a blank wall. The Doctor, on the other hand, isn't asking any questions, but recogning Perfection. And in that invocation of Perfection, I'm again reminded of Crimson Horror, and the attempt to find "perfect people" to put under a Bell Jar. From Clara's perspective, the Doctor's a stiff; from the Doctor's eye, Clara's a Doll.
CLARA: What set you on your way and where are you going?
DOCTOR: Too perfect.
This is chilling. Clara continues to keep theDoctor in her frame, but the Doctor's realization that Clara's too perfect entails removing her from the frame entirely. Clara has disappeared.
CLARA: Oh, and what is your name?
DOCTOR: You get used to not knowing.
These two shots are framed the same, but the synchronization is very brief. The effect is for the Doctor's line to serve as an answer to Clara's question, in front of that Royal Arch.
CLARA: (waits, gets no answer)
This cut, to Clara looking up at a speechless Doctor, is unmatched on the Doctor's side, but falls on the end of his last line, "you get used to not knowing."
CLARA: You get used to not knowing.
DOCTOR: I thought I never would. I was wrong.
Once again, the Doctor waits for Clara to catch up, as she starts repeating his dialogue verbatim, Midnight-style.
CLARA: I thought I never would. I was wrong.
For the last time, their blocking is synchronized. They turn and walk away from their respective "mannequins" at exactly the same time.
Their blocking is still matched, but starts to slip out of phase. The Doctor will now mirror Clara's dialogue, waiting for her to deliver her lines before he follows. This is exactly the same as Midnight -- the Midnight Creature (in this scene, Clara) is at first an echo, then becomes synchronized, and finally takes the lead.
Clara turns her head first. The Doctor echoes her. She's in front. She isn't doing him, he's doing her.
Clara speaks her line first:
CLARA: I know who he is. I know how he began, and I know where he's going.
The Doctor follows, but Clara's already on her next line:
DOCTOR: I know who Clara Oswald is. I know how she came to be in my life--
CLARA: I know the truth about the Doctor and his greatest secret.
She says she knows his greatest secret. Are we really so sure his greatest secret is his name? Perhaps. While the Doctor's now echoing Clara, their names (Clara Oswald and The Doctor) are aligned through the off-key juxtaposition. Both shots, by the way, have a blue light just to the right of the pillar -- the weird crystal thing the Doctor calls "a subset of the Eye of Harmony" from Hide.
DOCTOR: --and I know what she will always mean.
CLARA: The day we went to Trenzalore.
The timing's impeccable, in that each of them is falling silent just long enough for the other to deliver the line. It becomes a back-and-forth call-and-response. The prop tying the scenes together is the painting of Clara, more clearly foregrounded in the Doctor's frame.
DOCTOR: I found out the day we went to Trenzalore.
The Doctor fades out, but Clara leaves the scene. She leaves! Ack! And all that's left is a Dark Tower.
AAACK!
So that's why I'm scared. I'm scared for Clara falling in love, and dying again, another ascension to the Ghost of the Doctor, in a freaky Midnight scare-fest of scares, coupled with the feels of love and death.
Damn you, Moffat.
She Said, He Said: Name of the Doctor Prequel
Spoilers *only* *for* *the* *prequel*
No other spoilers! Promise! Not even the trailers.
Wherein Janie makes wild speculation on the upcoming episode based on the structural mirroring of the prequel... and importantly, where that mirroring breaks down...
Who are you?
Is everybody seated? Good. Then we can begin.
Now, for anyone who's seen the prequel, it should be obvious that the Doctor and Clara are mirroring each other. They share much of the same dialogue, and the direction of their scenes is almost spot on, shot for shot.
Almost.
The thing is, the synchronicity of the scenes is so stellar, the dissimilarities stick out like a missing toe. It would have been easy -- well, maybe not easy, but entirely possible -- for the mirroring to be flawless. And it's not.
So, this is what I've discovered, why it terrifies me, and why this Doctor is The Doctor Who Waited.
CLARA: (VO) One day, you meet the Doctor.
DOCTOR: (VO) From the beginning, she was impossible.
We begin with their names. Clara, and The Doctor. But already there's something different here. Clara's name blurs into focus, and back out again -- kind of like the opening titles to LOST. The Doctor's name fades in, and then fades out, but it's always clear. Clara's name means "clear" but it's reflected in The Doctor.
Cut to black, and the opening dialogue begins as voice-over. The dialogue is a mirror, of course, of their beginnings with each other. Of when they first met. Notice the word the Doctor uses: Impossible. That's the same word used for the Astronaut -- for Melody, before she was River -- as part of a plot to keep the Doctor from ever reaching Trenzalore.
CLARA: And of course, it's the best day ever.
DOCTOR: The Impossible Girl.
The synchronization here is flawless. Run the two scenes side-by-side, and the camera movements are exquisitely matched. So let's consider that the dialogue is similarly matched. The "best day ever" for the Doctor, in this case, is meeting an Impossible Girl.
CLARA: It's just the best day of your life.
DOCTOR: I met her in the Dalek Asylum.
The first real difference begins to emerge -- in the Doctor's scene the cut to him walking across the room happens before the cut in Clara's scene, but by the time they pass the diagonal thingy they are perfectly synchronized again. There other thing that stands out is that the arrangement of the props isn't quite the same. There's a Box stage right to Clara, and a round Hatch for the Doctor.
This is also where the first irony comes to light. The best day of your life is in the Dalek Asylum?
CLARA:
DOCTOR: I never saw her face, and she died.
This is interesting. The props stage right are the same props, but they've been reversed; obviously, they've taken *care* to arrange the props. Clara's got a Square before a Circle, while the Doctor's got a Circle before the Square. If these scenes were superimposed, we'd have the Circles and Squares aligned.
In the field of mathematics and geometry, there was a problem called Circling the Square, or Squaring the Circle. The idea was to construct a square and a circle with the exact same area, using a finite number of steps with only a compass and straightedge. It was later proved that this was impossible.
"Squaring the Circle" has an esoteric meaning of some interest. In The Meaning of Masonry, by W.L. Wilmshurst (1922), this expression refers to "Deity, symbolized by the all-containing circle, has attained form and manifestation in a 'square' or human soul. It expresses the mystery of the Incarnation, accomplished within the personal soul." Specifically, this phrase is likened to "regeneration" -- an "ascension into heaven" that accompanies the "necessity of self-dying-not, we repeat, the physical death of the body but a mystical death-in-life of everything except the body-is the first and fundamental fact to be grasped before one may hope to realize or even to understand the mystery of The Royal Arch Degree."
With that in mind, the accompanying dialogue of the scene is telling. The Doctor speaks of Clara's death. Clara says nothing.
CLARA: Because, because he's brilliant--
DOCTOR: I met her again in Victorian London and--
Here we get some weird juxtaposition. While Clara muses at the Rocket Console into which she threw a Chair back in the Victorian-era Crimson Horror, the Doctor approaches a mannequin bearing a Victorian dress.
The mannequin is Headless. Set somewhat behind it, there's a disembodied Head on a table -- from the Emperor's statue this latest Cyberman episode, I believe. Notice how the Doctor's head is cut off by the framing of the camera.
CLARA: --and he's funny and mad, and best of all--
DOCTOR: --she died!
The asynchrony continues. At this point we cut to a close up of the Doctor as he's saying Clara died again, a line that falls on "mad and best of all." So, dying is both mad, and somehow the "best."
It's a very strange juxtaposition.
CLARA: --he really needs you.
DOCTOR: Saved my life both times...
CLARA: The trick is--
This is the first point that terrifies me. Once again, the Doctor is addressing the headless mannequin. On the other side, Clara's flipping the switch on Castle Power -- and her head is cut out of the frame. Ouch!
According to the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, the castle is a place of inner refuge, protecting the privileged intercourse between the Soul and God. It is the home of the Spirit, the "natural self," a place of Oneness that not only defends from invasion, but prevents the premature escape of the "volatile stuff" that becomes the Golden Substance -- the Red Elixir of the alchemists, the Philosopher's Stone, the ticket to ride.
Clara turns the Castle Power off. Now, in Nightmare in Silver, they took a silver cord and dropped it into the moat, and turned the power on, creating an alchemical barrier, a mixture of electricity (fire) and water. So why is Clara turning the power off just as she "loses her head?"
CLARA: --don't fall in love. I do that trick a lot. Sometimes twice a day.
DOCTOR: ...by giving up her own. But now she's back, and we're running together,
The end of the asynchrony. Clara's saying the trick is not to fall in love -- something she does twice a day. Mind you, she's the Woman Who Died Twice, and her admonishment to not fall in love (to turn off the alchemical power) is juxtaposed with the Doctor's admiration of her self-sacrifice.
I'm always interested in the juxtaposition of Love and Death, but the Doctor and Clara are out of sync here -- the Doctor's still talking about Asylum/Victorian Clara, the girl who saved his life twice (he is ruminating on the past) while Clara's speaking from the present, her reserved self who can't let herself fall for this man.
The implication is still one of Love and Death, then, as indicated by River's Weddding, or Clara's mother's Leaf. The headlessness is important in this context, because it indicates a loss of Ego, and the self-sacrifice from which springs forth the revelations of divine love.
CLARA: Once you start running,
DOCTOR: and she's perfect, perfect in every way for me,
The Doctor's a bit ahead of Clara, he's already walked up to the camera and already said his "running" line... Clara's still lingering behind. At this point the dialogue starts to synchronize, as the Doctor waits for her to catch up.
Running is perfect, by the way.
CLARA: you start to forget,
DOCTOR: except she can't remember that we ever met.
Clara approaches the camera, and the dialogue starts to merge. Both now speak of memory, and forgetting, one of the long-running themes of the current era.
CLARA: slowly...
DOCTOR:
I love this bit. Clara's line of "slowly" in this context serves as a reminder to the Doctor to slow down a bit for the synchronization to complete. She has "breached" his scene, and he is The Doctor Who Waited.
CLARA: ...after a while...
DOCTOR: Clara. My Clara.
Their heads turn and they go stage right in perfect harmony...
CLARA: ...you just stop asking.
DOCTOR: Always brave. Always funny.
...passing a big round Hatch thingy again, not exactly in the same position, but synchronized...
CLARA: Who are you?
DOCTOR: Always exactly what I need.
Who is the Doctor? Exactly what Clara needs. And vice-versa. Interesting that these avatars are frozen in place. And I love the fact that Clara asks the real question, the question that's asked almost every episode: Who Are You?
But these shots line up only briefly. Over the next pair we'll linger:
CLARA: Where are you from?
DOCTOR: Perfect.
Side by side, it's clear that the Doctor is like a mirror, the space between a living Clara and a Doll-like Clara. The camera positions are reversed, both focused on Clara over the Doctor's shoulder, one pointing left and the other pointing right.
The focus of their dialogue has gone out of sync again. Clara wants to know who the Doctor is, but all she gets is a blank wall. The Doctor, on the other hand, isn't asking any questions, but recogning Perfection. And in that invocation of Perfection, I'm again reminded of Crimson Horror, and the attempt to find "perfect people" to put under a Bell Jar. From Clara's perspective, the Doctor's a stiff; from the Doctor's eye, Clara's a Doll.
CLARA: What set you on your way and where are you going?
DOCTOR: Too perfect.
This is chilling. Clara continues to keep theDoctor in her frame, but the Doctor's realization that Clara's too perfect entails removing her from the frame entirely. Clara has disappeared.
CLARA: Oh, and what is your name?
DOCTOR: You get used to not knowing.
These two shots are framed the same, but the synchronization is very brief. The effect is for the Doctor's line to serve as an answer to Clara's question, in front of that Royal Arch.
CLARA: (waits, gets no answer)
This cut, to Clara looking up at a speechless Doctor, is unmatched on the Doctor's side, but falls on the end of his last line, "you get used to not knowing."
CLARA: You get used to not knowing.
DOCTOR: I thought I never would. I was wrong.
Once again, the Doctor waits for Clara to catch up, as she starts repeating his dialogue verbatim, Midnight-style.
CLARA: I thought I never would. I was wrong.
For the last time, their blocking is synchronized. They turn and walk away from their respective "mannequins" at exactly the same time.
Their blocking is still matched, but starts to slip out of phase. The Doctor will now mirror Clara's dialogue, waiting for her to deliver her lines before he follows. This is exactly the same as Midnight -- the Midnight Creature (in this scene, Clara) is at first an echo, then becomes synchronized, and finally takes the lead.
Clara turns her head first. The Doctor echoes her. She's in front. She isn't doing him, he's doing her.
Clara speaks her line first:
CLARA: I know who he is. I know how he began, and I know where he's going.
The Doctor follows, but Clara's already on her next line:
DOCTOR: I know who Clara Oswald is. I know how she came to be in my life--
CLARA: I know the truth about the Doctor and his greatest secret.
She says she knows his greatest secret. Are we really so sure his greatest secret is his name? Perhaps. While the Doctor's now echoing Clara, their names (Clara Oswald and The Doctor) are aligned through the off-key juxtaposition. Both shots, by the way, have a blue light just to the right of the pillar -- the weird crystal thing the Doctor calls "a subset of the Eye of Harmony" from Hide.
DOCTOR: --and I know what she will always mean.
CLARA: The day we went to Trenzalore.
The timing's impeccable, in that each of them is falling silent just long enough for the other to deliver the line. It becomes a back-and-forth call-and-response. The prop tying the scenes together is the painting of Clara, more clearly foregrounded in the Doctor's frame.
DOCTOR: I found out the day we went to Trenzalore.
The Doctor fades out, but Clara leaves the scene. She leaves! Ack! And all that's left is a Dark Tower.
AAACK!
So that's why I'm scared. I'm scared for Clara falling in love, and dying again, another ascension to the Ghost of the Doctor, in a freaky Midnight scare-fest of scares, coupled with the feels of love and death.
Damn you, Moffat.