Eyes in Doctor Who
In The Forest of the Night airs tomorrow - the last standalone Doctor Who ep before the two-part season finale. At this point last season, just before Neil Gaiman's Nightmare In Silver graced our screens, I posted my summary of Clara theories, which has now once more become relevant in light of the end of Flatline. This time, I was intending to write a succinct summary of all of the main themes and motifs of Doctor Who S8, along with speculation as to where they might be leading. Instead I got carried away thinking about Eyes, and so discussion of Soldiers, Robots, Naming Things and other themes will have to wait until my brain has recalibrated. Also, I am sure that there will be a LOT of meta to ponder after tomorrow's tree-filled episode. So in the meantime:
Honestly, this is not a new motif. In fact, most of the motifs in this series are not new - they have been knocking around throughout the whole of Moffat's tenure so far (see also: Mirrors/Reflections/Doubles, Trees/Leaves, Books, Boxes, Memories, Puppets, Chess, Family and 'The Beast Below'). I mean, ten minutes into The Eleventh Hour we were faced with a gigantic eye through the crack in the wall (oh, such wonderful foreshadowing of The Time Of The Doctor, and the Timelords waiting and searching beyond this universe...). BUT! There have been an even higher number of Eye references than usual this season - from Deep Breath onwards, the Doctor is constantly imploring Clara to 'look at me', he comments repeatedly on her appearance (more on this later) and in particular on her eyes - 'you're all eyes! You've got eyes out to here!'. Not to mention all the comments from other characters - 'how could you trust someone if they looked at you out of your own eyes?' (some VERY heavy foreshadowing there, and not just for the end of that episode.) In Into The Dalek, Clara really hits us over the head with it by wearing a whole shirt covered in eyes, as she enters the Dalek through its eyestalk. The optic nerve has been mentioned not once but twice, first in Deep Breath and then in Flatline when the Doctor 'hacks' Clara's optic nerve in order to see out of her eyes. And those are just the references I can think of off the top of my head. I know there are more. So what is this all pointing towards? I would say there are several meanings:
(1) Clara and the Doctor are studying each other, sussing each other out. And thus they are *becoming* each other. Of all the Doctor/Companion relationships of the new series, theirs (in my opinion) has been one of the most interesting because they have BOTH been mysteries to each other. Eleven seeks out Clara because she is an 'enigma', the 'impossible girl', and spends the first half of their time together covertly investigating her origins - is she 'a trick, a trap?' (a question that has become very relevant once again, in light of Missy's words at the end of Flatline)- and he stalks her timeline, foreshadowing Clara's later split throughout his own timeline. Meanwhile, Clara is sussing him out, as all the Companions do at first. Then, just as they have become truly comfortable together, they have really *seen* each other ('I always know…those big sad eyes')...BAM! Regeneration. And suddenly the Doctor has new eyes with which to see the world, and a whole new personality which Clara struggles to really 'see': she initially sees straight through him ('just see me') to the ghost of Eleven, just as he once saw through her and only saw Oswin and Victorian!Clara. I love and adore that scene at the end of Deep Breath, because it worked for me too - until that point, I had felt like I was seeing the echo of Eleven behind Twelve's every step and word and gesture, like watching the pair of them move in blurry parallel. One Doctor dead and gone, one Doctor too newly formed to feel *real*. Suddenly, with that speech, it was as if they both slid together and snapped into focus and I could 'see' Twelve as The Doctor and oh it was wonderful. I imagine it was the same for Clara (for all that she has lived other lives with other Doctors, Eleven was *her* Doctor). And for the Doctor - well, the pain of Clara seeing right through him made me stop and think. 'Do you have any idea what that's like?' he asks her. Yes. Of course she does. That's how you saw her, Doctor, for most of S7. This is your comeuppance. Elisi has written some truly wonderful meta on Clara as 'Schrodinger's Companion', and how to be seen is to exist, in Moffat's Who. I won't try to summarise it all here because I absolutely won't do it justice. But you should read it, because it's extremely pertinent. Steven Moffat has long been obsessed with eyes, and seeing - think of the 'quantum locked' Weeping Angels, or the Silence who you only remember when you are looking at them. Think of Reinette, who is the proto-Schrodinger's Companion: young/old/alive/dead, her status is only fixed when the Doctor *sees* her, and once seen it can't be unseen and undone. (Remember that Moffat has been a Sherlock Holmes fan since forever - it is important not just 'to see' but 'to observe'. In the Sherlockian universe a person's whole life may be understood with little more than judicious use of eyesight.) Think of "The eyes are not the window to the soul, they are the doors. Beware what may enter there." (The Time Of Angels, one of my very favourite quotes) And this leads naturally to: "A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction." (The Girl In The Fireplace) Clara and the Doctor have been looking at each other, scrutinising each other for so long, they have stepped through the doorways into each others' souls. Clara is becoming ever more like the Doctor (a point hammered home in Flatline, but very much in place long before then - god, even the mirror she looks into so the Doctor can see her face in Flatline is eye-shaped. What an endless series of reflections.) Meanwhile the Doctor has taken Clara's place as 'The Impossible Man', the man twice dead - 'who frowned me this face?'. We're due an answer on this. Caecilius and Frobisher (from Torchwood) and goodness knows how many other people have worn Twelve's face before, just like all of Clara's time-split selves. (Whilst all of the Doctor's MANY comments on Clara's physical appearance have made me slightly uncomfortable this season, I am choosing to see it in a Watsonian light - his own face is clearly preying on his mind, and he is externalising this and projecting it onto Clara and what *she* looks like. This is very much the Doctor of Moffat's The Doctor Dances - 'Cuts himself shaving, does half an hour on life forms he's cleverer than.') He has become 'Schrodinger's Doctor', and needs Clara to 'see' him to be sure that he exists. Sure, he can bop around the universe without her, but he always keeps coming back for her. He can run around time and space observing things all he likes - see the beginning of Listen - but in order to make sense of anything he needs someone to observe *him*.
(2) Someone is observing both Clara and the Doctor. I should have posted this a few weeks ago, because now this seems like less of a revelation, though it's been clear for ages. Obviously, that someone is Missy - but who is she? To them? And is she working for anyone else? The predominant theory on the interwebs is that she is the Master, which I very much hope is true. So much of her demeanor points to this, as well as the obvious 'Mistress' connotations of her name, her garden which looks like a Tardis with the central column, and all of the throwaway comments on subverting ideas of gender that happened this season (See: Strax misgendering Clara, the female dinosaur, the female president in Kill The Moon, 'you're built like a man', etc etc). I have privately wondered if Missy might be a Tardis in human form (something I wondered a lot about Clara last season), as she seems to have abilities to pluck people from death that even Timelords shouldn't have. But that is probably too far-fetched. Other popular online theories are that she is - or is connected to - the Valeyard, the Black/White Guardians, the Great Intelligence, the Rani, River Song, CAL, Clara herself, etc etc. And of course she could always be something new. But whoever she is, she has been *watching* the Doctor and Clara, and the implication is that she has somehow played intergalactic puppeteer or chess grandmaster (see that giant chess board Clara stands on in The Caretaker) and handpicked them for each other, making efforts to ensure they stay together. Possibly she even manipulated the Doctor's regeneration, somehow. Why? How? How long has she been playing this game? How is she watching them? What is her ultimate aim? How is she plucking people from death and what does she want them for? What is 'Heaven' or the 'Nethersphere' (and is it connected to the Timelord 'Matrix')? So much we still don't know, and I don't have many convincing theories to add to it all. Whatever the answers to all these questions, it's clear that Missy's eyes have been on Clara (literally, in the case of her Into the Dalek shirt!) for a long time.
(3) Clara as a Witness. This is more speculative, but I am wondering if the Doctor is - once again - going to be put on trial. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Twelve is a more obviously aristocratic and imperious iteration of the Doctor than we've seen in a while, there have been more attempts than usual to undermine his authority. At least two characters have asked 'who put you in charge?' or words to that effect (in Time Heist and Kill The Moon) and in Flatline his role and title are taken wholesale by Clara. Danny - whose name means 'God has judged' - has taken issue with the Doctor's behaviour. Add to that the continued question of 'what is a Good Man?' as well as Psy's comment to Clara that she must have been with the Doctor for a long time because she is so good at 'making excuses' for him - is the Doctor going to have to answer for his actions before the gates of Heaven? Is he going to have to prove that he is a Good Man and will Clara be there to defend him or to prosecute him? Why her? Why now? I don't think Gallifrey is going to come back for good just yet - I think that's going to be next season's arc - so who or what is Missy working towards? When the Timelords are reinstated, there will always be someone Watching the Doctor and taking note of his actions. In the meantime, it's just Clara. She has become the authority on the Doctor, and likely that in either this finale or at Christmas, she will take her last look at him. The Doctor can see that she is turning into him, and knows that 'goodness has nothing to do with it'. One of them - and I very much hope it's Clara - is going to make the decision that they have to stop looking.
So...that's it for now. I will inevitably edit to add things later, as they strike me at inappropriate times. In the meantime - who has things to add?
Honestly, this is not a new motif. In fact, most of the motifs in this series are not new - they have been knocking around throughout the whole of Moffat's tenure so far (see also: Mirrors/Reflections/Doubles, Trees/Leaves, Books, Boxes, Memories, Puppets, Chess, Family and 'The Beast Below'). I mean, ten minutes into The Eleventh Hour we were faced with a gigantic eye through the crack in the wall (oh, such wonderful foreshadowing of The Time Of The Doctor, and the Timelords waiting and searching beyond this universe...). BUT! There have been an even higher number of Eye references than usual this season - from Deep Breath onwards, the Doctor is constantly imploring Clara to 'look at me', he comments repeatedly on her appearance (more on this later) and in particular on her eyes - 'you're all eyes! You've got eyes out to here!'. Not to mention all the comments from other characters - 'how could you trust someone if they looked at you out of your own eyes?' (some VERY heavy foreshadowing there, and not just for the end of that episode.) In Into The Dalek, Clara really hits us over the head with it by wearing a whole shirt covered in eyes, as she enters the Dalek through its eyestalk. The optic nerve has been mentioned not once but twice, first in Deep Breath and then in Flatline when the Doctor 'hacks' Clara's optic nerve in order to see out of her eyes. And those are just the references I can think of off the top of my head. I know there are more. So what is this all pointing towards? I would say there are several meanings:
(1) Clara and the Doctor are studying each other, sussing each other out. And thus they are *becoming* each other. Of all the Doctor/Companion relationships of the new series, theirs (in my opinion) has been one of the most interesting because they have BOTH been mysteries to each other. Eleven seeks out Clara because she is an 'enigma', the 'impossible girl', and spends the first half of their time together covertly investigating her origins - is she 'a trick, a trap?' (a question that has become very relevant once again, in light of Missy's words at the end of Flatline)- and he stalks her timeline, foreshadowing Clara's later split throughout his own timeline. Meanwhile, Clara is sussing him out, as all the Companions do at first. Then, just as they have become truly comfortable together, they have really *seen* each other ('I always know…those big sad eyes')...BAM! Regeneration. And suddenly the Doctor has new eyes with which to see the world, and a whole new personality which Clara struggles to really 'see': she initially sees straight through him ('just see me') to the ghost of Eleven, just as he once saw through her and only saw Oswin and Victorian!Clara. I love and adore that scene at the end of Deep Breath, because it worked for me too - until that point, I had felt like I was seeing the echo of Eleven behind Twelve's every step and word and gesture, like watching the pair of them move in blurry parallel. One Doctor dead and gone, one Doctor too newly formed to feel *real*. Suddenly, with that speech, it was as if they both slid together and snapped into focus and I could 'see' Twelve as The Doctor and oh it was wonderful. I imagine it was the same for Clara (for all that she has lived other lives with other Doctors, Eleven was *her* Doctor). And for the Doctor - well, the pain of Clara seeing right through him made me stop and think. 'Do you have any idea what that's like?' he asks her. Yes. Of course she does. That's how you saw her, Doctor, for most of S7. This is your comeuppance. Elisi has written some truly wonderful meta on Clara as 'Schrodinger's Companion', and how to be seen is to exist, in Moffat's Who. I won't try to summarise it all here because I absolutely won't do it justice. But you should read it, because it's extremely pertinent. Steven Moffat has long been obsessed with eyes, and seeing - think of the 'quantum locked' Weeping Angels, or the Silence who you only remember when you are looking at them. Think of Reinette, who is the proto-Schrodinger's Companion: young/old/alive/dead, her status is only fixed when the Doctor *sees* her, and once seen it can't be unseen and undone. (Remember that Moffat has been a Sherlock Holmes fan since forever - it is important not just 'to see' but 'to observe'. In the Sherlockian universe a person's whole life may be understood with little more than judicious use of eyesight.) Think of "The eyes are not the window to the soul, they are the doors. Beware what may enter there." (The Time Of Angels, one of my very favourite quotes) And this leads naturally to: "A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction." (The Girl In The Fireplace) Clara and the Doctor have been looking at each other, scrutinising each other for so long, they have stepped through the doorways into each others' souls. Clara is becoming ever more like the Doctor (a point hammered home in Flatline, but very much in place long before then - god, even the mirror she looks into so the Doctor can see her face in Flatline is eye-shaped. What an endless series of reflections.) Meanwhile the Doctor has taken Clara's place as 'The Impossible Man', the man twice dead - 'who frowned me this face?'. We're due an answer on this. Caecilius and Frobisher (from Torchwood) and goodness knows how many other people have worn Twelve's face before, just like all of Clara's time-split selves. (Whilst all of the Doctor's MANY comments on Clara's physical appearance have made me slightly uncomfortable this season, I am choosing to see it in a Watsonian light - his own face is clearly preying on his mind, and he is externalising this and projecting it onto Clara and what *she* looks like. This is very much the Doctor of Moffat's The Doctor Dances - 'Cuts himself shaving, does half an hour on life forms he's cleverer than.') He has become 'Schrodinger's Doctor', and needs Clara to 'see' him to be sure that he exists. Sure, he can bop around the universe without her, but he always keeps coming back for her. He can run around time and space observing things all he likes - see the beginning of Listen - but in order to make sense of anything he needs someone to observe *him*.
(2) Someone is observing both Clara and the Doctor. I should have posted this a few weeks ago, because now this seems like less of a revelation, though it's been clear for ages. Obviously, that someone is Missy - but who is she? To them? And is she working for anyone else? The predominant theory on the interwebs is that she is the Master, which I very much hope is true. So much of her demeanor points to this, as well as the obvious 'Mistress' connotations of her name, her garden which looks like a Tardis with the central column, and all of the throwaway comments on subverting ideas of gender that happened this season (See: Strax misgendering Clara, the female dinosaur, the female president in Kill The Moon, 'you're built like a man', etc etc). I have privately wondered if Missy might be a Tardis in human form (something I wondered a lot about Clara last season), as she seems to have abilities to pluck people from death that even Timelords shouldn't have. But that is probably too far-fetched. Other popular online theories are that she is - or is connected to - the Valeyard, the Black/White Guardians, the Great Intelligence, the Rani, River Song, CAL, Clara herself, etc etc. And of course she could always be something new. But whoever she is, she has been *watching* the Doctor and Clara, and the implication is that she has somehow played intergalactic puppeteer or chess grandmaster (see that giant chess board Clara stands on in The Caretaker) and handpicked them for each other, making efforts to ensure they stay together. Possibly she even manipulated the Doctor's regeneration, somehow. Why? How? How long has she been playing this game? How is she watching them? What is her ultimate aim? How is she plucking people from death and what does she want them for? What is 'Heaven' or the 'Nethersphere' (and is it connected to the Timelord 'Matrix')? So much we still don't know, and I don't have many convincing theories to add to it all. Whatever the answers to all these questions, it's clear that Missy's eyes have been on Clara (literally, in the case of her Into the Dalek shirt!) for a long time.
(3) Clara as a Witness. This is more speculative, but I am wondering if the Doctor is - once again - going to be put on trial. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that Twelve is a more obviously aristocratic and imperious iteration of the Doctor than we've seen in a while, there have been more attempts than usual to undermine his authority. At least two characters have asked 'who put you in charge?' or words to that effect (in Time Heist and Kill The Moon) and in Flatline his role and title are taken wholesale by Clara. Danny - whose name means 'God has judged' - has taken issue with the Doctor's behaviour. Add to that the continued question of 'what is a Good Man?' as well as Psy's comment to Clara that she must have been with the Doctor for a long time because she is so good at 'making excuses' for him - is the Doctor going to have to answer for his actions before the gates of Heaven? Is he going to have to prove that he is a Good Man and will Clara be there to defend him or to prosecute him? Why her? Why now? I don't think Gallifrey is going to come back for good just yet - I think that's going to be next season's arc - so who or what is Missy working towards? When the Timelords are reinstated, there will always be someone Watching the Doctor and taking note of his actions. In the meantime, it's just Clara. She has become the authority on the Doctor, and likely that in either this finale or at Christmas, she will take her last look at him. The Doctor can see that she is turning into him, and knows that 'goodness has nothing to do with it'. One of them - and I very much hope it's Clara - is going to make the decision that they have to stop looking.
So...that's it for now. I will inevitably edit to add things later, as they strike me at inappropriate times. In the meantime - who has things to add?