Meta: The Name of the Doctor (it's not a ghost story, it's a love story)
First of all, you should all go read this:
Doctor Who: The Name Of The Doctor Review - 8 Ways Steven Moffat Defined The Heroine’s Journey
Because I won't be talking much about Clara, and that review does a beautiful job of explaining a lot of the ways I see her.
The one thing I will mention specifically is her importance as a mirror (opposite) to River:
- Melody Pond was the girl born to kill the Doctor, with no choice.
- Clara Oswald was the girl born to save the Doctor - entirely of her own choice.
Yes, she figured out that she had to do it because it had already happened, but time can be broken, as well we know. She had both the Doctor and River tell her no...
Yet she grasped her opportunity and leapt.
And re-wrote the Doctor.
Where River was warped around the Doctor (as were all the Ponds, and the show never shied away from showing the inherent problems), the Doctor is now warped around Clara. And she is in many ways the new Rose - the one to pull him out of the darkness, quite literally, after he lost everything... Not as a love interest (or rebound), but just as his Clara, his Impossible Girl. The Girl Who Saves Him.
Mind you, I'm now rather keen on having her meet Rose - seriously, just imagine it:
Clara: Oh my stars, you're Rose Tyler! The Bad Wolf! You killed all the Daleks!
Rose (pleased): He told you about me?
Clara (breezily, in her Clara way): Oh no, I was there.
However, I feel Clara's story is not done yet. Yes we know who she is, but it's not like River's story was over once we knew who she was. When it comes to Clara, I feel this was more like AGMGTW - it answered a lot of questions, but still left many unanswered. Why does the TARDIS not like her? Why does she keep being monster'd? What's with all the bird imagery?
Whereas the Ponds had a very specific role (new start, learning to live again, family, coming to terms with who he was now, all the fairy tale stuff), Clara has right from the beginning been tied to the Time War and his role as warrior - and helping him move on. River mirrored him in this, but the first thing Clara [/Oswin] did was erase him from the Daleks' memory, freeing him. She was the one to find the book of The Time War, and learning his name that way, before falling down the rabbit hole in the finale and learning it all...
Basically, promethia_tenk summed up the whole thing in her vid: The New Age
However, all this involves reaching forward, trying to see where we are heading. And I can't see clearly. I'm guessing that Moffat will tackle the Time War head on, and through that help the Doctor to move forward. A clean slate for the 50th - that sounds about right.
But this episode was all about endings... And at this point we have reached the very end of A Christmas Carol:
AMY: It'll be their last day together, won't it?
DOCTOR: Everything has to end some time, otherwise nothing would ever get started.
Firstly, you should go here: In Gallifreyan we don't say 'I love you' - We just freeze time so we don't have to kill the one we love (read the tags)
Welcome to the last chapter of The Ultimate, No-Win, Tragic Love Story.
From the CiN minisode:
Oh my heart.
The wife who wasn’t there. The wife who was never mentioned, the wife alluded to over and over in imagery, but never directly. Never named.
And this was why.
He wasn’t just grieving for his friends.
He was a widower.
(No wonder he chose Victorian London.)
(And this makes me love his friends even more...
Doctor: I have to save Vastra and Strax. Jenny too if it's still possible. They cared for me during the dark times. Never questioned me, never judged me, they were just... kind, I owe them. I have a duty.
Kindness is the greatest virtue in this 'verse. And 'the dark times'. My poor Doctor.)
He eventually found his Clara, but he knew time makes us all pay:
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
And the price is summed up in one word:
Pond.
But it’s not a ghost story - it’s a love story. And as I learned a long time ago in a different ‘verse:
"You’re always here to me. And I always listen. And I can always see you."
River Song - just an echo, a copy... And yet not. The souffle isn’t the souffle, the souffle is the recipe. All the Claras are Clara.
And Melody Pond is River Song, and River Song is River Song, no matter that she is just a data ghost.
The important thing here is that they are linear, both of them facing their death, and the end of all things.
Bathed in the light of everything he was, his life extinguished, his body no more, endings are impossible to run from....
To go back a moment, to when the GI attacks:
River: "When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can't run for ever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark, if he ever, for one moment accepts it."
He did. And they did.
Until Clara saved him.
But accepting his own death was easier than accepting River’s. He runs from endings, leaves people behind. But River was always the exception - the one who refused to budge if she didn’t get what she needed. And so she guides him through the last obstacle...
The scene made one specific [Moffat] quote spring to mind - so strongly that I feel that it is probably deliberate:
He and River were always dancing - she made him run, forced him to keep up, rather than needing explanations.
Doctor: “Always suspected what it was, never wanted to find out myself. River would know though. River always knew.”
(This should not be compared to Ten’s comment on Rose. Ten was grieving for his lost companion. Eleven is stating a fact.)
Mostly though, we have beautiful, beautiful circles. River - the Child of the TARDIS. Whose life began and ended within those walls. Bespoke...
His equal, his partner, his queen, his wife.
Here is what I wrote almost 3 years ago ( Hello Sweetie: A Doctor/River Essay.):
Still, I am sure that one day River will decide that it is her time, and send one last, final message to her Doctor:
‘Goodbye Sweetie.’
And I was right.
I just didn’t know how much it would hurt. Or just how much more there would be. How deep, how wide, how complex, how beautiful.
The music from their wedding nearly did me in. And he steps into the light column on the exact beat of their kiss back then. Most beautiful show ever.
(Because she is truly gone now, her Library echo extinguished. Otherwise the whole thing is meaningless.)
Never has this been more true:
(He was so young. Understood so little. Not her. Not even himself.)
Ten: There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could...
Before The Name of the Doctor aired I pulled out the above quote when the River we saw in the previews seemed to be (post) Library River. Promethia and I had the following discussion:
elisi: Mind you, she still has to be around in person [in the episode] to actually LEARN his name, y/y?
promethia_tenk: This is the big stumbling block I'm coming over. Or if that River is post-Library, then pre-Library River must show up too. Unless she just knows already because he, ya know, told her. Because he wanted to and trusted her and now there's just this minor problem of the universe wanting to know as well. Which I can actually see happening, much in the way that he totally married her to keep the universe from blowing up because it was the only possible option and he was forced to, seriously.
Actually, wouldn't that just be Ten's tragedy in a nutshell? Thinking there is only "one way" something could happen because, basically, he can't imagine something better?
Rather want this to be the case now...
Also, it nicely preserves the most important thing about that moment in the Library, which was that it made the Doctor "just a man." There is nothing special about his name. It's not a cosmic revelation. It's just a name. That he told his wife. When he couldn't imagine ever having reason to do that again.
I love it when she’s right.
But then - who better to understand the meaning and importance of a name than River?
DOCTOR: Look, three options. One: I let the Star Whale continue in unendurable agony for hundreds more years. Two: I kill everyone on this ship. Three: I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can. And then I find a new name, cos I won't be the Doctor any more.
The Beast below
It’s all one story. The revelation in the last minute might have been shocking, but the foundations have been laid for the past three years (*waves to the Dream Lord*). Just look at this:
The Doctor's Secret
Mind you, I noticed that even as the Whisper Men are killing all his friends he still doesn't say his name, only begs for the GI to stop.
(Doctor: "I will destroy us if I have to. I will destroy us if I have to." Cold War)
In this context it’s interesting to look at the three finales next to each other... Each one has focussed on an attack on the Doctor, and slowly we have been finding out why:
- In S5 we had the Alliance locking him up, to save the universe from him... Except there was obviously another agent operating. The Doctor seemed to have been framed.
- In S6 we had the Silence creating River - along with a fixed point in time - to ensure that he would never reach Trenzalore, as we learned that his name was a danger.
- And in S7 the GI forced him to go to that very place. And we began to understand why his name might be dangerous.
So who is the mysterious not!Doctor? I hesitate calling him Valeyard - that’s a very specific incarnation - and I’m not sure I can refer to him as ‘dark!Doctor’, since he might be dark, but not in the way we usually associate with ‘dark’. Or rather - it's not a separate sort of darkness. Mostly I lean towards Time War Doctor, even though we’ve seen the Doctor claim that war as his own on several occasions...
NINTH DOCTOR: They're never gonna come! Your race is dead! You all burnt, all of you. Ten million ships on fire - the entire Dalek race wiped out in one second.
DALEK: You lie!
NINTH DOCTOR: I watched it happen. I MADE it happen!
DALEK: And what of the Time Lords?
NINTH DOCTOR: Dead. They burnt with you. The end of the last great Time War. Everyone lost.
~~~
TENTH DOCTOR: For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious.
~~~
HOUSE: Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords.
ELEVENTH DOCTOR: Fear ME. I've killed all of them.
But then... not!Doctor is *him*, even if he isn’t the Doctor. There are some very clever linguistics at work here.
Doctor: The name you choose, it’s like a promise you make.
Not!Doctor: What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity.
Doctor: But not in the name of the Doctor!
Go through S7 and you will in every episode find characters acting 'in the name of peace and sanity' whilst committing atrocities. Or, to quote Promethia:
Rather intrigued by that final beat: the Doctor has denied his name to that incarnation and then, immediately: Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor. You're 1) continuing the "Doctor Who?" trend of breaking the fourth wall but now doing it in an utterly flagrant and undeniable way and 2) immediately contradicting on a meta level the Doctor's own explanation for this character. Gloves are off, bitches: it's the Doctor versus the writer, winner takes the franchise *g*
And finally...
Doctor Who: The Name Of The Doctor Review - 8 Ways Steven Moffat Defined The Heroine’s Journey
Because I won't be talking much about Clara, and that review does a beautiful job of explaining a lot of the ways I see her.
The one thing I will mention specifically is her importance as a mirror (opposite) to River:
- Melody Pond was the girl born to kill the Doctor, with no choice.
- Clara Oswald was the girl born to save the Doctor - entirely of her own choice.
Yes, she figured out that she had to do it because it had already happened, but time can be broken, as well we know. She had both the Doctor and River tell her no...
Yet she grasped her opportunity and leapt.
And re-wrote the Doctor.
Where River was warped around the Doctor (as were all the Ponds, and the show never shied away from showing the inherent problems), the Doctor is now warped around Clara. And she is in many ways the new Rose - the one to pull him out of the darkness, quite literally, after he lost everything... Not as a love interest (or rebound), but just as his Clara, his Impossible Girl. The Girl Who Saves Him.
Mind you, I'm now rather keen on having her meet Rose - seriously, just imagine it:
Clara: Oh my stars, you're Rose Tyler! The Bad Wolf! You killed all the Daleks!
Rose (pleased): He told you about me?
Clara (breezily, in her Clara way): Oh no, I was there.
However, I feel Clara's story is not done yet. Yes we know who she is, but it's not like River's story was over once we knew who she was. When it comes to Clara, I feel this was more like AGMGTW - it answered a lot of questions, but still left many unanswered. Why does the TARDIS not like her? Why does she keep being monster'd? What's with all the bird imagery?
Whereas the Ponds had a very specific role (new start, learning to live again, family, coming to terms with who he was now, all the fairy tale stuff), Clara has right from the beginning been tied to the Time War and his role as warrior - and helping him move on. River mirrored him in this, but the first thing Clara [/Oswin] did was erase him from the Daleks' memory, freeing him. She was the one to find the book of The Time War, and learning his name that way, before falling down the rabbit hole in the finale and learning it all...
Basically, promethia_tenk summed up the whole thing in her vid: The New Age
However, all this involves reaching forward, trying to see where we are heading. And I can't see clearly. I'm guessing that Moffat will tackle the Time War head on, and through that help the Doctor to move forward. A clean slate for the 50th - that sounds about right.
But this episode was all about endings... And at this point we have reached the very end of A Christmas Carol:
AMY: It'll be their last day together, won't it?
DOCTOR: Everything has to end some time, otherwise nothing would ever get started.
Firstly, you should go here: In Gallifreyan we don't say 'I love you' - We just freeze time so we don't have to kill the one we love (read the tags)
Welcome to the last chapter of The Ultimate, No-Win, Tragic Love Story.
From the CiN minisode:
Oh my heart.
The wife who wasn’t there. The wife who was never mentioned, the wife alluded to over and over in imagery, but never directly. Never named.
And this was why.
He wasn’t just grieving for his friends.
He was a widower.
(No wonder he chose Victorian London.)
(And this makes me love his friends even more...
Doctor: I have to save Vastra and Strax. Jenny too if it's still possible. They cared for me during the dark times. Never questioned me, never judged me, they were just... kind, I owe them. I have a duty.
Kindness is the greatest virtue in this 'verse. And 'the dark times'. My poor Doctor.)
He eventually found his Clara, but he knew time makes us all pay:
This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?
And the price is summed up in one word:
Pond.
But it’s not a ghost story - it’s a love story. And as I learned a long time ago in a different ‘verse:
"You’re always here to me. And I always listen. And I can always see you."
River Song - just an echo, a copy... And yet not. The souffle isn’t the souffle, the souffle is the recipe. All the Claras are Clara.
And Melody Pond is River Song, and River Song is River Song, no matter that she is just a data ghost.
The important thing here is that they are linear, both of them facing their death, and the end of all things.
Bathed in the light of everything he was, his life extinguished, his body no more, endings are impossible to run from....
To go back a moment, to when the GI attacks:
River: "When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it will never end. But however hard you try, you can't run for ever. Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark, if he ever, for one moment accepts it."
He did. And they did.
Until Clara saved him.
But accepting his own death was easier than accepting River’s. He runs from endings, leaves people behind. But River was always the exception - the one who refused to budge if she didn’t get what she needed. And so she guides him through the last obstacle...
The scene made one specific [Moffat] quote spring to mind - so strongly that I feel that it is probably deliberate:
He and River were always dancing - she made him run, forced him to keep up, rather than needing explanations.
Doctor: “Always suspected what it was, never wanted to find out myself. River would know though. River always knew.”
(This should not be compared to Ten’s comment on Rose. Ten was grieving for his lost companion. Eleven is stating a fact.)
Mostly though, we have beautiful, beautiful circles. River - the Child of the TARDIS. Whose life began and ended within those walls. Bespoke...
His equal, his partner, his queen, his wife.
Here is what I wrote almost 3 years ago ( Hello Sweetie: A Doctor/River Essay.):
Still, I am sure that one day River will decide that it is her time, and send one last, final message to her Doctor:
‘Goodbye Sweetie.’
And I was right.
I just didn’t know how much it would hurt. Or just how much more there would be. How deep, how wide, how complex, how beautiful.
The music from their wedding nearly did me in. And he steps into the light column on the exact beat of their kiss back then. Most beautiful show ever.
(Because she is truly gone now, her Library echo extinguished. Otherwise the whole thing is meaningless.)
Never has this been more true:
(He was so young. Understood so little. Not her. Not even himself.)
Ten: There's only one reason I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could...
Before The Name of the Doctor aired I pulled out the above quote when the River we saw in the previews seemed to be (post) Library River. Promethia and I had the following discussion:
elisi: Mind you, she still has to be around in person [in the episode] to actually LEARN his name, y/y?
promethia_tenk: This is the big stumbling block I'm coming over. Or if that River is post-Library, then pre-Library River must show up too. Unless she just knows already because he, ya know, told her. Because he wanted to and trusted her and now there's just this minor problem of the universe wanting to know as well. Which I can actually see happening, much in the way that he totally married her to keep the universe from blowing up because it was the only possible option and he was forced to, seriously.
Actually, wouldn't that just be Ten's tragedy in a nutshell? Thinking there is only "one way" something could happen because, basically, he can't imagine something better?
Rather want this to be the case now...
Also, it nicely preserves the most important thing about that moment in the Library, which was that it made the Doctor "just a man." There is nothing special about his name. It's not a cosmic revelation. It's just a name. That he told his wife. When he couldn't imagine ever having reason to do that again.
I love it when she’s right.
But then - who better to understand the meaning and importance of a name than River?
DOCTOR: Look, three options. One: I let the Star Whale continue in unendurable agony for hundreds more years. Two: I kill everyone on this ship. Three: I murder a beautiful, innocent creature as painlessly as I can. And then I find a new name, cos I won't be the Doctor any more.
The Beast below
It’s all one story. The revelation in the last minute might have been shocking, but the foundations have been laid for the past three years (*waves to the Dream Lord*). Just look at this:
The Doctor's Secret
Mind you, I noticed that even as the Whisper Men are killing all his friends he still doesn't say his name, only begs for the GI to stop.
(Doctor: "I will destroy us if I have to. I will destroy us if I have to." Cold War)
In this context it’s interesting to look at the three finales next to each other... Each one has focussed on an attack on the Doctor, and slowly we have been finding out why:
- In S5 we had the Alliance locking him up, to save the universe from him... Except there was obviously another agent operating. The Doctor seemed to have been framed.
- In S6 we had the Silence creating River - along with a fixed point in time - to ensure that he would never reach Trenzalore, as we learned that his name was a danger.
- And in S7 the GI forced him to go to that very place. And we began to understand why his name might be dangerous.
So who is the mysterious not!Doctor? I hesitate calling him Valeyard - that’s a very specific incarnation - and I’m not sure I can refer to him as ‘dark!Doctor’, since he might be dark, but not in the way we usually associate with ‘dark’. Or rather - it's not a separate sort of darkness. Mostly I lean towards Time War Doctor, even though we’ve seen the Doctor claim that war as his own on several occasions...
NINTH DOCTOR: They're never gonna come! Your race is dead! You all burnt, all of you. Ten million ships on fire - the entire Dalek race wiped out in one second.
DALEK: You lie!
NINTH DOCTOR: I watched it happen. I MADE it happen!
DALEK: And what of the Time Lords?
NINTH DOCTOR: Dead. They burnt with you. The end of the last great Time War. Everyone lost.
~~~
TENTH DOCTOR: For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious.
~~~
HOUSE: Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords.
ELEVENTH DOCTOR: Fear ME. I've killed all of them.
But then... not!Doctor is *him*, even if he isn’t the Doctor. There are some very clever linguistics at work here.
Doctor: The name you choose, it’s like a promise you make.
Not!Doctor: What I did, I did without choice. In the name of peace and sanity.
Doctor: But not in the name of the Doctor!
Go through S7 and you will in every episode find characters acting 'in the name of peace and sanity' whilst committing atrocities. Or, to quote Promethia:
Rather intrigued by that final beat: the Doctor has denied his name to that incarnation and then, immediately: Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor. You're 1) continuing the "Doctor Who?" trend of breaking the fourth wall but now doing it in an utterly flagrant and undeniable way and 2) immediately contradicting on a meta level the Doctor's own explanation for this character. Gloves are off, bitches: it's the Doctor versus the writer, winner takes the franchise *g*
And finally...