Trenzalore
(Don't Go There!)
Truth
to tell, reader, this isn't the way I planned it. I meant to write an
overview of the most recent season in general but somehow ended up
focusing on the final episode. I shall post this now and perhaps get
back to the rest later, though I'm not exactly a lord of time right
now.
Perhaps
it's a good up-point to start on. For given that I wasn't
over-enamoured by this series in general, and given that the
much-heralded 'event episodes' normally disappoint, I was surprised
to find so much to enjoy in 'The Name of The Doctor'.
It was inventive, fittingly atmospheric, allowed the high drama to
overlap with the comedy without jarring, contained genuine surprises
and even made some sort of sense. (Note the qualifier there.)
True,
the Great Intelligence is hardly a major villain. The Yeti episodes
are chiefly remembered for... er... the Yeti. The fuzzy background
bad guy is less of an eternal foe, more a tiebreak question in nerd
quizzes. After all, disembodied brains manipulating brainless bodies
like remote limbs, they're a sort of a staple. There's probably
plenty of them in the Whoniverse alone. (The Animus in 'The
Web Planet' for one.)
We've
tolerated his somewhat sketchy nature in both 'The
Snowmen' and 'Bells of St. John',
despite the two episodes not seeming to have much in common with each
other. 'Bells of St. John', though the lesser
episode overall, probably used him the best by giving him a fresh
twist. The old Great Intelligence mastered robots. The new one uses
people as machines.
The
last word in the division between mental and manual labour becomes a
kind of skit on contemporary corporate capitalism. White collar
drones have their mentalities tweaked up and down by handheld
devices, a combination of the way companies give their employees
feelgood motivational sessions while treating them like extensions of
the software they use. His henchwoman/ avatar Miss Kizlet even gets
to sound like Baudrillard: “The
farmer tends his flock like a loving
parent. The abbatoir is not a contradiction. No one loves cattle more
than Burger King.”
We
tolerated this sketchiness because we fancied it to be foreshadowing.
Our fancy however was forlorn, for this
time round he's different all over again. The Whisper Men are neither
robots nor human slaves, they're more like extensions of him.
Ir should be said that symbolically, this works rather well. It's a story which focuses on
the Doctor's life and hence on his many identities. “Bodies”, he
says, “I've had loads of them.” A bodiless antagonist is
therefore quite fitting. And while they're not greatly dissimilar to
the Silence the Whispermen do feel like the sort of foes which should
be showing up on 'Doctor Who.' Not aliens, not
even really monsters, but appearing without explanation like they
stepped out of some truly twisted nursery rhyme.
But
whatever was his motivation supposed to be? Suddenly, the great
manipulator's entire purpose in life is to rid the universe of the
Doctor. When did that ever come about? And he's even willing to
sacrifice himself to do it, showing great selflessness in service of
the greater bad. Maybe he's called the Great Intelligence for the
same reason Woody Allen got dubbed the Brain in 'Small Time
Crooks.'
The
clue comes with his reference to the Doctor's “bloodsoaked history”
and having “other names before the end.” In this series, which
recycles enough plot ideas to keep the Green Party happy, we are back
at 'The Pandorica Opens', just with a tomb instead
of a trap. The stars go out again. And River saves the day by doing
something supposedly only the Doctor can do. Again.
Except
of course the pieces are being forced. Before, all the Doctor's major
adversaries had gained good reason to see him as “a
goblin... a trickster... a warrior... the most feared being in all
the cosmos” and so were willing to unite against him. This time,
the Great Intelligence getting all vengeful over Solomon the Trader?
Excuse me? Nuh-huh.
Then
again, as they say in the old rhyme “Do not look for plot holes/
For plot holes there will be/ If you look for plot holes/ Then plot
holes you will see.” The Great Intelligence is of course merely a
panto villain who turns up to get the show on the road to Trenzalore.
So let's start our way down it...
What's
In a Name?
The
ending... well, of course it wasn't one. However much they with-held
then telegraphed that title, it was obvious from the outset that they
were never really going to name the Doctor. He
already has the name he needs to make the show happen. The Doctor
isn't Superman or Spider-Man, with some secret identity to be kept
concealed from foes. He's more like the Spirit or the Lone Ranger,
his old Gallifreyan identity 'dies' the day he heads off travelling
and he's reborn as someone else – a change deeper than any
reincarnation.
He
says himself “my name, my real
name - that is not the point. The name I chose is the Doctor. The
name you choose, is like... it's like a promise you make.” We're
talking about the crucial distinction between names and titles. As
I've said before, “the epitome of the emblematic hero is
the Vow... The mask and costume don't just disguise the old identity
but replace it – depersonalise the figure, make
it into a symbol.”
But
of course Moffat isn't just playing with misdirection. Even if it
doesn't out him, speaking his name still has the same sting as would
unmasking Peter Parker. Symbolically, reciting his name doesn't just
open his tomb, it enables his tomb. Speaking his
name turns him back into his name, stops him being
the Doctor. Like weather vanes, the two cannot coexist.
So
his name... his true name, well of course we knew
it all along. It's the Doctor. By the time you get there, it doesn't
feel like a let-down so much as a re-establishment of the character.
We'd have been reasonably happy for it to end there...
The
Anti-Doctor
...at
which point we get the twist. Skeletons get put in the closet for a
reason. The figure we encounter at the end - he's not the
non-Doctor, the anonymous stay-at-home Gallifreyan. This figure is something else. The anti-Doctor.
Which
is why, despite incessant speculation in some quarters, he's not
going to turn out to be the Valeyard. His defence “what I did, I
did without choice... in the
name of peace and sanity,” accepted by the Doctor, that hardly
sounds like something the Valeyard would say. (Besides which, the
Valeyard doesn't have the cachet of the Master. Only the fans have
the faintest idea who he is. And the fans don't like the episodes he
appeared in very much. Which sounds like two pretty clear indications
that bringing him back would be ratings suicide.)
A
slightly more sensible suggestion is the Time Lord Victorious.
Towards the end of the Tennant era, there arose hints of an emerging
Annakin-like Dark Doctor. Though these were swiftly served away from,
the notion kept bubbling under the Eleventh. (For example, with the
Dream Lord.)
This
is the view noted
Who sage Andrew Rilstone seems to be taking: “Are
we actually getting the pay off on five years of hints about the Dark
Doctor and setting up mysterious man at the end as a new ongoing
baddy.”
But
I don't think that's it either. The same “peace and sanity” quote
which ruled out the Valeyard would seem to work equally against the
Dark Doctor. This guy seems less like the Doctor's Nemesis (a role
already filled by the Master), and more the embodiment of a
suppressed memory. While the other Doctors scuttle about the place,
saving this and rescuing that, he is still and glowering. That thing
you did... that thing you had to do... which you
now don't want to admit to. That's him.
So
I'm going to go with Cavelorn
and say this is all about what the Doctor did in the Time War.
(Which, as we all know, was to commit genocide.) And rather than “a
new ongoing baddy”, as the Zygons will appear in the next special,
my guess would be they give the anti-Doctor his chance to redeem
himself. He'll reorient around the gravity of the two already-Doctors
and will get welcomed back into the family just in time for Christmas
and cracker-pulling.
Overall,
a fresh twist and a genuine surprise. In many ways it's effective,
ingenious and displays an understanding of the DNA of the show. But
part of me still thinks – the Time Lords are dead now. Get over it.
They were boring buggers anyway, wasn't that part of the point of
ditching them?
In
a show that prides itself on it's ability to reinvent itself, it's
still a surprise found from within the existing parameters. The
series is circling a set of ideas rather than advancing or developing
them. The Time War. The Doctor having some kind of shadow side. The
Dark Doctor... of course he won't finally be unleashed at all, this
is just another feint at it until the next time.
In
fact the show seems caught in this. Its underlying premise has always
been that the ordinary and extraordinary coexist, and one instance of
that is its insistence that ordinary people have something
extraordinary within them. Ian and Barbara were two schoolteachers
who blundered quite randomly aboard the Tardis, and a few weeks later
were toppling Dalek empires. The implication was that any other
schoolteachers, any other decent English sort, would have taken to
the adventuring life the same way.
But
with Rose, with Donna, with Amy, with Clara, there had to be
something special about them. (The one companion
who didn't have this, Martha, was the one whose backstory didn't seem
to take off at all.) The
companion is no longer the average person, with whom we're all asked
to identify. The companion is now someone pretty special, with which
you're asked to identify. The companion was
waiting for stardom to strike all along. This
is the old show rewritten for the 'X Factor'
generation, and is a pretty direct violation of things in itself. But
worse, it infects what's around it by upping the ante on the Doctor.
If the companion is now
someone pretty special, the Doctor then has to become very
special indeed.
Andrew
Rilstone (who, as I may have mentioned, is a noted Who sage) has
pointed out: “Increasingly, what [the Doctor] pulls out
of his pocket is himself: the very fact of his Doctorness defeats the
enemy... The Doctor doesn't have a deus ex machina: the Doctor is a
deus ex machina.”
There
was nothing in the old show to suggest evil wasn't being fought
elsewhere, quite possibly successfully. There wasn't even anything to
suggest there weren't other Doctor-likes, wandering space at the same
time as him. We were just seeing a section of infinity each week. Things could have been really hotting up on Metebelis 2
for all we knew. Now he is not only unique but we're supposed to suppose that he's
needed by the universe, or all those stars just
cease to twinkle.
This
specialness feels like the way you'd structure a story told to tots.
“And then the goodie turned up, and he was so
good that all the bad stuff just kind of withered away. Now sleep
tight, and don't forget to tune in again next week.” The same
story, told to adults or even older children, will do nothing but
dull the senses.
But
more, it feels like a violation of the character. The Doctor should
be part mysterious stranger, part everyman. Though the Tardis is
being made more and more a character in it's own right, it still
signifies him. And, just like he is both human and alien, he is both
big and small. In the (actually very good) prior episode 'Family
of Blood' Joan comments “I must seem very small to you.”
To which of course he answers “no.” It's not that he
chooses not to see her that way, but that he
doesn't. It's simply not the way his perceptions
work.
Fresh
soldiers are being brought in to battle because this is a show at war
with itself. The Big Doctor, the sheer embodiment of good in the
universe, is such a violation that the scripts themselves cannot help but
produce antibodies which try to dispel it. His foes gang up, River
tell him he's become a warrior, he tries being dead for a bit, he
flirts with badness... this time a whole suppressed incarnation turns
up. When they appear, which is the moment we're in right now, we
become hopeful. But by precedent this will be another wave of
antibodies whose efforts are dashed, a medicine long worn off. The
Doctor used to ask “have I that right?” Now the scriptwriters ask
“should we even be doing this?”
Behind
Every Great Time Lord...
In
other news, what of Clara's impossible thing? The blogsphere used up
many gigabytes pondering that one. Except, like “Doctor who?” it
wasn't really the question at all. The real question was – which
old ending is due to be recycled this time? As it turns out, the
first season. Where Rose became Bad Wolf, lived out of time for a bit
and created ontological paradoxes which sorted everything out,
especially Daleks. Oh, and nearly died doing it. Except Rose's main
contribution to foreshadowing was to stick up loads of graffiti over
the past season. Clara ups this by going back not just to her
Doctor's beginnings but the Doctor's beginnings.
Which
admittedly throws a twist on things. Bad Wolf was no longer really
Rose, but an entity as or more powerful than the Doctor. (The meaning
they went for the first time they recycled it, by making Donna
temporarily smarter than the Doctor.) But Clara isn't an ex-companion
who gets promoted. Instead, she gets stretched - symbolically, she becomes every
companion in the Doctor's history, all at once. When she enters the
Doctor's timeline she notably sports appropriate companion clothing
for each incarnation. It's Moffat being metafictional again. She's
not the soufflé. She's the recipe. She's the
archetypal companion.
Now
this doesn't... wait for it... really make a lot of sense. Clara is
able to turn up visibly three times, to give useful help and advice.
The rest of the time... perhaps she's supposed to be giving
individual nudges, like a guardian angel, but it's not really
explained. Except the first time she meets him is at the very start,
when he first steals the Tardis. Of which he seems to have no
recollection. And the Clara of 'Asylum of the Daleks'
was no guardian angel, but her own person living her own life with no
knowledge of an outside timeline. (Some of it as a Dalek, but
no-one's perfect.) While the Clara of 'The Snowmen'
seemed to be some sort of secret agent, investigating events within
the episode and so running into the Doctor by accident. One doesn't
match the other, and neither fits with the retcon explanation.
(Neil
Gaiman has given away that Clara's impossible status was
decided fairly late on in the day. Presumably the Clara of 'Asylum
of the Daleks' was originally a standalone character,
retro-fitted into her story arc. Even if it meant forcing the
pieces.)
Perhaps
this doesn't matter too much. This is pretty much a fairy story,
where we're better off looking for the symbolic sense. Besides, some
fan somewhere will be reversing the polarity of it all until there's
some convoluted explanation. Or until everyone regrets asking,
whichever comes sooner.
What
may be more concerning is that a storyline seemingly devised to big
up the companion role, to promote her from the ankle-twisting
screamer and explanation-receiver, makes her into such a dutiful,
self-sacrificial female. “The real you will die,” she's warned.
In fact the Doctor's carefree adventuring now seems to be enabled by
the self-sacrifice of two invisible women, River and now Clara.
All
the talk, all the times the series has boldly coded the companion as
a new, sassy, assertive person in her own right. Girl power, yeah!
And yet it always seems to end up here.
And,
while it's true the new series has taken this further than the old,
what's interesting is that this has always seemed
the case. Starting with the very first companion, Susan, they were
always intending to this time develop a stronger companion character
and never carrying through with it. Clara says...
”I’m
born, I live, I die. And always, there’s the Doctor. Always, I’m
running to save the Doctor, again, and again, and again. And he
hardly ever hears me. But I’ve always been there.”
...which,
now I come to think of it, sounds a pretty good potted history of the
show.
The Great Intelligence would have been more plausible, if, instead of seeing revenge, he had announced his intention to prevent his original defeat via the timeline, and then conquer the universe. A showdown between him and Clara might have helped.
ReplyDeleteThat would indeed have been something a little more befitting his name. Perhaps it could be argued that it would only have taken us back to the Second Doctor when Moffat wanted to get the whole span in. But then any manipulating brainless body might have done just as well, so it could as easily have been the Animus or insert-other-trope-of-choice.
ReplyDeleteBut the more I think about it, the more Moffat needs to bump the GI off at that point. The GI is just a means to get Clara to jump in the Doctor’s timestream so she can become everycompanionwhoeverwas. He has to be swept off stage to make way for the next act, so he dies by sleight of hand.
There’s a similar swerve in the finale of ’Big Bang’, which goes from the end of everything there ever was to Amy’s wedding – when most people were expectinga big bash-up with the Silence which never actually occurred. It’s like the two things they really want to marry up in New Who, the cosmic battles and big emotional hits, are never really made to adhere. It makes even less narrative sense this time, though.
Or the other possibility is that he’s still blundering around in that cave thing at the end. “Bloody hell, I’m supposed to be so smart but I didn’t even think to bring a torch.”