The Book Tower Special - You And Who (Else)

So after the highs and lows of Doctor Who series nine (and with the Christmas special still to come), it's should be time to go back to a more varied selection of topics on the blog. The thing is, there is one other Doctor Who related post to come - and this one is a little different and rather special.

Normally I'd use this (somewhat infrequent) 'Book Tower' slot to review a novel I've recently read, talk about what I liked, the themes - you know the kind of stuff. This time that's somewhat harder because I'm part of it.

Yes you read that correctly, I am now a published author. What makes this even more lovely is that it's a project that I only got involved in through Doctor Who fandom and the friends I have made -  plus every penny of proceeds from sales of the book goes to a good cause. Before we get to the tome in question, perhaps I should cover a little bit of background on the "You and Who " brand.

The original concept for "You And Who" came from J.R. Southall (yes he of "Blue Box Podcast" and "Starburst" magazine). Inspired jointly by a purchase he had made on the self-publishing website lulu.com and an unsuccessful submission to Doctor Who Magazine, J.R. developed the idea of a book with a myriad of different voices of all ages revealing how and why they became fans of this very British series about a madman in a blue box that travels across all of time and space.

In a post on the Doctor Who forum 'Gallifrey Base' in early December 2010, J.R. invited fellow fans to contribute personal essays about their relationship with Doctor Who, with all profits from the book going to the "Children in Need" charity. The response was positive and immediate. Within 24 hours he had the first essay (from YouTube superstar 'Babelcolour') *and* had been contacted by small-press publisher Tim Hirst, with an offer to help with some of the more technical aspects of the project.

Over the next few months, submissions came in thick and fast from all over the world (including one from the legendary Dez Skinn, former editor and creator of Doctor Who Weekly) adding up to a total of sixty-six contributors. Seeing the quality of the finished collection, Tim Hirst decided that he wanted to publish the book himself. A release date was provisionally set for December 2011. J.R. did a local radio interview and some other promotion to publicise the book *and* got the official go-ahead for a second volume - things were really on a roll...

Sadly, it wasn't all to be plain sailing. Time marched on and communications with Tim Hurst seemed to break down. As spring 2012 turned into summer, there was still no sign of the book and J.R. began to have doubts about it's release, let alone the possibility of a sequel. It turned out that Tim Hirst had run into significant cashflow problems and was unable to fulfill any orders. Eventually in September 2012, J.R. realised that Tim was never going to be able to get the book out. What to do?

Enter Miwk Publishing. Owned and run by Matthew West and Robert Hammond, Miwk were (and continue to be) specialists in film, TV, music and drama related books and had built up a solid reputation for quality and reliability. The following month J.R. was able to announce that Miwk had stepped in and offered to publish "You And Who" instead. Tim Hirst thankfully paid across all the money he'd taken in pre-orders, so Miwk could fulfil those sales, and down to tireless efforts on everyone's part the book was finally released, albeit a year late, in December 2012.

Reviews were extremely positive. Here was a book that resonated with fans. As one put it "...an absolute and pretty much unswerving devotion to a show which, arguably, hasn’t always deserved it....and I doubt we’ll see a more passionate and enthusiastic book". Spurred on by the enthusiasm and with the stresses of the last twelve months behind him, J.R. pressed forward with activity on volume two, subtitled "Contact Has Been Made".

"Contact Has Been Made" quickly evolved into two books - requiring a second editor in the form of "Chap With Wings" blogger Christopher Bryant. The project became a massive collection of essays covering every story from "An Unearthly" Child" through to "The Snowmen", plus extras on "Torchwood", "The Sarah Jane Adventures" and other elements of the wider 'Whoniverse'. Many of the pieces only tangentially mentioned the specific story -  instead using it as a springboard for a wide mixture of  opinions, reviews, commentary and specific memories - all with that unique slant of what the story meant to each author and how it influenced and affected their lives. Thanks to a hugely swift turnaround, the companion books escaped into the wider world in June 2013. Together they formed a unique trio of collected work -  compositions as much about the fans as they were about Doctor Who.

Despite the popularity of all the books (which went to a second print), Miwk only had a limited run, and by late 2013 "Contact" Volume 1 had become unavailable and only a handful of copies of Volume 2 were for sale into early 2014. The original "You And Who" itself went out of print at around the same time. Faced with the option of reprinting all of them or letting the books go, a sudden personal disaster meant that Matt from Miwk had nowhere to store three hundred books - so sadly they slipped away.

Speed forward to 2015 and demand for "You and Who" was still high. To remedy this, J.R. created the self publishing imprint "Watching Books" with the intention of republishing the three volumes and carrying on with future "You and Who" material and other related projects. The imprints premier release was a bringing together of J.R.'s pre-Starburst Magazine Doctor Who essays and reviews entitled "The Monster Show" - which also became the first book I reviewed on this very blog (you can read that here). "Tales from the Other Side of the Page", a collection of J.R.'s fiction short stories, was next, followed at long last by the "You And Who" books. The two new "Contact Has Been Made" editions (also combined into one massive anthology) featured revised content and sixteen bonus essays which updated things to the end of the 50th anniversary.

Forging ahead with more all-new material, we next got the excellent "Blake's Heaven" (edited by John Davies) a story-by-story look at - what else - Blake's 7. Finally we come to the latest release - "You And Who Else", which is where I enter the picture.

Launching on the evening of the 26th March 2015, the tenth anniversary of Doctor Who's return to our television screens, the book was to be in a similar vein to it's predecessors - as much about the people who watched the programmes as it was the shows themselves -  but this time focussing on British science fiction and fantasy television through the decades. The beneficiary charity was also new - the Terrence Higgins Trust.

I had been a long-time listener to the "Blue Box Podcast" and through chats with J.R. and other podcasters, I became aware of the history of the You And Who franchise and the re-release of the previous books. With an interest in writing re-kindled by the creation of this blog, and having missed out on being part of the other projects, the news that there was to be a new book was music to my ears. Here was my chance to be part of something important  - a 'social and historical record' of British telefantasy. But which series to choose?

There were so many excellent shows. Should I pick "Ivor The Engine" or "The Clangers" from my childhood? What about "Children of the Stones" or "King of the Castle" - which scared me so much that they left a lasting impression to this day. Then there was "A Very Peculiar Practice", or "The Adventure Game" or "Star Cops" or "Life on Mars" or... well you get they idea. The choice was seemingly infinite. In the end it came down to one series: six episodes of a quirky detective drama from mid-1992 titled "Virtual Murder".

So why this one programme above all the others? Well it was really for two main reasons:

Firstly it was a show that very few people had probably even heard of let alone seen. This meant there was an extremely good chance I would have it to myself.

Secondly, apart from the strong memories I had about the show and my life at that time (and I won't repeat those here because they form the core of my essay) it had also been the subject of one of my first e-mails with the original hosts of the "Diddly Dum" podcast back in March 2014. There are a number of Doctor Who connections and one of the episodes of the podcast had dredged "Virtual Murder" from my memory. Those e-mails would be the start of a fundamental change in the way I interacted with fellow fans. Who would have expected that within the next 21 months I would have appeared on a podcast myself, interviewed two authors, developed the blog into something that others actually seemed interested in reading and most importantly, met up and become firm friends with several people who were originally just voices in my ears. My life has changed immeasurably for the better.

So, when it came to picking a show to write about from the hundreds out there, it seemed that there really was only one choice - it was almost fated. Here was a chance to have this strange little show -  mostly unloved and forgotten by the world at large -  preserved forever in the pages of a book alongside essays from fellow telefantasy enthusiasts, many of whose work, both vocal and written, I respected and admired. How could I resist? It was the first time I had done anything like this but the words flowed fairly easily and by late May 2015 I submitted my prose for J.R.'s expert editing. Now I just had to wait...

A quick jump cut to November and here we are - "You And Who Else" is out ! 62 years of British science fiction and fantasy. 150 shows. 175 different essays. 790 pages. There are so many amazing, well written, insightful and personal stories - and there I am on pages 562-565. I can scarcely believe it. You can buy it on Amazon right now !

It's an incredible book and I'm very, very proud to be a tiny part of it. I urge anyone who has the slightest interest in British TV shows to go and buy a copy, either physically or on e-book. Not only is it outstanding value, not only will all the proceeds go to a worthwhile cause but you will also get a fascinating, varied and detailed look at why these programmes mean so much to so many people. There is some amazing, personal and often heart-wrenching writing within these pages. I can't stress enough how happy I am to have been included.


Here's the official blurb from the "Watching Books" website:

Television is the route by which we map our lives. From the day we are old enough to understand words and pictures it is a constant companion, educating and entertaining us, helping us to understand the world around us – and firing our imaginations off into the far reaches of an infinitely varied universe.

From Ace of Wands to Worzel Gummidge, from Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) to Red Dwarf, from the moment Professor Quatermass' rocket ship returned to Earth, to the moment Ian and Barbara entered the Doctor's Ship, fantasy television has had an extraordinary effect on our emotions and our intellect. Whether it be exploring space or travelling through time, surviving the aftermath of some Earthbound disaster or creating new worlds in uncharted territories, the writers and producers of speculative television have used the format to reflect and inform the world in which we live. And whether it be through horror, science fiction or imaginative fantasy – or a combination of all three – we have all been touched in some way by the creativity and insight provided by such visionaries as Gerry Anderson, Nigel Kneale and Douglas Adams. 

You and Who Else is a unique history of  sixty years of British fantasy television, and a definitive record of its place in our lives – as told by the people who saw it: the viewers.

Further information about all the books and where to buy them, can be found at the "Watching Books" website. Their  Facebook page is at facebook.com/watchingbooks.

If you want to stay up to date with future projects in the You and Who series (and maybe feel like contributing yourself), then bookmark the You and Who page here.

For myself, I've already committed to writing another essay for the next book in the series - which is all about the Doctor Who target novelisations - and there is another new project due to start in 2016 (but you can find out about that one in the back of  "Your And Who Else".

All that remains is to say please, please, please buy a copy of this book - no wait - buy a copy of ALL of the books. You won't regret it.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all !

Timelord Thoughts 12 - Hell Bent

Apologies for the week-long delay on this final review.

It's the season nine finale - but probably not the one you were expecting...

Hell Bent

• It's a well know Moffat trope that he likes the second part of two-part stories (or in this case three part) to be markedly different to the first. So it comes as no surprise that after all the "Previously" montages of ravens, and confessional dial traps and apologies from Me, we start with a truck rolling across the deserts of Nevada.
• There really is a Jackson mountain range in Nevada. To the west is the Black Rock Desert. To the north (ish)  lies the Bilk Creek mountains, Kings River Valley and the Double Mountains. To the east are the Sleeping Hills and the Kamma Mountains. All very interesting names. Best of all southwest of the pass between the Jackson and Kamma ranges lies the ghost town of Sulphur. Just possibly that might where a diner selling "Snacks And Gas" lies

• "No matter where you go, there you are". That phrase is possibly most well known (well to me anyway) from the 1984 cult SF action adventure movie "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai in the 8th Dimension" (although it actually originates from the teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius). The film starred Peter Weller as the multi-talented physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot and rock musician out to save the world from the inter-dimensional Red Lectroids from Planet 10. The saying has gone on to be a bit of an "easter egg", popping up in TV shows, novels and even songs (not to mention the dedication plaque of the U.S.S. Excelsior  in 'Star Trek'). There are lots of different interpretations of what it means, but the one I like the most is "No matter where life takes you, you are still you. You must not change yourself or become manipulated into being something or someone that goes against your beliefs"...
• I guess one of the questions that will hopefully get answered is - where did the Doctor get the black suit, the pick-up truck and the guitar? Some time has passed since he emerge from the Confession Dial into the Dry Lands of Gallifrey.
• Even from the back you can tell that it's Clara behind the counter. The question is how? Is she another splinter of The Impossible Girl, is this set before she died (yes I'm still clinging to the vain hope that some of my time travel theory might not turn out to be total bobbins)? Is she a Life Model Decoy * ?
• I wonder who the jukebox is playing for? "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen could equally apply to the Doctor or Clara. Of course this is the Foxes version from "Mummy on the Orient Express"
• "I don't have any money". Nothing new there then.
• Sonic shades uses number 1536 - a radio transmitter for instant guitar amplification.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic...
• It's interesting that when the radio crackles both the Doctor and "Clara" look towards the back of the diner.
• At this point we don't know the rules of the games Moffat is playing, but this scene is wonderfully understated by both actors.
• There have been lots of example of diegetic music in Doctor Who, but is this the first example of a character performing one of Murray Gold's compositions?
• I'll admit that at first I was hugely resistant to the idea of the Doctor playing the electric guitar. It's first appearances seemed liked grandstanding and making the Twelfth Doctor kooky for kookiness sake. But as the season has gone on, it's grown on me. It's become an extension of the Doctor's character, allowing us an insight into his mood without the need for dialogue. Just a few notes of Clara's song on the guitar is very melancholy.
• "Nothing's sad till it's over. Then everything is". Never a truer word spoken. It certainly applies to the departure of companions (and even the end of series).
• The Doctor doesn't appear to recognise Clara, but knows to call his sad song after her? At this point she could be another splinter of the Impossible Girl, everything could be in his mind, or this could even be a fake reality inside the Matrix (we did last see the Doctor on Gallifrey after all). Who knows.
• And after the titles that's exactly where we see him, the Capitol dome dominating the skyline. It's a beautiful shot.
• The barn. A location possibly loaded with  more meaning and significance in the Doctor's life than the Panopticon, Earth and perhaps even the TARDIS. We've been here twice before, in "Day of the Doctor" and "Listen" and each time it's changed the Doctor's life forever.
• That zooming-in shot over the buildings and spires and in through the window of the Presidential chamber really shows of the size and scale of the Time Lord city.
• So the ringing of the cloister bells is not simply a warning signal in a TARDIS then. 
•  Lord President eh? The staff (the rod of Rassilon?) looks the same as the the last time we saw it in the hands of Timothy Dalton, but the robes and head dress have become even more ornate.

• The Matrix now seems to be more of a physical place than it's previous appearances - or at least it's bowels do. Bells? Cloister Wraiths? Maybe this is just the place where they hide all the wiring that connects to the colourful interface we saw in "The Deadly Assassin". Then again, who can guess how Time Lord technology has changed in the years since they have been gone.
• This President is a grumpy old soul - scared of the Doctor too by the looks of it.
• The Sisterhood of Karn. On Gallifrey? Have they known where it was hidden all along and didn't tell the Doctor because he....didn't ask? Can they just come and go in the "pocket dimension" it's meant to be trapped in whenever they like?
• I still visit my childhood home because my parents have never moved, but imagine what it must be like for the Doctor to come back to a place that he's only seen once in nearly two thousand years. The sunlight shining through the wooden slats, the bells ringing in the background as the Doctor climbs the steps to the place he slept as a child. What memories that small structure must hold.
• That look on the Doctor's face as he hears the voice of the old woman. A ghost from his past has just reappeared. Equally she has the same reaction when she sees him - which he confirms with a curt nod.
• "It's for the boys, if any of them ever want to come...". I'm leaning more and more towards her being the Doctor's foster mother or matriarchal head of a home for "lost" children. Which makes me wonder - what happened to the Doctor's real parents?
• If this whole sequence wasn't being shot and lit like a Spaghetti western, then Murray Gold makes sure you know the analogy through his music...
• Where did all those people suddenly come from? There didn't seem to be anything for miles around the barn (except for the Time Lords). They don't look like the outlanders from previous stories, more like extras from "How The West Was Won". And all to watch the Doctor eat a bowl of thin tomato soup?
• As we hear the rumble of a shuttle craft landing and the Doctor looks up, with an annoyed look on his face, he really need a cowboy hat...

• "At least move the children away". Would this greenhorn soldier really shoot unarmed civilians to get to the Doctor? He's terribly unconvincing.
• Oooh the Doctor has dropped his spoon. This means trouble.
• I love it. A literal line in the sand (it's also the title of a book about the battle of The Alamo, which is stylistically interesting).
• Even the General doesn't pique the Doctor's interest and he just gets a door in the face. The Doctor has yet to utter a word. They really are playing up the whole 'Man With No Name' feel. This could be Clint Eastwood or Henry Fonda.
• So after rescuing Gallifrey from the Time War and hunting for it for so long (remember how angry the Doctor was when it wasn't in the location Missy promised last series?), how come he seems so unhappy to be back now? Well I think I'd be slightly ticked off with the people that contributed to getting my companion killed and trapping me in a personal hell for several billion years.
• The President seems to have forgotten the pivotal role the Doctor had in saving Gallifrey , even if the General hasn't. I wonder how much time has passed for the Time Lords since they were saved from destruction and sent to the pocket dimension?
• Nope. If military force or the appearance of an old ally won't do it, then the High Council of Time Lords bowing in unison is not going to make the Doctor take notice. We already know his disdain for the members of that body. There can only be one person he is waiting for...
• The electrical crackle from that metallic glove as it smashes down on the table. We last saw a legendary figure in Time Lord history wearing that. Could it be...?
• "He just blames you". That just about clinches it. Even so, surely more than one person had a hand in the atrocities of the Time War. The military seems to be getting off very lightly here. Then again, in "Day of the Doctor" they seemed to be somewhat independent of the High Council. Maybe Moffat is trying to say that the soldiers did the "normal" fighting and Rxxxxxx and his lackeys were the ones who conjured up the hideous things that should never have been  (plus of course they did try to destroy the Earth way back in "The End of Time").
• I think they've worn out the comedy of the "foster mother" knocking and mouthing wordlessly at the next arrival.
• Forget the token hand of friendship. It's loaded with such meaning when the Doctor throws the confession dial at the President's feet. This is one time that the Doctor is not willing to forgive.
• "Get off my planet". Shades of Sheridan in "Babylon 5" stating "Get the hell out of our galaxy"?
• I'm still not really sold on this whole idea that the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey because of what he knew about the Hybrid and the Time Lords need to know his secret in order to protect themselves - hence placing him in the confession dial. It's a bit of a big retcon when there has been no evidence relating to this over the last 51 years. I'm all for revealing new takes on what we thought we knew (A hidden War Doctor worked because we knew nothing about the time between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors) but this is meant to be a prophecy that dates back through eons of time. If it had been seeded slower over the last couple of years then maybe I would have bought it more. It's almost as if Moffat needed a season arc, didn't have a better idea so went with this even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
• The President's order to fire on the Doctor is a bit odd too. He couldn't torture the truth out of the Doctor over those billions of years so why does he think that threatening to shoot him will make any difference? And if they do shoot and kill him, what will that have gained in terms of information about the Hybrid? 
• Still as "Clara" says when we switch back to the Diner without seeing the results of the shots, it would have made a great cliffhanger in the Classic series. 
• I've been to Glasgow and I don't remember it looking anything like Gallifrey. Where's the river, and the motorway running through the centre?
• This incarnation of the President seems a bit slow on the uptake. Of course the soldiers wouldn't fire on a certified war hero and want to side with him. The face that the "Doctor of War" was usually seen to be unarmed (despite us seeing him with a gun in the 50th anniversary special) seems to indicate that the John Hurt version did still hold true to the ideals of the Doctor, even if he was prepared to do some reprehensible things "without choice...in the name of peace and sanity".
• Add Skull Moon as the name of another skirmish in the Time War. At this rate we'll be able to build up a proper chronology.
• "Ever story ever told really happened. Stories...are where memories go when they are forgotten". It's a wonderful line. This could be akin to the many worlds theory - where every alternative event in history is played out somewhere in a dimension just out of phase with our own. It could also apply to Doctor Who and what is considered "canon" or "non-canon(ical). It reminds me of the last line from the start of Alan Moore's Superman story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" - "This is an imaginary story - aren't they all?". In other words it ALL matters.Even the bits that don't make sense. Even though I'm sitting here picking apart a Doctor Who story, at the same time I want to celebrate the fact that we have it at all. Embrace the power of imagination.
• Absolute power has corrupted the President (that seems to be  part of the job description sadly). I love Donald Sumpter as an actor but I think he's playing this just the wrong side of hammy.

• He's ever so slightly unhinged isn't he?
• "How many regenerations did we grant you?" I guess even the Time Lords don't know. The limit of twelve may be well and truly out the window, for the Doctor at least.
• And there you have it at last. Rassilon the resurrected. Older, grumpier and definitely not wiser.
• He might be banished from Gallifrey, but I am sure this is not the last we will see of the prime founder of Time Lord society. Could Rassilon be the 'Minster of War' we heard about back in "Before The Flood"?
• So if Gallifrey is at the extreme end of the time continuum for it's own protection (presumably from the threat of the Hybrid) then we have to assume the Time Lords moved it there. Which still begs the question of how they were released from the "pocket dimension" they were trapped in. Did Missy do it? Did Rassilon figure out a way? Does Steven Moffat even know?
• Another reference to the "long way round". This kind of confirms that all those millennia inside the confession dial happened in 'real time' too. It's a good job the Doctor didn't under or overshoot - Gallifrey might not have been there to greet him.
• The Doctor is really out for regime change. The High Council are banished too, which leaves a total power vacuum that I doubt he wants to fill himself.
• I'm getting giddy with all this zooming up and down the spires of the Capitol
• "At the end of everything one must expect the company of immortals". Oh Ohila you cryptic old minx. Maybe she's been reading about Sam and Frodo in "Return of the King". Actually that title could be apt in other ways...
• Okay, so if a confession dial is a "ritual act of purification" (very Vulcan 'Kolinahr') for a dying Time Lord before he is uploaded to the Matrix, then we have been led to believe that the Doctor used it before he went to see Davros. What demons did he see that time?
• Confirmation that Rassilon ordered the Doctor's imprisonment. Did he learn nothing after his last defeat?
• "...Are you just being cruel? Or just being cowardly". Another callback to words spoken by the Doctor in the 50th anniversary special. Originally coined by the legendary Mr Terrance Dicks no less and probably the phrase the Doctor most strives to live by. It must hurt to have those tenets turned back on himself.
• Have the Time Lords based all their recent actions on rumour and supposition and interpretation of the prophecies of the Hybrid? They don't seem 100% sure about anything.
• "Oh must be well hard then". Dismissive but also slightly cringe worthy.
• The General states that ALL Matrix prophecies concur that the Hybrid will one day stand in the ruins of Gallifrey and unravel the web of time... Since when did the Matrix start making prophecies of this kind anyway? I thought it was a just a repository of all of Time Lord knowledge (with maybe a little hack by the Master to feed the Doctor a hallucinatory vision of him killing the then President).
• "...and destroy a billion, billion hearts to heal it's own". Much like the Doctor went through in the confession dial then. Interesting...
• Just like that the Doctor undercuts the portentous, solemn nature of the General's speech. He's right though. Why can't prophecies be a little more...explicit?
• The Doctor offers to help Gallifrey if they give him the use of an "extraction chamber" to talk to an old friend. Maybe he's going to go back and talk to Adric and get some Block Transfer Computation done. Oh come on, we all know it's Clara he's talking about, but right now I'm not sure his motives are exactly focussed on helping his own race. For once the Doctor could be so unpredictable and angry that you can't trust him.
• I was afraid that this was going to happen. Much as I like the idea of a Doctor who has found the only way to save Clara is to deceive his own people, it totally undermines the whole dramatic moment of her death. Any kids watching can cope with the concept of people they care about dying - indeed some might say that they ought to be exposed to it. The series this year has spent a lot of time engaging with concepts around time and death and mortality (or lack of it). There is nothing wrong in them seeing that sometimes the good guys don't win and that people do make mistakes and sometimes they die. In Stephen Moffat's second script for the new series, "The Doctor Dances", he had the Doctor proclaim "Just this once everybody lives" and RTD swore that you would never see a companion die on his watch.  It seems to have become Moffat's mantra. He just can't let people stay dead. River Song, Rory Williams, the entirety of reality (in "The Big Bang") - all of them come out of things alive in one way or another. He's even used the Big Red Reset button. How can you have any real jeopardy if you know that all your main cast will always survive (or come back from the dead)? Now I'm not suggesting that Doctor Who needs to have "Game of Thrones" levels of deaths but at the moment it would be a pleasant surprise if occasionally dead did mean dead.
• I did like the slightly 3D offset effect around Clara's "extraction".
• I think anyone would be confused if they expected to die and suddenly found themselves in a completely white room with a couple of old men.
• Clara thinks things sound odd because she can no longer hear her own heartbeat, which has always been there since she was born. Is that really true? I don't hear mine if I put my fingers in my ears to block out exterior noise although I can perhaps hear it sometimes if I'm laying down on a pillow. I do know there is a condition called pulsatile tinnitus which affects a certain segment of the population and causes them to hear a regular pulsing. I think in this case it's just less about medical accuracy and more a narrative device to bring our attention to the fact that Clara's heart is no longer beating.
• I was right. The extraction of Clara in between the final nano-seconds of her life was not so the Doctor could use her knowledge to help save the Time Lords. It's all a ruse to get what he really wanted - his companion back from a untimely and undeserved death. My theory of the time-twisting nature of Clara's series nine adventures with the Doctor might have been shot down in flames, but I did predict that the Doctor would do anything to save her, even transgress the laws of time. That was also one hell of a punch.
• "On pain of death, no one take a selfie". Groan. Really? 
• Clara's pleading with the Doctor to put down the gun reminded me of Rose doing the same thing in "Dalek". This time though I don't think the Doctor is going to be quite so easily persuaded. 
• This is a Doctor who has been pushed completely over the edge. No other incarnation has deliberately shot and "killed" one of his own people before. I'm not sure I entirely like it. Even if "death is Time Lord for man flu", it's still possibly a step too far. Has the Doctor stopped being the hero and the man who saves people beyond his own selfish needs?
• With one swift regeneration Moffat makes it irrecoverably and definitively canon that Time Lords can change gender and race. There is no going back now and the role of the Doctor is wide open. Whether it needs to be is a debate for another time.
• I love the fact that the General's ninth incarnation was the only one that was male. No idea what this ego thing is all about though. We're not that fragile...
• This idea that the Cloisters are the "hell" of the Time Lords is another new twist in the mythology of the show. I just don't think it's very well defined. What is meant to be down there? If it's the bowels if the Matrix - a machine the Time Lords created to house their "souls" and wisdom and knowledge after they finally died - then why are they scared of it?
• Just like that Moffat hand waves away the explanation of how Gallifrey escaped being frozen. I guess he feels that any story he could tell would never be as good as the one in our heads, so he decided not to bother - or the Time Lords are ultimately too dull and the story he wants to tell is far more interesting (to him at least). The problem is, the escape story is the one I would have liked to have seen.  
• What's a Weeping Angel baby doing in the bowels of the Capitol on Gallifrey? Isn't that a bit...dangerous?

• Hang on - how on earth is wiping Clara's memory of the Doctor going to keep her safe? She's a no pulse extract taken from between heartbeats who is meant to be dead and whose continued existence possibly threatens all of time and space.She shouldn't exist at all. It's a very odd decision. Perhaps the Doctor doesn't really have a clue what to do next and is winging it hoping that a permanent solution will present itself. Making Clara forget will only create more danger to the timelines because she could end up getting killed before she dies (kind of like I was trying to theorise).
• I'll admit the Sliders are kind of spooky.
• The Dalek being in the Cloisters seems a bit like they had to shoehorn one in for licencing rights sake. It's all a bit like the Underhenge in "The Pandorica Opens".
• Another mention for the Cloister Wars, which seem to have been a series of attempted invasions of Gallifrey separate from the Last Great Time War. Maybe somewhere in the cavernous deep there is a Sontaran and a Vardan (it's baco-foil shimmering faintly in the half light).
• Likewise with the Weeping Angels and the Cyberman - they are just there to add some kind of ineffectual threat to what is basically a walk through a musty cavern covered in stone columns and cables. Clara did turn her back on one right at the end of the scene, but maybe she can't be transported back into the past because she is an undead zombie. At least it's good for the kids to play spot-the-monster.
• "The Time Lords have got a big computer made of ghosts in a crypt guarded by more ghosts". I can go with that. The "dead manning the battlements" thing was very Shakespearian though and in keeping with this Doctor's apparent obsession with death.
• The student that got stuck in the Cloisters? Had to be the First Doctor didn't it?
• So if the Doctor only lost the moon and really stole the President's daughter, then those must be the two things that Missy said were a lie in "The Magician's Apprentice". If Missy herself was telling the truth then the Doctor was a little girl at some point during his childhood...
• Eccentric, A bit mad. Rude to people. Not much has changed then. Maybe the first incarnation in a new cycle is always a cantankerous old grump to start with before mellowing after a few adventures.
• The Doctor's refusal to tell Clara how long it has been since he last saw her suggests that he somehow remembers every one of those billions of years even though he physically only aged around three days.
• So does the Doctor not consider himself the Doctor at this point? Has his experiences in the confession dial caused him to change to the man who became the Doctor of War? The mention of his new black jacket reminds me yet again - exactly where did it come from? We saw him change into it in the barn but there isn't a Saville Row tailor for billions of years in both time and space.
• "It doesn't matter what the Hybrid is". It's all another bluff. The Doctor has no more idea than the High Council. Even his statement at the end of the last episode -  "The Hybrid is me" - was just misdirection. I'm starting to think that the whole point of the legend of the Hybrid arc is to show what people will do if they believe in something that they can't prove exists.
• Four and a half billion years. So we only saw 50% of the ordeal the Doctor had to go through to escape, and it was all so that he could trick the Time Lords into bringing Clara back. That's dedication of the highest order. Or insanity. Or obsession. Take your pick.
• Clara is right. He should have let her go. Duty of care of not.
• We don't need to hear what the Doctor and Clara say to each other. How do you put that kind of relationship into words.
• Clara is right. The Time Lords have gone from being the stuffy old curators of time to the most feared and hated race in the universe because they let nothing get in the way of their need to destroy the Daleks. They even tortured the man who saved them from obliteration. It's a big change from their appearances in the Classic series. But the question is - does it make them any more interesting? What can you do with them as race - as characters - after this? Maybe they should stay lost at the end of time.
• Ha! A classic piece of mis-direction as the Doctor escapes into the workshop vaults.
• That gleaming white original TARDIS console room is a thing of absolute beauty.

• "Face me, boy!" I reckon there is a longer, older relationship between the Doctor and Ohila than we first thought. Maybe that's why she keeps turning up at key points in his life. She also seems to have a higher position in the Time Lord hierarchy than you would expect for a member of the Sisterhood of Karn. A lot may have changed in the Sisterhoods relationship with Gallifry over the last few millennia - or she could just be making a bid for more power. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see her as the new female President if the Time Lords ever come back again.
• The Doctor is manic. Full of energy. "Cocktails with Moses". His audacious improvised plan worked. Clara is saved. He puts on a good show but we all know it's just a front. Nothing is that easy. The Doctor has broken the rules of time and Clara knows it. He's not fooling anyone
• The Doctor has supposedly been to the end of the universe before, in "Utopia". Just not this close to the end. Maybe it's like travelling near the speed of light. The closer you get the longer it will take to get there.
• The whole pulse thing is a bit over laboured but I can see what they were going for - the Doctor getting more and more agitated when things don't go they way he hoped. He must be starting to realise that he has miscalculated by now. His desire to rescue Clara has over-ridden any sense of  logic.
• "I am answerable to no-one". The Doctor is gone and the Time Lord Victorious is back. Right now he is more dangerous than anything else in the universe. He really has risked everything and will stop at nothing. Capaldi is magnificently scary at this point.

• "It's always four knocks". The heartbeat of a Time Lord and perhaps a signal from the universe that the Doctor's arrogance has taken him too far. It's certainly stopped him in his tracks. 
• Does anyone else feel that the name taken by Ashildr was only done to set up the series of deliberate confusions about the word "me"? I hope I'm being too cynical.
• Lovely to hear the classic style hum as the TARDIS doors open.
• "Even the other immortals are gone". Are we ever going to find out what happened to Sam Swift? If not, what was the point of giving him the other Mire chip? Maybe he was too dim and got fatally injured 30 minutes after he was given it. Even immortals can die (just look at "Highlander"). Since the whole episode seems to be in a nostalgic mood, it would also have been nice to have a passing mention of Captain Jack.
• "Me" knows the Doctor better than he knows himself. Living on the slow path has finally bought her peace and wisdom. She's right that the Doctor doesn't like endings. That's why he always leaves so suddenly after saving people. That's why he can't come to terms with the fact that Clara is dead and that it was on her own terms, not his. Clara chose to face the raven but he can't - and he won't face the fact that he might be wrong now.
• "We know summer can't last forever". Who else wanted her to say "Winter is coming..."?
• Look! This TARDIS even has the fault locator machine!

• So it's revealed at last. The Hybrid is "Me". Not Dalek and Time Lord but human and Mire.
• Except maybe it not. Instead it's the Doctor. Half human on his mothers side (or so the Eighth Doctor said). A nice nod to the biggest part of the shows history that every fan has decided to ignore.Then again why *would* the Doctor run away from himself?
• Third theory - the Hybrid is the explosive combination of the Doctor and Clara brought together by Missy (way back in "The Bells of Saint John"). As she put it: "The control freak and the man who should never be controlled. You'd go to Hell, if she asked. And she would". Missy was right - the Doctor did go to Hell for Clara and she has become more and more like him rather than being the reality check he sometimes needs. He did die a billion billion times and now he is standing in the ruins of Gallifrey. It's the version that ties in most with the themes of this series. I'm not sure they really qualify as a hybrid but then again Moffat does love twisting the meaning of words.
• I'm also coming back to the thought that Moffat is trying to say that who the Hybrid is really doesn't matter. It's the *idea* and the fear of that idea that has made everyone behave the way they have. Fans can chose their own theory. The one they like (or can live with) best. The journey is the thing, not the destination, and this journey has been about how far would you go to protect the ones you love.
• Again, "Me" is able to tell the Doctor the things he has becomes too blind to see for himself. The risk he has taken with the lives of  everyone else just because he misses Clara.
• The Doctor still doesn't get it. "Doing a Donna" on Clara and wiping her memory won't stop the fact that she is an anomaly in time.and a risk to all of creation. The only way to put things right is to send her back to her death. It's a good job Clara was watching.
• "I reversed the polarity". At last someone has done what it actually means !
• Jenna Coleman is doing brilliant things with these scenes of Clara expressing her right to live her life (or death) the way she wants to.
• Finally the Doctor comes to his senses. He knows that his relationship with Clara is ultimately destructive for both of them and one of them has to forget the other. It's such a sad moment for this ancient lonely time traveller, because you know that he's always in charge and knows what he is doing. The look on his face says it all:

• Will the neural block actually really work on the Doctor? Wasn't it configured for humans back on Gallifrey?
• Capaldi rings every last drop of emotion out of the scene where he collapses and starts to forget about Clara. Some of those lines are worthy of a regeneration. Clara has been around for over half the Doctor's life (more if you count the splinters) and now he won't remember a thing about her. It's a brilliant performance.
• So the Doctor remembers all his adventures and that he travelled with someone called Clara but not what she looks like or who she was. There is just a hole. At this end of the episode its now obvious that the girl in the Diner is Clara checking that the Doctor really has forgotten her. Still no explanation for where he got the pick-up truck or guitar from. 
• Could those words that Clara said to the Doctor while in the Cloisters come into play in future series? Part of me hopes not.
• There is a terribly sad flicker of emotion across Clara's face as the Doctor looks right at her and doesn't recognise her. It's beautifully played.
• A nice reference to Amy and Rory and the diner in "The Impossible Astronaut". That one was in Utah so it can't be the same. The Doctor thinks something is odd though...
• "...memories become stories when we forget them. Maybe some of them become songs". I so hope that's true..
• And there's the final twist. The diner was the stolen TARDIS all along. It's a nice touch. But surely when it dematerialises the Doctor would recognise the sound immediately? He's lost his memory of Clara, not all his intelligence. And where did the truck vanish to?
• I'm not even going to try and guess how they got the Doctor's TARDIS from London to Nevada and parked it outside the diner without him noticing.
• Errr...um...hmmm..not sure what to say about that last scene in Clara's TARDIS. So her transformation into a Doctor-like figure is complete. She can't die. She's travelling with an immortal companion. She has a TARDIS with a broken chameleon circuit (stuck as an American diner) and she going back to Gallifrey the long way round. It could't be more blatant if it tried. I'm not particularity impressed. I'm quite happy  to have just one Doctor rattling around the universe thanks all the same. Maybe this is to silence those who want the Doctor to be a woman. More likely it's Moffat''s way of empowering his female characters  to ridiculous levels. Clara had already become the most important companion through the Doctor's whole time stream, now she's turned into the "mad woman in a box" . It's really not to kind of send off I wanted for the character, plus it still means THE WHOLE WEB OF TIME IS AT RISK !! 

• Run you clever boy and...be a Doctor. It's a triumphant scene as he steps back into the TARDIS and it hums to life. The familiar theme rises. The velvet jacket is waiting. A shiny new sonic screwdriver flies out of the console. A click of the fingers and the doors close. This is the Doctor I want. The one and only.Two final stunning shots. One of the spinning rings of the time rotor and finally Rigsy's graffiti peeling off. The Doctor is back.

Conclusion:

I'll admit that the first time I watched this I really wasn't that impressed. It wasn't the finale I wanted after all that build up - especially after the masterpiece of "Heaven Sent". I wanted an epic confrontation with the Time Lords, resulting in them coming back for good or staying lost. I wanted a definitive explanation for the Hybrid (yes I know we got *an* explanation but I still feel that it has been left open to interpretation). Instead what we got was an unexpected homage to spaghetti westerns (which I do love), a somewhat lacklustre match against the Time Lords, with the main villain sent off stage very quickly and then another extended goodbye to Clara, which undermined her heroic death of two weeks previous. Moffat managed to contradict or wave away his own stories and the series mythology, some of the seeds from the beginning of the series (the confession dial particularly) made poor sense and the less said about the "Diner" TARDIS and Clara's eventual fate (or lack of it) the better.On second viewing I was less harsh. There are still problems and it's certainly not the strongest Moffat finale (that trophy still lies with "The Big Bang") but I can see that the story was really about how far we would go for love and what we are willing to sacrifice. I didn't see the twist with the Doctor being the one to lose his memory coming and you have to admit the whole thing looked fabulous. 

The thing is, the Doctor being the kind of man he is - a man who will spend four and a half billion years punching through a wall or digging into why we all dream of monsters under the bed - would not let a blank space in his memory where a companion should be stay a mystery for long (if he has indeed forgotten at all). It's the kind of thing that would drive him to investigate relentlessly until he uncovered the truth. I can understand why erasing his memory will allow him to move on from the loss of Clara and get back to doing what he does best, but that missing piece won't stay lost forever. That's why I don't think we are completely done with Clara and Ashildr and the American Diner TARDIS. Much like Donna Noble making an appearance in "The End of Time" or Amy Pond turning up in the final moments of "The Time of the Doctor", I think The Girl Who Won't Die will feature in the Twelfth Doctor's last story.

Overall it's been a very very strong season with only a couple of clunkers ("Before The Flood" and "The Zygon Invasion" I'm looking at you). I even enjoyed "Sleep No More" - more than some people did -  even if it was flawed, it did try something different. Capaldi has got better and better with each episode with the real highlights being "The Zygon Inversion" and of course "Heaven Sent".If they can keep away from the poor quips and forced humour and let him ACT, then he's going to really rise in my estimation as the Doctor. I'm glad Clara is gone now though, as I think it will give Capaldi a chance to shine without the baggage of a companion with such a complicated back story.

Mr Moffat has said that he likes to shake things up each year with a different feel. So for series ten you know what I'd like to see? No series arc at all. By all means have a couple of episodes that are sequels to previous stories - bring back the exiled Rassilon or the Daleks or even the Jagrafess - but don't link the stories together. Let's say eight stories across twelve episodes which are just adventures. No hybrid or "darkness is coming" or "four knocks". Just the Doctor and his companion travelling across time and space righting wrongs and having fun. Wouldn't that be different?

Roll on Christmas Day.

* Yes I know that you'll only get that reference if you are a Marvel comics fan.

Timelord Thoughts 11 - Heaven Sent

A story featuring just the Doctor in a head-spinning clockwork puzzle trap.  It's also the episode that has taken me the longest to write about (sorry about that). I wonder if that's an indication of the quality of :

Heaven Sent

• The opening monologue from the Doctor is obviously about the fact that Death is stalking towards us from the moment we are born. It's not so much the words that captivate me as the images and sounds that accompany them. The bright sunlight through windows onto cold hard stone, The orange glowing cogs. The bloody marks of the passageway floor. The music transforming from sounding like something our of a spaghetti western into a classical piece as we approach the central chamber and the hand pulling the lever and turning to dust. From the offset I can tell that this is going to be something special.
• Don't the struts holding up the teleport chamber look very like the girders from the Eighth Doctor's console room in the TARDIS?
• "I am the Doctor. I'm coming to find you, and I will never, ever stop". This is one pissed off Timelord. Remember those words.
• The castle setting with the TV screens and who knows what terrors and traps within reminds me of the game show "Fort Boyard". As well as ex-Eastender Leslie Grantham, the show featured Doctor Who gust star Geoffrey Balydon - and in series 5 a certain Mr Tom Baker.
• I  know it's a necessity to get dialogue into an episode featuring only one actor, but I totally buy that the Doctor would talk out loud to the enemies he knows must be listening.
• The spade covered in dried earth. Our first clue, But who put it there?
• Who knew that the Doctor hate's gardening? His first incarnation loved pottering about in that big place we saw in "The Five Doctors". 
• It clear that this regeneration is very impatient and I don't blame him -  "I just watched my best friend die in agony. My day can't get any worse. Let's see what we can do about yours!"
• You can just some writing on the far right wall - and it's the text of the Doctor' opening monologue. Which begs the question - who wrote it there? Is it some kind of instruction manual for the trap?

• The moment the Doctor realises that the TV screens show a view of him, that "something" is watching him and then he spots the hooded figure - I've got goosebumps. (I'm going the refer to the creature as "The Veil" from now on as that's what it's called in the credits if not on-screen.)
• A fly on a video screen. Another homage to "The Ring" maybe?
• The Doctor looks genuinely scared as he runs up the corridor looking left and right for a way out.
• "Back when I was young and telepathic". Seems he has lost those abilities in the 1,100 years since he was the Tenth  / Eleventh Doctor.
• If doors are always cross that might explain why I keep bumping into the frames when I walk through them. Poor spatial awareness you say? No, the doors just don't like me. This one does seem to like the Doctor though.
• "I've finally run out of corridor. There's a life summed up". Brilliant line.
• "I'm actually scared of dying" - and everything stops. Frozen in time. Flicking flies out of the air like Quicksilver from the X-Men / Avengers movies. Or a million other films, TV shows and video games. It's still a great image.

• Likewise the revolving levels of the castle look wonderful. This trap is not Fort Boyard - it's the classic puzzle game "Myst". Maybe all those gears and cogs on the opening titles meant more than just parts of a clock?
• It's a very nice room. It would get full marks on "Four In A Bed" if it wasn't part of a deadly trap.
• The peeling painting of Clara gets a sad smile from the Doctor as he examines it. But who painted it and put the eyeglass there for him to find.?
• Cleverly Moffat and director Rachel Talaly are using what they have told the audience to great effect. We've been told that what the The Veil sees appears on the monitors, so when an image of the Doctor in from of the painting appears, we *know* that its close, and that makes it all the scarier.
• That's some very Peter Davison era synth music from Murray Gold, which fits perfectly as the monster shuffles its way forward in the background. it reminds me of some of those 80s horror movies I used to watch.
• What an odd childhood the Doctor must have had if he was exposed to dead old ladies covered in veils and flies. The "pop" he does with his mouth when telling this tale is *very* Tom Baker.
• As is waving a 'gladioli' in front of a creeping monster while prancing about like a cross between W.C. Fields and Dame Edna.
• Okay. No I didn't see that dive coming. Is this all in the Doctor's head? Or is it in some virtual reality illusion? In any case it's a bloody long way down.
• Huh? So we're in the TARDIS now? Or are we?
• "Rule one of dying - don't". I can get behind that.
• So a "storm room" is the Doctor's version of Sherlock's "mind palace" - only this one comes complete with it's own mute version of Clara that never looks at you. Of course Sherlock Holmes is far from the first person real or fictional to use this technique.  It actually dates back all the way to Ancient Rome and Greece. I first came across it in the novel "Little Big" by John Crowley but more famous literary uses have been in novels by Thomas Harris (creator of the evil Hannibal Lecter) and Stephen King (in "Dreamcatcher"). On television it was discussed  by "Connections" presenter James Burke in his follow up series "The Day The Universe Changed" and various police procedurals such as "The Mentalist" and "Criminal Minds" have characters that utilise the method. Showman extraordinaire, all round genius and personal hero Derren Brown is also an expert (watch "Tricks Of The Mind" or any of his live shows to see what I mean.
• The fact that Clara is there is the storm room and the Doctor is compelled to explain how he survives the fall is not only a clever way of showing us how the Doctor thinks, it's also a manifestation of his grief.
• "Assume you're going to survive! Always assume that!". This echoes Clara's line in "The Witch's Familiar" when she tells Missy that the Doctor always assumes he is going to win, he just has to find out how.
• The grimace as he climbs the TARDIS steps. "I can't wait to hear what I say. I'm nothing without an audience". The sly look into camera. The fourth wall just shuddered ever so slightly...

• The part where the Doctor explains that all the things he did before jumping out the window were part of his plan is *very* Sherlock Holmes - specifically the Guy Ritchie films starring Robert Downey Jr. In those there were several sequences where time was slowed down to show Holmes anticipating his opponents moves ten steps ahead. "Am I spoiling the magic?" No, not at all Doctor.
• The lights slowly coming on around the TARDIS control room as the Doctor regains some form of conciousness is just lovely.
• Another great example of there not being a need to show us things. Just the sound of chalk on a blackboard and the questions being there is enough. "Clara" is the Doctor's mind refusing to give up and still wanting the answer to questions even as he lies drowning.
• Just how many skulls are down there? How many people have been killed by this trap?
• Notice how the music changes as soon as the Doctor re-enters the castle. Again it's more classical and majestic. The hero regaining his strength.
• Someone put that dry set of clothes in front of the fire (and lit the fire too). An exact match for what the Doctor is wearing too. Curiouser and curiouser. It's at this point that I'm starting to suspect that there might be some kind of time-related shenanigans going on.

• What do the arrows pointing to the circle of dust mean? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...? "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" from the Sandman comic - the master of dreams? Is it late and I'm getting tired?
• Yes Doctor, you are the mouse in a very large automated haunted mansion but with a scary ghost that can kill you. The question is why? More questions than answers so far, but I'm utterly gripped by this. Someone has been reading the blog and found out how much I like puzzle movies...
• "Must be Christmas". That grin means business.
• Now we are definitely in horror movie territory. The dark corridors. The dripping water. The creaking door. The squealing violins. The steam rising from plants in a garden that probably reeks of death and decay. Don't go in Doctor - too late!
• Ah so the arrows and the hexagon above mirror the garden and it's paths below. With what looks like a grave at it's heart. Does the tinkle of bells in the background also mirror the Victorian custom of putting bells in a casket in case the deceased was accidentally buried alive?
• The Doctor's acknowledgement that doing what he would do is what got Clara killed is tinged with such sadness. He blames himself. He knows that he could have - should have - done something to prevent it.
• Is persuading him to dig the grave another delaying tactic to get the Doctor to stay in one place so that The Veil can get him?
• Okay so when the Doctor opens the door and The Veil is right behind, it I literally jumped out of my chair. Even when watching it a second time and knowing it was coming it still made me start. I'm such a wuss.
• Time for another McCoy call back I think - and The Veil struggling to get through the door brings to mind "Curse of Fenric"...

• Just where is The Veil lumbering off to and how will it get the Doctor? It seems to have gone back to the store room. Personally I would not have removed that spade from the door until I was sure it was miles away and even then I'd be checking the screen every five mutes. I guess the flies act as a kind of early warning system so that the Doctor can continue to dig into the golden twilight. But why are the constellations different to what he expected if he has only travelled one light year? Maybe this isn't real space.
• "I Am In 12". Click. The pieces start to fit. That's written on the stone tile from the room with the saucepans. The arrows were highlighting that it was missing and that the Doctor had to find it. Question is - Who took that tile from the store room, wrote on it and buried it in the pit? The same person who left the spare set of clothes next to the fire? Is there another Doctor running around the castle somewhere? Also does 12 refer to the Twelfth Doctor, or 12 hours on a clock or a clue that this is all inside his own head? I'm really enjoying trying to figure all this out.
• Does "I am In 12" have an even wider significance? After all it was buried in The Veil's Yard. See? Valeyard? No? Oh please yourselves...
• Another damn jump as The Veil breaks through the bottom of the pit (I assume it tunnelled it's way through from the other side - wherever that is). I don't think I can take many more scares like that.
• Back to the "mind TARDIS" to try and get out of the latest situation and the Doctor realises he is being terrorised and interrogated. Someone wants his deepest darkest secrets - and this time his name will not do. I'm betting it's information about the Hybrid they want.
• That wide shot of the TARDIS control room is just stunning.

• I don't think it's a huge controversial revisionist leap to reveal that the Doctor originally left Gallifrey because he was scared of something. We've already had a solution to the regeneration limit (and *that* was only introduced thirteen years into the Classic series), and a "hidden " regeneration which didn't call himself the Doctor. This is minor in comparison (at least so far). It depends if they are going to retcon him knowing about the Daleks before he left. That might be a step too far.
• So every time the Doctor confesses a secret, he completes a level of the "game" and the castle levels rotate and new pathways and rooms are accessible. I think this is where the Doctor realises the scale of his trap and that there is no normal way off his floating prison.
• The rise and fall of those two submerged skulls is important - I just haven't figured out how yet.
• "The day you lose someone isn't the worst. At least you've got something to do. It's all the days they stay dead".It's a beautiful summation of the feelings of loss and grief after someone has gone from your life and this world forever. Is this one of the reasons why the Doctor never stands still? 
• Talking of which, it seems he has only 82 minutes to run through what appears to be a series of ever more exquisitely decorated rooms before The Veil catches up with him. This episode is benefiting hugely from being filmed on location. I really want to visit Cardiff and Caerphilly castles now.
• I recall that when the Doctor was hunting for the trap street in "Face The Raven", he told a little boy to "...remember 82". I wonder if that was just a little Easter Egg for the obsessively observant?
• As the Doctor starts to map the castle in his notebook and talk through his observations with "Clara", we can see the beginnings of a theory building up. Hundreds of rooms and corridors, not all accessible at the same time. Rooms that reset themselves if you leave them long enough. Pits fill in, Flowers re-pot themselves. It's like multiple circles of the Doctor's own personal eternal hell, where nothing he does ultimately has any effect - or does it?
• The light filtering through the window as the Doctor sits eating his meal is just sublime. They really have pulled out all the stops to make this episode look extra special.

• "I'm not scared of Hell. It's just Heaven for bad people". Trust the Doctor to have a different viewpoint to us mere mortals.
• Back in the teleport room the Doctor discovers a skull connected to the control panel. It's another important clue. Is it related to the other skulls in the ocean surrounding the castle? Whose skull is it? I'm beginning to put together my own theory involving time travel and a closed loop...
• Then in amongst all the Doctor's musings on the nature of birth and death, they throw the word "bird" into the mix. What's that got to do with anything? Is it a reference to the raven from last week's episode? I'm back to being confused again but I don't care. This is just too good.
• So if The Veil stops and the castle rotates every time the Doctor reveals a secret, what made the door behind the teleporter open? Was it the word "bird" or did the Doctor just get close enough to trigger something for the first time? Then again the Doctor has already said that he knows the castle wants him to solve it's secrets.
• Putting the skull on the edge like that, why it could easily fall off into the water...
• Finally Room 12 reveals itself and it's just another blocked entrance. The game isn't over yet - something more needs to happen before the Doctor can gain access.
• That cross fade from the Doctor's face to the skull confirms it - the skull *is* the Doctor's (however I don't think he has realised it yet). It matches perfectly. Which means there must have been thousands of time loops in the trap before this point, each one ending with the Doctor's death. But why was this skull in the teleport room?
• "It's a trap...I've been following breadcrumbs...this is somebody's game and I can't stop playing". The Doctor sounds very despondent right about now.
• So two days must now have passed since the Doctor arrived - we've seen two sunsets and two night skies. Skies in which the stars are all wrong.
• F***k ! Behind you Doctor! I'm almost shouting at the screen at this point. It's edge of your seat stuff.
• How can he be 7,000 years in the future without time travelling? Are the stars lying? Is this all some macabre "Truman Show"-like entertainment dome with a painted starscape?
• Phew! Another "confession" (hang on a minute...) stops The Veil just in time. This time it's the tale of the Hybrid, but with added commentary.
• "The Time Lords knew it was coming, like a storm on the wind". An "Oncoming Storm" maybe? Like the one in the legends of Skaro? My theory of who the Hybrid is may just have taken a tiny shuffle forward.
• And as the Doctor confesses he knows who, what and where the Hybrid is, the castle shudders and The Veil turns away. We know what that means by now - the door to Room 12 is finally open.
• The skull falls off the parapet into the waters to join it's identical cousins. That must mean that this sequence of events has happened many, many, many times before.
• The music as the Doctor creeps down the darkened corridor towards the shimmering light is almost religious or funereal. At first I thought it was a curtain of light but it's one final opaque wall with "Home" stencilled on it (which fades as the Doctor approaches). The builders of the trap have a twisted sense of humour.

• Nor are they going to make it easy to get through since it's composed of Azbantium - four hundred time harder then diamond and twenty feet thick. It's going to take a miracle.
• And with the camera performing the infamous Dolly Zoom effect (where the camera pulls away while the lens zooms in) a horrifying realisation appears on the Doctor's face. He knows what he has to do and it's so terrible that he retreats into his memory palace TARDIS.
• "That's when I remember...always then..exactly then...why can't I just lose?". Snap! Like clockwork another puzzle piece snaps into place. The Doctor hasn't just come to this conclusion once, He's been in this exact scenario before. Many. many times before. 
• The truth shakes him to his core and he desperately wants to just give in. Have we ever seen a Doctor this low before? But "Clara" won't let him stop fighting - his own brain won't let him. Even though at this point he now remembers all the times he's been round the maze before like a hamster in a wheel. Even though it appears to be utterly hopeless. That's what makes him the Doctor.
• And now there is nowhere to run anyway. Only that final confession will save the Doctor now. The Veil is in room 12 and there is no way out. Is there?
• "Whatever I do, you still won't be there". At his lowest ebb the Doctor's grief at losing Clara overwhelms him. It's heartbreaking and beautifully played by Capaldi.

• Finally his "Clara memory" speaks. "Get up off your arse...and win". Having Clara there as a constant companion in the Doctor's memory but always silent makes this moment much more effective than if she had been talking to him all along.
• Errr.. then again maybe he has been driven mad. Punching the azbantium wall like that must be agony but the Doctor seems determined to get out and punish those that put him in this trap. Just how is this going to help? 
• Slowly my pudding brain slots things together. A closed time loop. The second set of clothes. All the skulls. Surely they don't mean to....?
• "The Brother Grimm. Lovely fellas...they're on my darts team". Even this close to certain death the Doctor can joke.
• "The Shepherd Boy" tale is a short one in which a king asks the titular boy three fundamental questions of life, one of which is how many seconds of time there are in eternity... *
• Six punches. That's all the Doctor gets before The Veil catches up with him. It looks like a hideous painful death. And with that The Veil is gone, its task complete. The Doctor is dead (I don't believe that for a minute - we still have more than ten minutes to go).
• The storm room TARDIS lights flicker on and that familiar hum rises in the background. It's not a new thing to state that Time Lords can take a long time to die - the Tenth Doctor managed to hold off his regeneration long enough to visit every single one of his old companions (and set Captain Jack up on a date), so it's not a stretch to have this mortally wounded Doctor at the cusp of death for ages.
• "They know not to bury us early". That harkens back to the bells and my comment about Victorians being worried about being buried alive. Maybe I was on to something.
• It's going to take the Doctor a day and a half to die and he's not going to waste a single moment of it. Even this close to death he is looking for a way to win. Scarred, burnt and bloodied he drags himself up the tower stairs and through the corridors. Now we know where the blood came from at the top of the episode.

• I was right. Every skull at the bottom of the sea belongs to another version of the Doctor. It's an eternal trap which he is destined to repeat over and over and over forever - designed to torture him to the point where he has to give up the secrets of the Hybrid. Someone must hate the Doctor very much (or fear him even more).
• I was also wrong. It's not a time loop. Time is moving normally which means that based on his comment at the top of the tower, the Doctor (or a version of him) has been here seven thousand years already - and every time he gets to the glass wall in room 12 he figures out what is going on and how many times he must have been here before. It's truly a living hell and it would drive a normal person insane. 
• The hand we saw at the start? That was the Doctor. The only question left is quite how this one dies and another appears.
• It's a great analogy to compare teleporters to 3D printers. As much as you can apply real-world science to a totally impossible device, I've always thought that they must destroy your original body at the departure point and create a new one out of surrounding atoms at the arrival site.
• The Doctor says that all the rooms reset back to their original state when he first arrived. I don't think that quite holds true - this trap is more sophisticated than that, more cunning.
• If he has been here for 7,000 years and each "reset" lasts for three and a half days (we saw two night skies plus a day and a half to get back to the teleport room) then there have already been over 730,000 versions of the Doctor. Probably more as some will have been caught by The Veil quicker - and like this one they all failed to escape.
• As the Doctor burns (trust Moffat to give away the biggest clue at the very start of the episode) the clockwork turns and the teleporter fires up. Just a few fleeting moments left to write "Bird" in the dust of his previous selves. What *does* it mean?
• The cycle begins again with a new arrival. A new, old Doctor. Destined to repeat the actions of the last?
• "I am the Doctor. I'm coming to find you, and I will never, ever stop". And boy does he mean it.
• It's difficult to explain how astonished I am at the incredible montage that follows.Over and over and over the Doctor arrives, escapes The Veil out the window, changes his clothes, digs the pit, reaches Room 12, punches the wall a few times before being caught in the clutches of his worst nightmare. Drags himself back to the teleport room to try again. And again. And again. Seven thousand years. Twelve thousand years. Six hundred thousand years. Each time the Doctor tells a little more of the story of the Shepherd boy and each time a miniscule amount of the azbantium wall gives way. I keep expecting it to stop, but it doesn't. The sequence goes on and on and my jaw hangs open at the sheer audacity of it. One million, two hundred thousand years. Two million years. Is that a hole in the wall? Twenty million years. It's a masterclass in editing, the cycle repeating through the millennia. Now it's a definite corridor through the shining barrier. And still we go on. Fifty two million years. I'm holding my breath. How much longer? The story of the bird is being revealed word by word, step by step.  Faster and faster and faster. It's a blur but I know each action, each outcome. A billion years. More. Deeper into the wall. Closer to escape. Two billion years. Murray Gold makes up for everything else this season with an epic score. It's perfect. It's awe inspiring. "I will never ever stop". And then...
• After four and a half minutes of frankly astounding television the Doctor breaks free and The Veil dissolves into nothing more than rags and clockwork and cogs. I start to breathe again. What now?
• "Personally I think that's a hell of a bird". I think that's a hell of a f***ing Time Lord !!
• He was inside the damn Confession Dial all along ! I think part of me subconsciously guessed that, but wasn't sure until the Dial closes up over the castle. There is only one race that could put so much inside a tiny disc of metal. Which means the Time Lords were the Doctor's jailers. Another part of my theory must be right.
• The Dial might be in it's own Bootstrap Paradox though. The Doctor has it at the start of the series, gives it to Missy for some reason then gets it back, He  hands it to Ashildr in "Face The Raven" and now it's in the middle of the desert. Where did it come from in the first place? There's still one episode left to go...

• "I came the long way round". A deliberate callback to the last line of "The Day of the Doctor" - but I bet he never expected that it would be a two billion year year long journey.
• The Capitol dome rises out of the desert, pristine and shining. Is this before or after the Time War?
• If what the Doctor says is the truth then the final part of my theory was correct too. "The Hybrid is me". **
• We're back on Gallifrey - and there's going to be hell to pay...

Conclusion:

Moffat does it again. Consistently he writes the most original, intricate, bold, format-busting, confusing, twisty and downright amazing episodes of Doctor Who. Words fail me. It's a stone cold classic and the first time I finished watching I could hardly speak. It's Peter Capaldi's finest hour and he's finally and irrecoverably won me over.

The Veil was bloody terrifying for something so simple - made more so by the Doctor's obvious fear of it. The mechanical castle trap was wonderfully realised both in location and set form - full of atmosphere and beautiful designs .On occasion the shot composition was almost painterly. Rachel Talalay and Michael Pickwoad deserve as much kudos as Mr. Capaldi.

The concepts littered throughout this whole series have been preparing us for this episode. The broom that is still the same broom even if the head and the shaft are replaced. The bootstrap paradox. Who wrote Beethoven's symphonies. Ripples in time. Forget the Hybrid - this was the real series arc. Even the supposed talking to the camera turns out just to be the Doctor in his "storm room".

Yes the story does show it's influences. Off the top of my head I can name Moon, Cube, Triangle, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure / Bogus Journey, The Prisoner, Groundhog Day, The Shawshank Redemption (just about), The Avengers: "The House That Jack Built", Sherlock (of course), The Prestige, It Follows (funny that I'd only watched that a week before), Dark City, Myst (I mentioned it earlier), the Dark Tower novels. The list goes on.

Let's not forget our Greek mythology lesson. It's the story of Tantalus. He became one of the residents of the deepest part of Tartarus, the Greek Underworld. He was condemned there for stealing the ambrosia of the gods and revealing their secrets when he was taken to Olympus by Zeus. Tantalus's punishment was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches moved out of the way. Whenever he bent down for a drink, the water receded. Eternal temptation without satisfaction (the origin of the word 'tantalise').

Let's talk about the score. Murray Gold didn't produce inappropriate incidental music this week. He didn't even produce something as good as "Doomsday". He surpassed himself and created a whole superb music suite. Totally unexpected and beautiful to listen to. It even used themes and motifs from Beethoven to link back to earlier in the series.

It's difficult to know what to say overall without gushing superlatives. Of course it's not without it's minor flaws and unanswered questions and some of the in-story logic doesn't quite make sense (would you expect anything less from Steven Moffat) but those things are far outweighed by the cleverness of the story and the way it was told, the towering performance of the lead actor and the quality of the direction and (not forgetting) the editing. Some will decry it as "too complicated" or "not for the kids". I don't care. I wouldn't want to see an episode like this every week (nor do I think you could repeat it's style) but this ticked all the boxes for me. It's high in my personal top ten of all time favourite episodes. So there.

God I can't wait for next Saturday

As an extra, and for a bit of fun, let's look at some of those unanswered or unclear questions:

• Who painted the picture of Clara? 
• Who put the eyeglass on the mantelpiece?
• Who drew the arrows pointing to the flagstone?
• Who dug the grave in the first place and put the flagstone in the bottom with "I am in 12" written on it?
• Who put the dirty shovel near the teleport room?

It's all part of the trap to get the Doctor to make his confessions. The painting was there to twist the knife into the Doctor's grief and his guilt at his part in Clara's death. Similarly the eye piece to make him examine it so he would be distracted from the slow arrival of The Veil. The arrows were in the storeroom to get him to look for the flagstone. The shovel was there to get him to dig. The flagstone was under the ground with it's cryptic message to get him to figure out the rooms all had numbers and look for room 12. Ashildr said that the Doctor could never resist a good mystery. The abzbantium wall was meant to be the final barrier, at which point the Doctor was meant to realise the futility of his existence and give up all his secrets. They never planned on him hitting the wall with his bare fists for two billion years.

• Who put the clothes there for the Doctor to find? Why didn't they reset like everything else?

It could have been the Time Lords, but then they wouldn't have known the Doctor would dive into the sea to escape The Veil. I like to think that the first iteration of the Doctor took his clothes off and carried out the rest of the cycle in his undergarments (complete with question mark underpants). Because the Doctor left them there, they stayed there. Part of him was always in that room I think.

• So how do you explain the Doctor's skull and the word "bird"?

Ah, well the rooms only reset when the Doctor leaves - and apart from the point when he picks up the skull and the word gets blown away by the draft, there is always a version of the Doctor in the teleport room, either dead or alive.

• With each version of the Doctor, does he use the same confessions or does he have to come up with new ones? 

The Doctor probably used the same ones, as they were new to that iteration. 

• What happened to the untold number of Doctor skulls dropped  into the sea over the course of two billion years?

It's a Time Lord trap using TARDIS technology. Therefore it's an infinite ocean that never fills up. Or the skulls turn to dust eventually. Or they wash further out to sea. They don't reset because they are outside the castle. Take your pick.

• Why does he use his fist to punch the wall?

When the Doctor enters Room 12 it's in a bit of a rush and he hasn't any other implements (like the spade) with him. Then The Veil blocks the entrance and there is no way out. What about the sonic shades? Errr.... well maybe they don't work on abzantium.

• Why doesn't the wall reset each time? 

It doesn't need to. The Time Lords planned it as the final trap from which there was no escape. The designers thought he would only arrive in the last room once, succumb to despair and reveal everything in order to escape.

Does any of this matter? The thing is, we can all come up with our own answers. It's fun to try. Even without them the episode is still incredible.

I'm incredibly late with this I know, but at least I've only got just over a day to wait for "Hell Bent" !

* The boy replies "In Lower Pomerania is the Diamond Mountain, which is two miles and a half high, two miles and a half wide, and two miles and a half in depth; every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over.".

** Unless of course he means "It's ME", in which case i will be VERY disappointed. ***

*** Then again if it's all about being half-human on his mother's side I owe someone a pint...