meta: Pond Life
It begins in fire and water. Visually, we've got both the red/orange of the flames, and the blue glow from the ship that comes from behind the sliding doors - and the Doctor is surfing. Because these are the Firefalls - the polarity of fire and water unified. He's our Trickster God, chaotic, yet able to negotiate the dangerous currents that come when you unify two opposites.
In the following scene of Part 1, with the Mata Hari the viewer is within the fire itself. We zoom into the scene from within the fireplace - or perhaps from the other side of the fireplace. This is reminiscent of The Girl In the Fireplace in some ways; we are looking through the fireplace into the Doctor's world, as Reinette did, before the Doctor crossed into her world. And soon the Doctor's going to be crossing back into our world in the form of the new series. Also, considering the proliferation of mirrors, physically and as a theme in the last 2 series, it was nice to see a mirrored candle holder on the wall of the room, with the flame clearly shown in the glass. Or through the looking glass.
We've got red and blue in the form of the clothing worn by the people on wither side of the Doctor dancing in the following scene too.
Part 2
Hmm. I wasn't able to make much meta of this. Only that for me overall Pond Life seems very much about Rory in a lot of ways. Here the Doctor crosses boundaries that were set. He invades an intimate space. Rory speaks about the idea of rules - but with the Trickster there are no boundaries. The Trickster runs at them and jumps over them. Then kicks them. There's an old theatre poster on their wall too. A theatre which was destroyed and never rebuilt. A poster misplaced out of its time zone.
Part 3
The music at the start of part 3 is the same as the music at the start of Amy's Choice. The start of Amy's Choice is a wedded bliss situation (for Rory), and Rory is accused at one point in the ep by the Doctor of it being his dream, and he als specifically states that he wants that reality. So the use of the music is bringing us back to Rory's dreams of a normal life with Amy. The colouring of the walls - the pale yellow - is also the same as the colouring of the nursery in the house of Amy's Choice, where Rory's final scene plays out. Then, Rory's peace is invaded again - a place that should be secure, where you should feel a sense of privacy - the bathroom, the toilet. The Doctor's life encroaching onto the most intimate of situations.
Part 4
So, here is where I become even more convinced that this is very much about Rory. We see Roman Soldiers on Rory's lunchbox. It's a reminder of what he went through, of all the time he waited for Amy. He's the one most uncomfortable with the situation, he's the one making the call to the Doctor. As
sarah531 pointed out, Rory has memories of living during the Roman Empire. He's seen slavery first hand.
Part 5
Interesting. We've got the World Tree. We start with the Doctor on a ladder - a symbol of ascension to the Above. And he's mending the Above of the Tardis - our first clue that something is broken. This puts him on a level with the upper branches of a tree. Then at the very end, we have Amy's shopping bag with a tree symbol on. I can't unpick this until the series starts, I don't think. But...my feeling is that it's the Doctor's presence in their lives, and Rory's issues with that, that's led to the marriage breakdown. But maybe I'm completely wrong.
This entry was originally posted at http://lonewytch.dreamwidth.org/13772.html You can comment here or there, i watch both.