meta: The Songs of the Red Snow - Cold War
This meta is late, late, late due to personal stuff, so I hope there is still interest in it.
Fantastic episode. To be perfectly honest, I am not usually a huge fan of Gatiss’s work on Who, but I thought this was wonderful. Atmospheric, loads of tension, and the Ice Warrior was really scary. It was also delicious from the point of view of writing meta.
One of the things that I want to talk about briefly before getting into the meat (meat, meta, meat) of the ep itself, is Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, also called the Hero’s Journey. Clara’s journey with the Doctor is following some of the key points of Campbell’s mythic map.
Campbell published a very influential book in 1949 called Hero With a Thousand Faces. In it he argued that myths from different cultures and across different time periods all share elements of a fundamental structure. He called this the Monomyth or Hero’s Journey. This structure describes stages that the Hero, or protagonist of a story or myth passes through during the course of the story, and reflects different aspects of human experience and the human journey through life.
This idea has been expanded on and refined over the years by other authors, including an exploration of how this manifests in Cinema in The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler (fantastic book). Not all stories contain every stage of the Journey, and they don’t always happen in the exact order presented in the Monomyth (and especially not when we’re dealing with characters like River Song), but it’s possible to apply the Journey to reading a lot of TV shows, films and books.
So, in a very very short and inadequate summary of the structure - the Hero will undergo a process where they step into some sort of Otherworld or supernatural realm, or into a new and completely unfamiliar stage or territory in their life (the Doctor's world). Once there, there are various stages that they pass through and many challenges to be met, and ultimately they will emerge transformed back into the Ordinary World. With Clara and the Doctor we are currently moving thruogh stage 1 of the Monomyth.
Stage 1 - Departure, Separation
Call to Adventure The Hero, who lives in the Ordinary World gets a Call to Adventure. For Clara there was a reversal of this, as she was the one who actually made the call to the Doctor, leading to him turning up on her doorstep and deliver her true call. This is a call to enter a previously unknown world of unfamiliar forces and events in order to reach some ultimate goal, retrieve something or find a gift - for Clara, her goal is to travel, to see the 101 places contained in the book her mother gave her. It’s both a physical journey out into the world, and also a fulfillment of the legacy of the book, left to her by her mother.
Refusal of the Call The Hero doesn’t always heed the call immediately. As a result they can lose the ability to take direct action, and instead become a victim. Clara closes the door in the Doctor’s face in episode one, and as a result is uploaded by the Spoonhead, necessitating her rescue. She also resists going into the Tardis when he asks her to for the first time, and later she refuses to give a direct answer as to whether she will travel with him.
Supernatural Aid When the Hero decides to take on the quest, a guide or a mentor will appear, and will often furnish the Hero with amultets or charms to help with the quest. The Doctor always plays the role of this guide or mentor - though that’s not to say a companion can’t play this role for the Doctor in many ways too. Clara also has a mentor in the form of the memories of her mother, and in the Leaf and the Book her mother gave to her.
The Crossing of the First Threshold The Hero steps out of the Ordinary World and into the Special Place, they step out of the realm of that which is known to them into a space where the rules are unknown to them. Clara is taken to a world totally unlike her own, filled with alien beings and Gods, she is immersed fully into the Doctor’s world, although she returns to her own at the end of the episode.
The Belly of the Whale This is where we are now with this episode. The Belly of the Whale in the Journey, is the stage at which the Hero leaves behind everything they have ever known, it is the final stage of separation between their old way of being and their new way of being. The Journey of the Hero is all about change and growth, about a rebirth into new ways of being, so this stage is much about symbolically dying to the old self and returning to a womb-state in preparation for transformation. As such, the Belly of the Whale can also be very much linked to the Underworld which is the realm of the dead.
In Amy’s era, at The Belly of the Whale stage in series 5, we had her and the Doctor literally sliding down into the mouth of the Star Whale. Here, at the Belly of the Whale stage, the Doctor and Clara emerge into a sub deep beneath the sea - the visual and practical links between a sub and a whale being totally obvious. Campbell says the following about this stage of the Journey:
The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappearance corresponds to the passing of a worshipper into a temple-where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple interior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond, above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same.
So, in keeping with the Doctor and Clara being in the Underworld, they are literally deep down underneath the sea, where it is dark. They have sunk down and the sub is teetering on the edge of a deep sea-trench - teetering on the edge of all of them being crushed to death by the weight of both the water, and the weight of the things that can be found in the Underworld, in the dark part of the self. Of course, the Underworld is the realm of the Dead so it’s entirely appropriate that they literally teeter on the bring between life and death, in danger of being annihilated by the darkness underneath. . Symbolically in the Western occult tradition the ocean/water represents the unconscious/subconscious, memories, dreaming, journeys into the dark places and the realm of intuition.
Appropriately, in the first shot of the show, a camera sweeps down into the dark depths of the ocean, towards the whale-like submarine. Remember how I keep writing about the idea of unification of opposites - The name of the sub itself embodies a contradiction. It is called the Firebird. Fire, as the opposite of water, and a bird as a creature whose natural element is the sky in contrast to the whale whose natural element is the depths of the ocean.
In Fire and Water in the Belly of the Whale
The Tardis materializes onto the ship to the colour red and a cascade of water. The colour scheme of red and blue is a popular on in Moffat era Who, and the colours can represent Fire and Water. These are both symbols of purification of baptism and therefore death to an old way of life and a rebirth - and they are all over this episode. It’s reminiscent of the 11th Doctor’s birthing into the world of Amelia Pond, when he emerges from the fire of the crashing Tardis covered with the water from the library swimming pool. Here's a few images of the Tardis emerging, and of the blue/red theme throughout the episode.
When they go through the Doctor's pockets, shortly after he and Clara arrive on the sub, one of the items they discover is a toffee apple. Apples are a food which is very much associated with the idea of the Underworld/the land of the dead. The apple harvest occurs at a time of year when the nights are growing longer, and so have become associated with the time of Hallowe'en/the celtic festival of Samhain. Mythologically, it is a time of year when the veils between the worlds of living and dead are seen as being thinner than usual, and those from the Underworld walk the normal world. There's also a link back to the idea that in the previous episode, the Doctor offered Clara a blue glowing fruit which was a symbol of stepping into his world.
Shortly after this, in a near-death experience which mirrors the return to the womb that the Belly of the Whale stage is all about, Clara is thrown beneath the water on the sub and is rendered unconscious - again you can see the red/blue - fire/water colour scheme being used here.
Clara: We were sinking.
Doctor:Yes
Clara: What happened?
Doctor: We sank.
So after the production of the apple, amidst fire and water, a near death experience and a literal sinking, the true nature of their problem is revealed, in the form of Skaldak.
Doctor: It never rains, but it pours.
Skaldak too is very much associated with the idea of Water and Fire - he is frozen in a block of Ice, which is melted by a blow torch. I love riffing on Norse mythology, so it’s worth noting here that in the Norse creation myth, the Universe was created out of the elements of Ice and Fire meeting each other and from this grew the first living being. In the myth, the North is a realm of ice, wind and frost with an icy river flowing from it southwards. In the south is the realm of fire, with a river of fire flowing northwards out of it. In between the two of these realms was a great void, a gap of nothingness. When the two energies of fire and ice met in the abyss, a mist was created (note also the extensive use of smoke/mist/vapour throughout this episode) and the drops from it formed into a giant called Ymir - the first living thing. It's a creation and rebirth story.
There’s the moment when they first see the Ice Warrior and there is a shot up close - it looks like motes of dust in the sunlight, or ice particles refracting the light next to its face. Also, the Warrior of Ice is stunned by an electrical charge. The union of water and fire again.
Anyway, back to Clara's journey. Down in the Belly of the Whale Clara is confronted by the true reality of traveling with the Doctor. She is, for the first time, totally terrified. She talks to the Professor about the courage she had in speaking to the Ice Warrior, but is disturbed by the sight of the dead bodies ripped to shreds. This is real Belly of the Wlahe stuff - returning to the ultimate womb of darkness that is death, Clara is confronted by the mortal nature of humans in the most visceral way possible. She’s already well grounded in this idea of mortality as we discussed with regard to the last ep, where she used the power of death/life through the Leaf to vanquish the Sun God. However, here she is face to face with her own mortality. She is aware that her own life could be forfeit.
Clara: Seeing the bodies back there, it all got very…real. Are we gonna make it?
So, what's next for Clara? Well, in the Monomyth we are now moving into the second stage, where the Hero is fully within the Special Place. This stage is called Intiation, and the first stage of this is the Road of Trials. This is a series of tests that the hero has to undergo, in order to begin their transformation.
Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed-again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unretainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land.
Grand Marshall Skaldak and the Doctor
Doctor: Skaldak won’t talk to you, you’re an enemy soldier
Captain: And how would he know that?
Doctor: A soldier knows another soldier. He’ll smell it on you, smell it on you a mile off.
Captain: And he wouldn’t smell it on you, Doctor?
One of the other things that happen when characters symbolically journey into the Underworld, is that they enter the realm of the subconscious and encounter the Shadow Self. The Shadow is a Jungian concept, and represents elements of the Self that a person has pushed down into their subconscious, because they do not want to own or acknowledge them. The Shadow is the monster within all of us; all the things we wish we hadn't done, all the things of which we are ashamed. The thing with the Shadow though is this: it has to be embraced and owned in order for us/our characters to be whole and complete. It's that whole thing about unification of seeming opposites (remember fire and water) that I was writing about in reference to The Rings of Akhaten. This facing of the monster is always a key part of the Doctor's journey, with regular mirroring of these two different aspects of himself.
Appropriately, Doctor and Skaldak are mirrors of each other in a number of ways. As is often the case with Moffat's Who, the monster isn't everything he appears to be, and much of it is down to perception - just as it is with the Doctor who isn't the clear cut hero he sometimes appears to be. Both of them could be considered either heroes or villains in terms of their histories; both of them are warriors yet have the ability to be merciful. Both of them have their own sense of honour.
There’ also a mirror in the sense that Skaldak has been frozen for thousands of years…in a way this is also like the Doctor He has been damaged - badly damaged - by everything that’s happened to him. I’m reminded of The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe where the Doctor tells Madge that he doesn't feel like they do any more (only to discover he can cry at the end of the ep.) In some senses the Doctor has had to become colder in order to deal with everything he’s lost.
We see two of the different sides of the Docotr, represented in the framing of this shot, as he speaks to Clara through the comms system. The Doctor is shot framed on either side by the Professor and the Captain. The archaeologist, the historian who loves to research, discover hidden things and learn (remember the way Skaldak investigates and researches the structure of the ship and the human's bodies). And the warrior who has the ability to press a button that could being about the end of the world.
There are further Doctor/Skaldak mirrors in the armor. They are both creatures of duality - the Ice Warrior's hard exterior represents a code of honour, but it hides a more vulnerable inner being that works by stealth and cunning. The Doctor's usual mask of Hero and Saviour hides a man who is deeply damaged and responsible for genocide, and who can be deeply deceptive. The light inside the heart of the armor that sends out the signal for the Ice Warrior's race to find, him glows yellow. It’s the thing that will identify him to his people, and is the same colour as the Time energy inside the Doctor - the identifying feature of the Time Lords that lends them the ability to regenerate.
Skaldak: My distress call has not been answered, it will never be answered, My people are dust.
Like the Doctor, Skaldak believes himself to be the last of his kind, alone in the Universe.
At the climax of the episode, Skaldak and the Doctor's actions directly mirror each other - as both of them threaten to blow things up. The Doctor is prepared to re-enact his actions in the Time War - he is prepared to sacrifice a smaller amount of people for the rest of Earth, just as he was prepared to sacrifice his own people for the sake of the rest of the Universe at the end of the Time War.
The Doctor tries to persuade Skaldak not to launch the nuclear warheads, and his words are not only applicable to Skaldak, but also to himself.
Doctor: Is this how you want history to remember you? Grand Marshall Skaldak, destroyer of Earth - because that’s what you’ll be if you send those missiles. Not a soldier. A murderer. ..5 billion lives extinguished, no chance for goodbyes, a world - a world snuffed out like a candle flame. Alright. Alright Skaldak, you leave me no choice. I'm a Time Lord Skaldak, I know a thing or two about sonic technology myself.
Skaldak: A threat! You threaten me, Doctor?
Doctor: No. No, not you. All of us. I will blow this sub up before you can even reach that button, Grand Marshall, blow us all to oblivion.
Skaldak: You would sacrifice yourself?
Doctor: In a heartbeat.
Skaldak: Mutually assured destruction.
Doctor: Look into my eyes Skaldak. Look into my eyes. Tell me you’re capable of doing this. Can you do that? Dare you do that? Look into my eyes Skaldak, come on! Face to face.
Skaldak: Well, Doctor. Which of us shall blink first?
Ultimately, Skaldak receives a sort of ascension, he is lifted up into the ship by a ray of light, if fact the whole sub is lifted up from the bottom of the ocean. So, through the monster's race the journey is made back up from the Underworld to the Upperworld. It's a symbol of the idea that enlightenment ascension cannot be gained by denying the monstrous part of the nature but by accepting it. Ultimately engaging and coming face to face with the monster/the shadow self, eye to eye and with masks off, is what enables us to be born into striving for a new way of being.
Skaldak engages with this light side of himself - by showing mercy, and ultimately, the Docotr gives him the warrior's salute.
Briefly, on Skaldak's titles and their links to the idea of light born out of darkness/birth/rebirth:
Doctor: Sovereign of the Tharsisian Caste, Vanquisher of the Phobos Heresy. The greatest hero the proud Martian race has ever produced.
Phobos was an ancient Greek word for “fear/terror” - it’s where the word “phobia” derives from. Phobos was also the ancient Greek god of horror. He doesn't actually feature directly in any myths, but is more a representation of the fear brought on by battle. As a deity, he was worshiped by both warriors and heroes. Skaldak also commanded a fleet called Nyx-Tharsis with his daughter beside him. Nyx was the Greek goddess of the night, and the mother of Sleep and Death. She is birthed by Chaos, and she herself gives birth to Brightness and Day - and later a number of dark Gods and Goddesses. So the Greek myth links to Skaldak are very much associated with darkness and fear, and the idea that the fundamental elements of the daylight and the sun are born out of darkness. It's a real message of hope.
***engage speculation mode***
So, if Skaldak is a mirror of the Doctor, I find it intriguing that we have this bit of dialogue:
Skaldak: I was Commander of the Nyx-Tharsis, may daughter stood by me. It was her first taste of action. We sang the songs of the old times, the songs of the red snow. 5000 years. Now my daughter will be dust. Only dust.
I’d previously written off the idea of Clara being a relative of the Doctor's due to the snogging and the flirting. Because Moffat wouldn't take it there…surely? Of course, there’s all the parallel's here I've spoken about above, mirrors to the Doctor having lost his family, that fact that everyone he knows is dead and gone too.
However, this idea that Skaldak took his daughter into battle, and it was her first taste of action… this is the first time we see Clara really, properly rattled by what is going on. It’s the first time the Doctor takes her properly into a battle (of sorts) with him. It makes me rethink whether she could in fact be related to him. Considering the fact, also, that Skaldak thinks he is totally alone, abandoned - but it turns out his people still live and they come back for him. I'm swaying again towards the idea that Clara is related to the Doctor.
Song and Sound
In the last episode, the power of song and sound was made explicit. Here this theme continues - initially, the song Vienna by Ultravox interrupts the nuclear missile release drill at the moment when the finger hovers over the button. The symbolism is clear - music/song can save.
Later on the professor suggests to Clara that she sing a song to help her feel brave.
Professor: I always song a song.
Clara: What?
Professor: Keep my spirits up.
Clara: Yeah, that would work..if this was Pinnochio.
Professor: Do you know Hungry Like the Wolf?
Clara: What?
Professor: Duran Duran, one of my favourites. Come on!
Clara: I’m not singing a song!
After this when there’s a strange noise and Clara becomes afraid, the Professor starts bopping about and singing Hungry Like the Wolf.
In the last ep we saw the use of sonic technology with the doors in the Pyramid of the Sun God being controlled by sound waves. We see it here again, when Skaldak summons the suit to come back to him.
Doctor: Sonic tech, Clara. The song of the Ice Warrior.
It's also likely Clara's final words to Skaldak that encourage him to be merciful, she reminds him of the songs he sang with his daughter.
Clara: Why did you hesitate, back there, in the dark? You were going to knill this man, remember? I begged you not to and you listened. Why show compassion then Skaldak and not now? The Doctor’s right. Billions will die. Mothers, sons, fathers, daughters. Remember that last battle Skaldak? Your daughter. You sang the songs…
Skaldak: …of the red snows.
At the end, when they stand poised on the brink between the Doctor blowing up the sub, or the Martians setting of the nuclear warheads, Clara at last starts to sing Hungry Like the Wolf . As she's singing that song, there comes the moment when they are saved as Skaldak disarms the nuclear warheads.
So, in the last episode and this one, we've had the power of song as something that can keep sing a God to sleep, that can guard against fear and that can hold memories and remind someone of compassion and forgiveness. As i'm typing this section, i'm considering the series finale. I'm thinking about the idea that song saves, that melody can provide salvation. I'm thinking about River Song/Melody Pond and how all this may be pointing to the fact that she may be the one that saves the Universe from the consequences of the answer to the Question. But at what price?
Fantastic episode. To be perfectly honest, I am not usually a huge fan of Gatiss’s work on Who, but I thought this was wonderful. Atmospheric, loads of tension, and the Ice Warrior was really scary. It was also delicious from the point of view of writing meta.
One of the things that I want to talk about briefly before getting into the meat (meat, meta, meat) of the ep itself, is Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, also called the Hero’s Journey. Clara’s journey with the Doctor is following some of the key points of Campbell’s mythic map.
Campbell published a very influential book in 1949 called Hero With a Thousand Faces. In it he argued that myths from different cultures and across different time periods all share elements of a fundamental structure. He called this the Monomyth or Hero’s Journey. This structure describes stages that the Hero, or protagonist of a story or myth passes through during the course of the story, and reflects different aspects of human experience and the human journey through life.
This idea has been expanded on and refined over the years by other authors, including an exploration of how this manifests in Cinema in The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler (fantastic book). Not all stories contain every stage of the Journey, and they don’t always happen in the exact order presented in the Monomyth (and especially not when we’re dealing with characters like River Song), but it’s possible to apply the Journey to reading a lot of TV shows, films and books.
So, in a very very short and inadequate summary of the structure - the Hero will undergo a process where they step into some sort of Otherworld or supernatural realm, or into a new and completely unfamiliar stage or territory in their life (the Doctor's world). Once there, there are various stages that they pass through and many challenges to be met, and ultimately they will emerge transformed back into the Ordinary World. With Clara and the Doctor we are currently moving thruogh stage 1 of the Monomyth.
Stage 1 - Departure, Separation
Call to Adventure The Hero, who lives in the Ordinary World gets a Call to Adventure. For Clara there was a reversal of this, as she was the one who actually made the call to the Doctor, leading to him turning up on her doorstep and deliver her true call. This is a call to enter a previously unknown world of unfamiliar forces and events in order to reach some ultimate goal, retrieve something or find a gift - for Clara, her goal is to travel, to see the 101 places contained in the book her mother gave her. It’s both a physical journey out into the world, and also a fulfillment of the legacy of the book, left to her by her mother.
Refusal of the Call The Hero doesn’t always heed the call immediately. As a result they can lose the ability to take direct action, and instead become a victim. Clara closes the door in the Doctor’s face in episode one, and as a result is uploaded by the Spoonhead, necessitating her rescue. She also resists going into the Tardis when he asks her to for the first time, and later she refuses to give a direct answer as to whether she will travel with him.
Supernatural Aid When the Hero decides to take on the quest, a guide or a mentor will appear, and will often furnish the Hero with amultets or charms to help with the quest. The Doctor always plays the role of this guide or mentor - though that’s not to say a companion can’t play this role for the Doctor in many ways too. Clara also has a mentor in the form of the memories of her mother, and in the Leaf and the Book her mother gave to her.
The Crossing of the First Threshold The Hero steps out of the Ordinary World and into the Special Place, they step out of the realm of that which is known to them into a space where the rules are unknown to them. Clara is taken to a world totally unlike her own, filled with alien beings and Gods, she is immersed fully into the Doctor’s world, although she returns to her own at the end of the episode.
The Belly of the Whale This is where we are now with this episode. The Belly of the Whale in the Journey, is the stage at which the Hero leaves behind everything they have ever known, it is the final stage of separation between their old way of being and their new way of being. The Journey of the Hero is all about change and growth, about a rebirth into new ways of being, so this stage is much about symbolically dying to the old self and returning to a womb-state in preparation for transformation. As such, the Belly of the Whale can also be very much linked to the Underworld which is the realm of the dead.
In Amy’s era, at The Belly of the Whale stage in series 5, we had her and the Doctor literally sliding down into the mouth of the Star Whale. Here, at the Belly of the Whale stage, the Doctor and Clara emerge into a sub deep beneath the sea - the visual and practical links between a sub and a whale being totally obvious. Campbell says the following about this stage of the Journey:
The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown and would appear to have died. This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. Instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again. The disappearance corresponds to the passing of a worshipper into a temple-where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal. The temple interior, the belly of the whale, and the heavenly land beyond, above, and below the confines of the world, are one and the same.
So, in keeping with the Doctor and Clara being in the Underworld, they are literally deep down underneath the sea, where it is dark. They have sunk down and the sub is teetering on the edge of a deep sea-trench - teetering on the edge of all of them being crushed to death by the weight of both the water, and the weight of the things that can be found in the Underworld, in the dark part of the self. Of course, the Underworld is the realm of the Dead so it’s entirely appropriate that they literally teeter on the bring between life and death, in danger of being annihilated by the darkness underneath. . Symbolically in the Western occult tradition the ocean/water represents the unconscious/subconscious, memories, dreaming, journeys into the dark places and the realm of intuition.
Appropriately, in the first shot of the show, a camera sweeps down into the dark depths of the ocean, towards the whale-like submarine. Remember how I keep writing about the idea of unification of opposites - The name of the sub itself embodies a contradiction. It is called the Firebird. Fire, as the opposite of water, and a bird as a creature whose natural element is the sky in contrast to the whale whose natural element is the depths of the ocean.
In Fire and Water in the Belly of the Whale
The Tardis materializes onto the ship to the colour red and a cascade of water. The colour scheme of red and blue is a popular on in Moffat era Who, and the colours can represent Fire and Water. These are both symbols of purification of baptism and therefore death to an old way of life and a rebirth - and they are all over this episode. It’s reminiscent of the 11th Doctor’s birthing into the world of Amelia Pond, when he emerges from the fire of the crashing Tardis covered with the water from the library swimming pool. Here's a few images of the Tardis emerging, and of the blue/red theme throughout the episode.
When they go through the Doctor's pockets, shortly after he and Clara arrive on the sub, one of the items they discover is a toffee apple. Apples are a food which is very much associated with the idea of the Underworld/the land of the dead. The apple harvest occurs at a time of year when the nights are growing longer, and so have become associated with the time of Hallowe'en/the celtic festival of Samhain. Mythologically, it is a time of year when the veils between the worlds of living and dead are seen as being thinner than usual, and those from the Underworld walk the normal world. There's also a link back to the idea that in the previous episode, the Doctor offered Clara a blue glowing fruit which was a symbol of stepping into his world.
Shortly after this, in a near-death experience which mirrors the return to the womb that the Belly of the Whale stage is all about, Clara is thrown beneath the water on the sub and is rendered unconscious - again you can see the red/blue - fire/water colour scheme being used here.
Clara: We were sinking.
Doctor:Yes
Clara: What happened?
Doctor: We sank.
So after the production of the apple, amidst fire and water, a near death experience and a literal sinking, the true nature of their problem is revealed, in the form of Skaldak.
Doctor: It never rains, but it pours.
Skaldak too is very much associated with the idea of Water and Fire - he is frozen in a block of Ice, which is melted by a blow torch. I love riffing on Norse mythology, so it’s worth noting here that in the Norse creation myth, the Universe was created out of the elements of Ice and Fire meeting each other and from this grew the first living being. In the myth, the North is a realm of ice, wind and frost with an icy river flowing from it southwards. In the south is the realm of fire, with a river of fire flowing northwards out of it. In between the two of these realms was a great void, a gap of nothingness. When the two energies of fire and ice met in the abyss, a mist was created (note also the extensive use of smoke/mist/vapour throughout this episode) and the drops from it formed into a giant called Ymir - the first living thing. It's a creation and rebirth story.
There’s the moment when they first see the Ice Warrior and there is a shot up close - it looks like motes of dust in the sunlight, or ice particles refracting the light next to its face. Also, the Warrior of Ice is stunned by an electrical charge. The union of water and fire again.
Anyway, back to Clara's journey. Down in the Belly of the Whale Clara is confronted by the true reality of traveling with the Doctor. She is, for the first time, totally terrified. She talks to the Professor about the courage she had in speaking to the Ice Warrior, but is disturbed by the sight of the dead bodies ripped to shreds. This is real Belly of the Wlahe stuff - returning to the ultimate womb of darkness that is death, Clara is confronted by the mortal nature of humans in the most visceral way possible. She’s already well grounded in this idea of mortality as we discussed with regard to the last ep, where she used the power of death/life through the Leaf to vanquish the Sun God. However, here she is face to face with her own mortality. She is aware that her own life could be forfeit.
Clara: Seeing the bodies back there, it all got very…real. Are we gonna make it?
So, what's next for Clara? Well, in the Monomyth we are now moving into the second stage, where the Hero is fully within the Special Place. This stage is called Intiation, and the first stage of this is the Road of Trials. This is a series of tests that the hero has to undergo, in order to begin their transformation.
Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure. It has produced a world literature of miraculous tests and ordeals. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region. Or it may be that he here discovers for the first time that there is a benign power everywhere supporting him in his superhuman passage. The original departure into the land of trials represented only the beginning of the long and really perilous path of initiatory conquests and moments of illumination. Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed-again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unretainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land.
Grand Marshall Skaldak and the Doctor
Doctor: Skaldak won’t talk to you, you’re an enemy soldier
Captain: And how would he know that?
Doctor: A soldier knows another soldier. He’ll smell it on you, smell it on you a mile off.
Captain: And he wouldn’t smell it on you, Doctor?
One of the other things that happen when characters symbolically journey into the Underworld, is that they enter the realm of the subconscious and encounter the Shadow Self. The Shadow is a Jungian concept, and represents elements of the Self that a person has pushed down into their subconscious, because they do not want to own or acknowledge them. The Shadow is the monster within all of us; all the things we wish we hadn't done, all the things of which we are ashamed. The thing with the Shadow though is this: it has to be embraced and owned in order for us/our characters to be whole and complete. It's that whole thing about unification of seeming opposites (remember fire and water) that I was writing about in reference to The Rings of Akhaten. This facing of the monster is always a key part of the Doctor's journey, with regular mirroring of these two different aspects of himself.
Appropriately, Doctor and Skaldak are mirrors of each other in a number of ways. As is often the case with Moffat's Who, the monster isn't everything he appears to be, and much of it is down to perception - just as it is with the Doctor who isn't the clear cut hero he sometimes appears to be. Both of them could be considered either heroes or villains in terms of their histories; both of them are warriors yet have the ability to be merciful. Both of them have their own sense of honour.
There’ also a mirror in the sense that Skaldak has been frozen for thousands of years…in a way this is also like the Doctor He has been damaged - badly damaged - by everything that’s happened to him. I’m reminded of The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe where the Doctor tells Madge that he doesn't feel like they do any more (only to discover he can cry at the end of the ep.) In some senses the Doctor has had to become colder in order to deal with everything he’s lost.
We see two of the different sides of the Docotr, represented in the framing of this shot, as he speaks to Clara through the comms system. The Doctor is shot framed on either side by the Professor and the Captain. The archaeologist, the historian who loves to research, discover hidden things and learn (remember the way Skaldak investigates and researches the structure of the ship and the human's bodies). And the warrior who has the ability to press a button that could being about the end of the world.
There are further Doctor/Skaldak mirrors in the armor. They are both creatures of duality - the Ice Warrior's hard exterior represents a code of honour, but it hides a more vulnerable inner being that works by stealth and cunning. The Doctor's usual mask of Hero and Saviour hides a man who is deeply damaged and responsible for genocide, and who can be deeply deceptive. The light inside the heart of the armor that sends out the signal for the Ice Warrior's race to find, him glows yellow. It’s the thing that will identify him to his people, and is the same colour as the Time energy inside the Doctor - the identifying feature of the Time Lords that lends them the ability to regenerate.
Skaldak: My distress call has not been answered, it will never be answered, My people are dust.
Like the Doctor, Skaldak believes himself to be the last of his kind, alone in the Universe.
At the climax of the episode, Skaldak and the Doctor's actions directly mirror each other - as both of them threaten to blow things up. The Doctor is prepared to re-enact his actions in the Time War - he is prepared to sacrifice a smaller amount of people for the rest of Earth, just as he was prepared to sacrifice his own people for the sake of the rest of the Universe at the end of the Time War.
The Doctor tries to persuade Skaldak not to launch the nuclear warheads, and his words are not only applicable to Skaldak, but also to himself.
Doctor: Is this how you want history to remember you? Grand Marshall Skaldak, destroyer of Earth - because that’s what you’ll be if you send those missiles. Not a soldier. A murderer. ..5 billion lives extinguished, no chance for goodbyes, a world - a world snuffed out like a candle flame. Alright. Alright Skaldak, you leave me no choice. I'm a Time Lord Skaldak, I know a thing or two about sonic technology myself.
Skaldak: A threat! You threaten me, Doctor?
Doctor: No. No, not you. All of us. I will blow this sub up before you can even reach that button, Grand Marshall, blow us all to oblivion.
Skaldak: You would sacrifice yourself?
Doctor: In a heartbeat.
Skaldak: Mutually assured destruction.
Doctor: Look into my eyes Skaldak. Look into my eyes. Tell me you’re capable of doing this. Can you do that? Dare you do that? Look into my eyes Skaldak, come on! Face to face.
Skaldak: Well, Doctor. Which of us shall blink first?
Ultimately, Skaldak receives a sort of ascension, he is lifted up into the ship by a ray of light, if fact the whole sub is lifted up from the bottom of the ocean. So, through the monster's race the journey is made back up from the Underworld to the Upperworld. It's a symbol of the idea that enlightenment ascension cannot be gained by denying the monstrous part of the nature but by accepting it. Ultimately engaging and coming face to face with the monster/the shadow self, eye to eye and with masks off, is what enables us to be born into striving for a new way of being.
Skaldak engages with this light side of himself - by showing mercy, and ultimately, the Docotr gives him the warrior's salute.
Briefly, on Skaldak's titles and their links to the idea of light born out of darkness/birth/rebirth:
Doctor: Sovereign of the Tharsisian Caste, Vanquisher of the Phobos Heresy. The greatest hero the proud Martian race has ever produced.
Phobos was an ancient Greek word for “fear/terror” - it’s where the word “phobia” derives from. Phobos was also the ancient Greek god of horror. He doesn't actually feature directly in any myths, but is more a representation of the fear brought on by battle. As a deity, he was worshiped by both warriors and heroes. Skaldak also commanded a fleet called Nyx-Tharsis with his daughter beside him. Nyx was the Greek goddess of the night, and the mother of Sleep and Death. She is birthed by Chaos, and she herself gives birth to Brightness and Day - and later a number of dark Gods and Goddesses. So the Greek myth links to Skaldak are very much associated with darkness and fear, and the idea that the fundamental elements of the daylight and the sun are born out of darkness. It's a real message of hope.
***engage speculation mode***
So, if Skaldak is a mirror of the Doctor, I find it intriguing that we have this bit of dialogue:
Skaldak: I was Commander of the Nyx-Tharsis, may daughter stood by me. It was her first taste of action. We sang the songs of the old times, the songs of the red snow. 5000 years. Now my daughter will be dust. Only dust.
I’d previously written off the idea of Clara being a relative of the Doctor's due to the snogging and the flirting. Because Moffat wouldn't take it there…surely? Of course, there’s all the parallel's here I've spoken about above, mirrors to the Doctor having lost his family, that fact that everyone he knows is dead and gone too.
However, this idea that Skaldak took his daughter into battle, and it was her first taste of action… this is the first time we see Clara really, properly rattled by what is going on. It’s the first time the Doctor takes her properly into a battle (of sorts) with him. It makes me rethink whether she could in fact be related to him. Considering the fact, also, that Skaldak thinks he is totally alone, abandoned - but it turns out his people still live and they come back for him. I'm swaying again towards the idea that Clara is related to the Doctor.
Song and Sound
In the last episode, the power of song and sound was made explicit. Here this theme continues - initially, the song Vienna by Ultravox interrupts the nuclear missile release drill at the moment when the finger hovers over the button. The symbolism is clear - music/song can save.
Later on the professor suggests to Clara that she sing a song to help her feel brave.
Professor: I always song a song.
Clara: What?
Professor: Keep my spirits up.
Clara: Yeah, that would work..if this was Pinnochio.
Professor: Do you know Hungry Like the Wolf?
Clara: What?
Professor: Duran Duran, one of my favourites. Come on!
Clara: I’m not singing a song!
After this when there’s a strange noise and Clara becomes afraid, the Professor starts bopping about and singing Hungry Like the Wolf.
In the last ep we saw the use of sonic technology with the doors in the Pyramid of the Sun God being controlled by sound waves. We see it here again, when Skaldak summons the suit to come back to him.
Doctor: Sonic tech, Clara. The song of the Ice Warrior.
It's also likely Clara's final words to Skaldak that encourage him to be merciful, she reminds him of the songs he sang with his daughter.
Clara: Why did you hesitate, back there, in the dark? You were going to knill this man, remember? I begged you not to and you listened. Why show compassion then Skaldak and not now? The Doctor’s right. Billions will die. Mothers, sons, fathers, daughters. Remember that last battle Skaldak? Your daughter. You sang the songs…
Skaldak: …of the red snows.
At the end, when they stand poised on the brink between the Doctor blowing up the sub, or the Martians setting of the nuclear warheads, Clara at last starts to sing Hungry Like the Wolf . As she's singing that song, there comes the moment when they are saved as Skaldak disarms the nuclear warheads.
So, in the last episode and this one, we've had the power of song as something that can keep sing a God to sleep, that can guard against fear and that can hold memories and remind someone of compassion and forgiveness. As i'm typing this section, i'm considering the series finale. I'm thinking about the idea that song saves, that melody can provide salvation. I'm thinking about River Song/Melody Pond and how all this may be pointing to the fact that she may be the one that saves the Universe from the consequences of the answer to the Question. But at what price?