meta: Not Everything Ends. Not Love. Not Always. - Hide.
In which we travel along the World Tree, the Forest is the Afterlife, there is both Love and Death, we are on the Road of Trials stage, the Doctor is Alec Palmer and River Song is everywhere.
The World Tree
The World Tree as a mythic symbol - it's forever there in Moffat's Who, as is the use of the Forest as an Afterlife metaphor.
The World Tree is found in both subtle and obvious forms - not always directly as an actual tree, sometimes as a symbolic tree, though we have already seen it used explicitly in the form of an actual tree a couple of times this series. The use of the Forest as an Afterlife metaphor is usually more direct. From the Clerics walking into the light in the forest in the crashed Byzantium in Flesh and Stone, to the symbol of the leaf from Clara's dead mother; from the spirits of the Forest in the Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe that leave their physical bodies to be reborn into a new life to the Tardis kept hidden in a woodland shrine while the Doctor contemplates the death and rebirth of Clara/Oswin; from the tree symbol over River's bed as she awakens to her new self after giving away all her regenerations to the Doctor, to the Forest of the Dead where those who are Saved live on inside a virtual forest of books, where the little girl who controls it all has wallpaper covered with trees. The Forest is death and rebirth, it's an afterlife. It's the cycle of life that the Leaf represents, when it falls from the tree, rots down and nourishes the roots of the tree, and then is reborn in continued life of the tree.
So.... the World Tree represents the Universe, the different plains of connections between things, the life cycle of everything, it represents the fabric of reality. Part of that fabric of reality is birth death and rebirth, and this is shown through the symbol of the forest as the afterlife.
Appropriately in an ep which is concerned with journeying between different worlds, and with the idea of ghosts, our first 3 shots of the ep are of a tree, leaves blowing in the wind, and branches silhouetted against Caliburn House. This is reminiscent of the theme setting at the start of The Rings of Akhaten where the first 3 shots are of leaves blowing, and of a tree.
The World Tree in this ep represents the ability to journey inbetween the worlds. Myhtologically, in spiritual traditions, the branches of the tree extend across all worlds and into all times. Here, the Tardis is parked directly in front of the tree that we see in the first shot of the episode, and as it comes and goes, we see it materialising against the tree. This spot, where the tree is, is where the Doctor and Clara journey from the beginning to the ends of the Earth.
Thresholds, Wormholes and the Afterlife
Archways and open doorways are used extensively in this episode. Open doorways are often used in cinema, TV and photography when trying to create a unsettling sense of the horror or the "Gothic". The suggestion of an open door or a darkened archway especially one with half suggested shapes thruogh it, is that there is something beyond which the character/viewer cannot see, something which may well be unpleasant. So on one level, arches and doorways are used in this ep to create a sense of Gothic horror.
The other way in which they are used is to link in with the theme of journeying between the worlds. Archways and doorways are liminal spaces, they are thresholds - neither one thing nor the other. They are places which are crossed to step from one place/room/world to another.
When first calling on the spirit of the house, Emma Grayling stands before an archway into darkness, and walks into it as she continues to call. It is in this space inbetween that the Forest overlaps with the ordinary universe and that allows the spirit passage to move towards her and then thruogh her.
The initial door knock from the Doctor is framed through another partially open doorway, and there's lots of action shot from beyond doorways, and featuring open doorways in the background.
Clara's confrontation with the Tardis as herself takes place next to a stone archway. The doorway from the Forest to this world is very much framed as passing thruogh a doorway from an afterlife state - light is all around Hila.
So, the Forest. The Forest represents the Afterlife, or Rebirth - essentially what happens after death. Those who occupy this Afterlife appear as ghosts in our own realm, and this place is accessed via a Dark Mirror (the wormhole spins reflective black before manifesting). One of the ideas which has also been used often in Moffat's Who when the idea of passing from one world to another in play, is the concept of stepping Through the Looking Glass. The When the Dark Mirror/wormhole appears, the looking glass spins faster and faster, before finally cracking as the connection between the worlds is made. The glass shatters, and It's at this stage where the realms overlap, and the ghostly figure can be seen. Or else people can pass back and forth between the two, coming and going Through the Looking Glass. As well as being a looking glass, the wormole is also a well.
Hila is described as The Wraith or The Lady, the maiden in the dark, the witch of the well. There’s no well on the property plans, and no well that they can actually find, and in the end the Doctor recognises that the well is the wormhole. Water is an element strongly associated with the afterlife. Historically, in many pagan spiritual traditions, wells were seen as entrances to the Otherworld. In some of the Celtic traditions, the Land of the Dead was seen as being over a great ocean in the west. In modern paganism, the element of water is associated with the festival of Samhain/Hallowe'en, which is the festival of the ancestors.
Apart from already having seen the Forest a number of times in Moffat's Who as an Afterlife, visually we are cued into it here. Not only is Hila presented as a ghost, but she also wears white, a colour very much associated with the Afterlife (see: the outfits of River and her team in the Library episodes of Forest of the Dead.) Passing through the wormhole from that world to this is very much presented with the traditional idea of a bright white light, although this time they are walking out of a bright white light rather than into it.
Another of Moffat's themes that features heavily in this ep is that of Love and Death. It's all over the place; series 5 and 6, particularly River Song's story arc tap into this really strongly. We are told explicitly by both the Doctor and Emma that the only thing that can transcend the reality of everything ending is Love. It's the light of Emma's psychic connection - based upon a familial bond- that shines out between the world like a beacon.
Emma: What’s wrong?
Clara: I just saw something I wish I hadn’t.
Emma: What did you see?
Clara: That everything ends.
Emma: No, not everything. Not love. Not always.
*
Doctor: Blood calling to blood, out of time. Not everything ends. Not love. Not always.
*
The love between the two monsters keeps them seeking and searching for each other, the one trapped in the pokcet universe trying to join its partner. This isn't a story about Death, it's a story about Love.
Doctor: Every lonely monster needs a companion.
Clara: There’s two of them!
Doctor: It’s the oldest story in the universe, this one or any other. Boy and girl fall in love and get separated by events. War, politics, accidents in Time. She’s thrown out of the place, or he’s thrown into it. Since then, they’ve been yearning for each other across time and space, across dimensions. This isn’t a ghost story, it’s a love story.
The Hero's Journey - The Road of Trials
In terms of the Monomyth/Hero’s Journey which Clara is currently making, and which I talked about ant length in my last meta, she is now entering the Second Stage which is referred to as Intiation. This is the stage where the Hero has entered fully into the Special Place (the Doctor’s world) and it is comprised of a number of different phases. The next couple of weeks will give me more perspective as to how exactly these stages will unfold in Who will unfold with reference to the mythic structure, but one thing for sure is that they have entered into the initial phase of this second stage, The Road of Trials.
The Road is where the Hero is presented with a number of challenges, some of which they pass, some of which they fail, but all of which are necessary for them to undergo in order to move towards their transformation. We have seen Clara dealing with Fear in the last episode, at the Belly of the Whale stage of the journey. This time. though Emma tells the Doctor Clara is more scared than she lets on - she has overcome some of her fear. She asks the Docotr - her Mentor in the special place - to "dare" her to take the candlestick and go off into the dark house hunting for ghosts. She steps forward at least partially willingly to combat her fear. However, the lesson of mortality that she began to learn in Cold War is now slammed home even harder, in the most extreme of ways.
The Doctor and Clara go from the beginning to the end of the Earth, via the World ,Tree. They go to 6 billion years ago, They see the Earth from the beginning to the end - the full cycle of its life. There's a link here back to the Doctor's speech to the Sun God in the Rings of Akhaten, when he talks about having witnessed the beginning and the end of the Universe.
Clara: Have we just watched the entire life cycle of earth, birth to death?
Doctor: Yes.
Clara: And you’re okay with that?
Doctor: Yes.
Clara: How can you be?
Doctor: The Tardis, she’s…Time. With…wibbly vortex. And so on.
Clara: That’s not what I mean.
Doctor: Okay. Some help. Context? Cheat sheet? Something…
For the Doctor, this is both his curse and his role as mentor. He drags Clara onto the Road of Trials, ripping away from her the illusion that we sometimes labour under, that things that move at a much slower rate of time than us, last forever. As a denizen of the Special Place, he is both familiar and comfortable with this notion. The rules in the Special Place though, are totally different to those in the Ordinary Place.Wisdom won in the past life cannot be used to understand it.
Clara: I mean, one minute you’re in 1974, looking for ghosts. But all you have to do is open your eyes and talk to whoever’s standing there. To you, I haven’t been born yet. And to you, I’ve been dead a hundred billion years. Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?
Doctor: Yes. I suppose it is.
Clara: But here we are, talking. So I am a ghost. To you, I’m a ghost. We’re all ghosts to you. We must be nothing.
Doctor: No. No. You’re not that.
Clara: Then what are we? What can we possibly be?
Doctor: You are the only mystery worth solving.
Just as Cold War showed Clara the fragility of the human body and that her life is actually at risk when she travels with the Doctor, so this shows her that she is both not yet born, already dead even she is living right now. It hits her hard. Along with Emma's words, it begins to fracture something in their relationship (that - let's face it - for him was already fractured - he doesn't trust her.) What hit her hardest is that he doesn’t really connect any emotion to this fact.
Emma: What did you see?
Clara: That everything ends.
However it is quite a transcendental message. By travelling in the Special Place with the Doctor, the companion experiences all 3 states - pre-birth, living and post death. Clara’s challenge on this bit of the Road of Trials is to come to terms with that, to understand and accept that the Doctor has come to terms with that too.
(Incidentally "what can you possibly be" are the Doctor's words to the Pandorica as he waits for it to open in the Underworld of the Pandorica opens. The Pandorica turns out to be life/death combined.)
One thing that's very interesting to me in the context of the Heroic Journey is that we are seeing a deep mistrust growing in Clara and the Doctor's relationship. The Doctor usually plays the role of mentor- and while, yes, he challenges his companions on a mythic level, in order to help them grow - i'm not sure i have seen this level of mistrust before in New Who between him and a regular companion. I was somewhat shocked to hear that he doesn't necessarily regard her as a real girl, more as a thing. He asks not who is she, but "what is she?"
Doctor: Clara?
Emma: Yes?
Doctor: What is she?
Emma: She’s a girl.
Doctor: Yes, but what kind of girl, specifically?
Emma: She’s a perfectly ordinary girl. Very pretty. Very clever. More scared than she lets on.
Doctor: And that’s it, is it?
Emma: Why? Is that not enough?
Similarly, Clara is learning that the Doctor's ways of seeing the world are vastly different to her own. She is beginning to mistrust him, the seeds are sown by Emma.
Emma: Don’t trust him. There’s a sliver of ice in his heart.
The Doctor asking "what is she?" about Clara is mirrored by Alec's question to him when first meeting him: "Doctor what?" rather than "Doctor Who?"
I have no doubt that the unraveling of both there secrets will be core to the lessons that the Doctor and Clara learn on the Journey, but it's unnerving to see the fracturing of this relationship, and that the Doctor is not so much playing the mentor archetype to her.
Character Mirrors
Moffat has got a cheeky little nod into Sherlock here, by saying that Alec Palmer was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars - a group of urchins who helped Sherlock out in some of the original stories.
He’s a bit of a mirror of the Doctor - he was a hero in the war who has his Victoria Cross hidden in the attic, just as the Docot ris in some ways a war hero who doesn't shout about his credentials. He is also a Professor. He has a companion, in the same way that the Doctor does in the form of Emma Grayling. As he describes the character of the Doctor to Emma, he is clearly reflecting upon his own character.
Emma: Is he really from the Ministry?
Alec: Er…I don’t know. He’s certainly got the right demeanor. Capricious, brilliant.
Emma: Deceitful?
Alec: Yes..ha. He’s a liar. But you know…that’s so often the way it is, when someone’s seen…a thing or two. Experience makes liars of us all. We lie about who we are, about what we’ve done…
Emma: And about how we feel?
Alec: Yes..always. Always that.
Doctor: How does that man, that war hero, end up here in a lonely old house, looking for ghosts?
This is the Doctor, right now - he is chasing ghosts. Clara is the ghost that he is looking for, the woman twice dead. It goes to the core of the question of why the Doctor does what he does, why he feels compelled to help and save, and Alec’s answer to the Doctor’s question is telling.
Alec: Because I killed. I caused to have killed. I sent young men and women to their death. But here I am still alive and it…does tend to haunt you. Living. After so much of…the other thing.
This is the Doctor. How many has he killed and caused to have killed? Like Alec, he is hainted by the things he has done, so tries to atone for it by going round and saving/helping people where he can
It’s appropriate that this conversation takes place in the equivalent of a photographer's “dark room”. This is the Docotr’s darkness coming out and being reflected back to him. As an image develops of him with a ghost standing behind him, so we are reminded through Alec's words of the ghosts that haunt the Doctor.
As the Doctor and Alec have this conversation - a conversation all about the effect of Death and the ghosts that haunt a person - there is a mirror conversation going on between Emma and Clara. It's a reverse mirror. Their conversation is essentially about Love, focusing as it does on Emma and Alec's feelings for each other and these mirror conversations reflect one of the central themes of the ep.
Recurring ideas and Rivers
There's that old chestnut of red and blue/fire and water. Clara gives Emma whiskey to drink - also known as "fire-water". The Doctor uses a red and blue balloon to demonstrate the relationship of the two Universes to each other. The whole thing takes place amidst thunder an lightening - the storm as the elemental union of fire and water.
There are hints and ideas that we are beginning to see again and again that may give nods to the way that this series is going to unfold . There's the mentions of familial connections. We have it here again in the form of a great great great granddaughter. Along with the idea that blood can call to blood across time, suggesting a reason why the Doctor may have been able to find Clara/Oswin again and again. I am more and more convinced Clara is related to the Doctor.
There's the Tardis's dislike of Clara. Clara says she gets the feeling the Tardis doesn't like her, the Tardis makes weird noises at Clara again. The ship won't let Clara in, and Clara insults her. However, interestingly, here the Tardis actually presents herself as Clara.
She mirrors her, suggesting snidely that Clara is arrogant. This could link in with the idea of the Tardis being jealous and familial rivalry, if Clara is a relative of the Doctor's, this mirroring of Tardis and Clara could suggest that they are much much closer than we think. Both of them like family to the Doctor.
Or maybe it's just because the Tardis can see ahead the Timelines that will ultimately lead Doctor to Trenzalore; something which Clara will inevitably play a part in, or perhaps just a reflection of the Doctor's own mistrust of Clara.
*
There's the idea of song and music as central to the plot of this series, which has come up repeatedly now.
Emma: The music room is the heart of the house.
The idea is that music is core to the plot, that it has the power to save the world, to sing gods to sleep, to help people remember who they were. With all the other links to River going on this series, this surely isn't an accident. While River has been conspicuous in her absence, both physically and in terms of the Doctors' dialogue, she is very much present thematically. In The Bells, we have a virtual world which is a dark mirror of the Library where people are trapped, along with the Spoonheads who are visually similar to the Flesh Librarians in the Library episodes. We have the use of song to sing a God asleep in The Rings. There is a spacesuit that provides its wearer with everything they need in Cold War, like Melody's astronaut suit, and again in that episode we have the power of song to save and remind people of the good inside them. Now, we have a woman trapped in an echo Universe, clad all in white, just as River is trapped in the Library computer. Then, there is the idea of lovers separated by time, circumstance, politics, universes. One lover (monster) trapped in an Universe which is the echo of the other (like the Library.)
Let's just talk for a moment about how Emma is River is the Tardis. Emma puts on a crown in order to hold open a connection which will allow those from the symbolic Afterlife to transition into the real world. River puts on a crown in order to allow the 4000 souls saved in the Library Afterlife to transition into the real world. Emma is linked with the Tardis; the gem on the middle of the crown she wears is located over the third eye chakra, believed to be the seat of the psychic powers. The third eye gem is mirrored by the Eye of Harmony which has been wired out of the Tardis. Emma and the Tardis reverse-mirror each other; Emma's mistrust of the Doctor mirrored by the Tardis's mistrust of Clara. River is the Child of the Tardis and was show to be able to communicate psychically with her in let's kill Hitler.
So, really, what i'm saying is that while River may not be here in the episodes, she is very much here symbolically. Everything up til now suggests that she is going to save the world at the end of the series. Song saves.
There was a lot more to this ep than I thought. If i wasn't so meta'd out right now, I'd be writing about links to The Tempest by Shakespeare.
About the most obvious link being that the episode takes place during a storm, just as the beginning Tempest does, and that the house is called Caliburn House, which reminds me of the character of Caliban. Id' probably write a lot about how it’s interesting to me that there may be links to the Tempest, because I think that current Who is very self aware of itself as modern myth, and is deliberately positioning itself as such, while the play is very much concerned with its own nature as a play... Like the links that are drawn in The Tempest between Prospero’s ability to weave magic and the ability of Theatre to weave illusions, and the Doctor's ability to weave seeming magic and the show's ability to weave illusion. I'd likely write a lot about the Docotr as Prospero. About how Ariel the spirit of the air appears as a number of characters from Classical mythology, just like characters in Who manifest different archeytypes. About how The end of The Tempest breaks the fourth wall, when Prospero bids the audience to release him from the island through their applause, and the fact that the core Question at the heart of this arc threatens to break the fourth wall.
But...brainpower and time are in short supply now, so thank you for reading this.
The World Tree
The World Tree as a mythic symbol - it's forever there in Moffat's Who, as is the use of the Forest as an Afterlife metaphor.
The World Tree is found in both subtle and obvious forms - not always directly as an actual tree, sometimes as a symbolic tree, though we have already seen it used explicitly in the form of an actual tree a couple of times this series. The use of the Forest as an Afterlife metaphor is usually more direct. From the Clerics walking into the light in the forest in the crashed Byzantium in Flesh and Stone, to the symbol of the leaf from Clara's dead mother; from the spirits of the Forest in the Doctor the Widow and the Wardrobe that leave their physical bodies to be reborn into a new life to the Tardis kept hidden in a woodland shrine while the Doctor contemplates the death and rebirth of Clara/Oswin; from the tree symbol over River's bed as she awakens to her new self after giving away all her regenerations to the Doctor, to the Forest of the Dead where those who are Saved live on inside a virtual forest of books, where the little girl who controls it all has wallpaper covered with trees. The Forest is death and rebirth, it's an afterlife. It's the cycle of life that the Leaf represents, when it falls from the tree, rots down and nourishes the roots of the tree, and then is reborn in continued life of the tree.
So.... the World Tree represents the Universe, the different plains of connections between things, the life cycle of everything, it represents the fabric of reality. Part of that fabric of reality is birth death and rebirth, and this is shown through the symbol of the forest as the afterlife.
Appropriately in an ep which is concerned with journeying between different worlds, and with the idea of ghosts, our first 3 shots of the ep are of a tree, leaves blowing in the wind, and branches silhouetted against Caliburn House. This is reminiscent of the theme setting at the start of The Rings of Akhaten where the first 3 shots are of leaves blowing, and of a tree.
The World Tree in this ep represents the ability to journey inbetween the worlds. Myhtologically, in spiritual traditions, the branches of the tree extend across all worlds and into all times. Here, the Tardis is parked directly in front of the tree that we see in the first shot of the episode, and as it comes and goes, we see it materialising against the tree. This spot, where the tree is, is where the Doctor and Clara journey from the beginning to the ends of the Earth.
Thresholds, Wormholes and the Afterlife
Archways and open doorways are used extensively in this episode. Open doorways are often used in cinema, TV and photography when trying to create a unsettling sense of the horror or the "Gothic". The suggestion of an open door or a darkened archway especially one with half suggested shapes thruogh it, is that there is something beyond which the character/viewer cannot see, something which may well be unpleasant. So on one level, arches and doorways are used in this ep to create a sense of Gothic horror.
The other way in which they are used is to link in with the theme of journeying between the worlds. Archways and doorways are liminal spaces, they are thresholds - neither one thing nor the other. They are places which are crossed to step from one place/room/world to another.
When first calling on the spirit of the house, Emma Grayling stands before an archway into darkness, and walks into it as she continues to call. It is in this space inbetween that the Forest overlaps with the ordinary universe and that allows the spirit passage to move towards her and then thruogh her.
The initial door knock from the Doctor is framed through another partially open doorway, and there's lots of action shot from beyond doorways, and featuring open doorways in the background.
Clara's confrontation with the Tardis as herself takes place next to a stone archway. The doorway from the Forest to this world is very much framed as passing thruogh a doorway from an afterlife state - light is all around Hila.
So, the Forest. The Forest represents the Afterlife, or Rebirth - essentially what happens after death. Those who occupy this Afterlife appear as ghosts in our own realm, and this place is accessed via a Dark Mirror (the wormhole spins reflective black before manifesting). One of the ideas which has also been used often in Moffat's Who when the idea of passing from one world to another in play, is the concept of stepping Through the Looking Glass. The When the Dark Mirror/wormhole appears, the looking glass spins faster and faster, before finally cracking as the connection between the worlds is made. The glass shatters, and It's at this stage where the realms overlap, and the ghostly figure can be seen. Or else people can pass back and forth between the two, coming and going Through the Looking Glass. As well as being a looking glass, the wormole is also a well.
Hila is described as The Wraith or The Lady, the maiden in the dark, the witch of the well. There’s no well on the property plans, and no well that they can actually find, and in the end the Doctor recognises that the well is the wormhole. Water is an element strongly associated with the afterlife. Historically, in many pagan spiritual traditions, wells were seen as entrances to the Otherworld. In some of the Celtic traditions, the Land of the Dead was seen as being over a great ocean in the west. In modern paganism, the element of water is associated with the festival of Samhain/Hallowe'en, which is the festival of the ancestors.
Apart from already having seen the Forest a number of times in Moffat's Who as an Afterlife, visually we are cued into it here. Not only is Hila presented as a ghost, but she also wears white, a colour very much associated with the Afterlife (see: the outfits of River and her team in the Library episodes of Forest of the Dead.) Passing through the wormhole from that world to this is very much presented with the traditional idea of a bright white light, although this time they are walking out of a bright white light rather than into it.
Another of Moffat's themes that features heavily in this ep is that of Love and Death. It's all over the place; series 5 and 6, particularly River Song's story arc tap into this really strongly. We are told explicitly by both the Doctor and Emma that the only thing that can transcend the reality of everything ending is Love. It's the light of Emma's psychic connection - based upon a familial bond- that shines out between the world like a beacon.
Emma: What’s wrong?
Clara: I just saw something I wish I hadn’t.
Emma: What did you see?
Clara: That everything ends.
Emma: No, not everything. Not love. Not always.
*
Doctor: Blood calling to blood, out of time. Not everything ends. Not love. Not always.
*
The love between the two monsters keeps them seeking and searching for each other, the one trapped in the pokcet universe trying to join its partner. This isn't a story about Death, it's a story about Love.
Doctor: Every lonely monster needs a companion.
Clara: There’s two of them!
Doctor: It’s the oldest story in the universe, this one or any other. Boy and girl fall in love and get separated by events. War, politics, accidents in Time. She’s thrown out of the place, or he’s thrown into it. Since then, they’ve been yearning for each other across time and space, across dimensions. This isn’t a ghost story, it’s a love story.
The Hero's Journey - The Road of Trials
In terms of the Monomyth/Hero’s Journey which Clara is currently making, and which I talked about ant length in my last meta, she is now entering the Second Stage which is referred to as Intiation. This is the stage where the Hero has entered fully into the Special Place (the Doctor’s world) and it is comprised of a number of different phases. The next couple of weeks will give me more perspective as to how exactly these stages will unfold in Who will unfold with reference to the mythic structure, but one thing for sure is that they have entered into the initial phase of this second stage, The Road of Trials.
The Road is where the Hero is presented with a number of challenges, some of which they pass, some of which they fail, but all of which are necessary for them to undergo in order to move towards their transformation. We have seen Clara dealing with Fear in the last episode, at the Belly of the Whale stage of the journey. This time. though Emma tells the Doctor Clara is more scared than she lets on - she has overcome some of her fear. She asks the Docotr - her Mentor in the special place - to "dare" her to take the candlestick and go off into the dark house hunting for ghosts. She steps forward at least partially willingly to combat her fear. However, the lesson of mortality that she began to learn in Cold War is now slammed home even harder, in the most extreme of ways.
The Doctor and Clara go from the beginning to the end of the Earth, via the World ,Tree. They go to 6 billion years ago, They see the Earth from the beginning to the end - the full cycle of its life. There's a link here back to the Doctor's speech to the Sun God in the Rings of Akhaten, when he talks about having witnessed the beginning and the end of the Universe.
Clara: Have we just watched the entire life cycle of earth, birth to death?
Doctor: Yes.
Clara: And you’re okay with that?
Doctor: Yes.
Clara: How can you be?
Doctor: The Tardis, she’s…Time. With…wibbly vortex. And so on.
Clara: That’s not what I mean.
Doctor: Okay. Some help. Context? Cheat sheet? Something…
For the Doctor, this is both his curse and his role as mentor. He drags Clara onto the Road of Trials, ripping away from her the illusion that we sometimes labour under, that things that move at a much slower rate of time than us, last forever. As a denizen of the Special Place, he is both familiar and comfortable with this notion. The rules in the Special Place though, are totally different to those in the Ordinary Place.Wisdom won in the past life cannot be used to understand it.
Clara: I mean, one minute you’re in 1974, looking for ghosts. But all you have to do is open your eyes and talk to whoever’s standing there. To you, I haven’t been born yet. And to you, I’ve been dead a hundred billion years. Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?
Doctor: Yes. I suppose it is.
Clara: But here we are, talking. So I am a ghost. To you, I’m a ghost. We’re all ghosts to you. We must be nothing.
Doctor: No. No. You’re not that.
Clara: Then what are we? What can we possibly be?
Doctor: You are the only mystery worth solving.
Just as Cold War showed Clara the fragility of the human body and that her life is actually at risk when she travels with the Doctor, so this shows her that she is both not yet born, already dead even she is living right now. It hits her hard. Along with Emma's words, it begins to fracture something in their relationship (that - let's face it - for him was already fractured - he doesn't trust her.) What hit her hardest is that he doesn’t really connect any emotion to this fact.
Emma: What did you see?
Clara: That everything ends.
However it is quite a transcendental message. By travelling in the Special Place with the Doctor, the companion experiences all 3 states - pre-birth, living and post death. Clara’s challenge on this bit of the Road of Trials is to come to terms with that, to understand and accept that the Doctor has come to terms with that too.
(Incidentally "what can you possibly be" are the Doctor's words to the Pandorica as he waits for it to open in the Underworld of the Pandorica opens. The Pandorica turns out to be life/death combined.)
One thing that's very interesting to me in the context of the Heroic Journey is that we are seeing a deep mistrust growing in Clara and the Doctor's relationship. The Doctor usually plays the role of mentor- and while, yes, he challenges his companions on a mythic level, in order to help them grow - i'm not sure i have seen this level of mistrust before in New Who between him and a regular companion. I was somewhat shocked to hear that he doesn't necessarily regard her as a real girl, more as a thing. He asks not who is she, but "what is she?"
Doctor: Clara?
Emma: Yes?
Doctor: What is she?
Emma: She’s a girl.
Doctor: Yes, but what kind of girl, specifically?
Emma: She’s a perfectly ordinary girl. Very pretty. Very clever. More scared than she lets on.
Doctor: And that’s it, is it?
Emma: Why? Is that not enough?
Similarly, Clara is learning that the Doctor's ways of seeing the world are vastly different to her own. She is beginning to mistrust him, the seeds are sown by Emma.
Emma: Don’t trust him. There’s a sliver of ice in his heart.
The Doctor asking "what is she?" about Clara is mirrored by Alec's question to him when first meeting him: "Doctor what?" rather than "Doctor Who?"
I have no doubt that the unraveling of both there secrets will be core to the lessons that the Doctor and Clara learn on the Journey, but it's unnerving to see the fracturing of this relationship, and that the Doctor is not so much playing the mentor archetype to her.
Character Mirrors
Moffat has got a cheeky little nod into Sherlock here, by saying that Alec Palmer was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars - a group of urchins who helped Sherlock out in some of the original stories.
He’s a bit of a mirror of the Doctor - he was a hero in the war who has his Victoria Cross hidden in the attic, just as the Docot ris in some ways a war hero who doesn't shout about his credentials. He is also a Professor. He has a companion, in the same way that the Doctor does in the form of Emma Grayling. As he describes the character of the Doctor to Emma, he is clearly reflecting upon his own character.
Emma: Is he really from the Ministry?
Alec: Er…I don’t know. He’s certainly got the right demeanor. Capricious, brilliant.
Emma: Deceitful?
Alec: Yes..ha. He’s a liar. But you know…that’s so often the way it is, when someone’s seen…a thing or two. Experience makes liars of us all. We lie about who we are, about what we’ve done…
Emma: And about how we feel?
Alec: Yes..always. Always that.
Doctor: How does that man, that war hero, end up here in a lonely old house, looking for ghosts?
This is the Doctor, right now - he is chasing ghosts. Clara is the ghost that he is looking for, the woman twice dead. It goes to the core of the question of why the Doctor does what he does, why he feels compelled to help and save, and Alec’s answer to the Doctor’s question is telling.
Alec: Because I killed. I caused to have killed. I sent young men and women to their death. But here I am still alive and it…does tend to haunt you. Living. After so much of…the other thing.
This is the Doctor. How many has he killed and caused to have killed? Like Alec, he is hainted by the things he has done, so tries to atone for it by going round and saving/helping people where he can
It’s appropriate that this conversation takes place in the equivalent of a photographer's “dark room”. This is the Docotr’s darkness coming out and being reflected back to him. As an image develops of him with a ghost standing behind him, so we are reminded through Alec's words of the ghosts that haunt the Doctor.
As the Doctor and Alec have this conversation - a conversation all about the effect of Death and the ghosts that haunt a person - there is a mirror conversation going on between Emma and Clara. It's a reverse mirror. Their conversation is essentially about Love, focusing as it does on Emma and Alec's feelings for each other and these mirror conversations reflect one of the central themes of the ep.
Recurring ideas and Rivers
There's that old chestnut of red and blue/fire and water. Clara gives Emma whiskey to drink - also known as "fire-water". The Doctor uses a red and blue balloon to demonstrate the relationship of the two Universes to each other. The whole thing takes place amidst thunder an lightening - the storm as the elemental union of fire and water.
There are hints and ideas that we are beginning to see again and again that may give nods to the way that this series is going to unfold . There's the mentions of familial connections. We have it here again in the form of a great great great granddaughter. Along with the idea that blood can call to blood across time, suggesting a reason why the Doctor may have been able to find Clara/Oswin again and again. I am more and more convinced Clara is related to the Doctor.
There's the Tardis's dislike of Clara. Clara says she gets the feeling the Tardis doesn't like her, the Tardis makes weird noises at Clara again. The ship won't let Clara in, and Clara insults her. However, interestingly, here the Tardis actually presents herself as Clara.
She mirrors her, suggesting snidely that Clara is arrogant. This could link in with the idea of the Tardis being jealous and familial rivalry, if Clara is a relative of the Doctor's, this mirroring of Tardis and Clara could suggest that they are much much closer than we think. Both of them like family to the Doctor.
Or maybe it's just because the Tardis can see ahead the Timelines that will ultimately lead Doctor to Trenzalore; something which Clara will inevitably play a part in, or perhaps just a reflection of the Doctor's own mistrust of Clara.
*
There's the idea of song and music as central to the plot of this series, which has come up repeatedly now.
Emma: The music room is the heart of the house.
The idea is that music is core to the plot, that it has the power to save the world, to sing gods to sleep, to help people remember who they were. With all the other links to River going on this series, this surely isn't an accident. While River has been conspicuous in her absence, both physically and in terms of the Doctors' dialogue, she is very much present thematically. In The Bells, we have a virtual world which is a dark mirror of the Library where people are trapped, along with the Spoonheads who are visually similar to the Flesh Librarians in the Library episodes. We have the use of song to sing a God asleep in The Rings. There is a spacesuit that provides its wearer with everything they need in Cold War, like Melody's astronaut suit, and again in that episode we have the power of song to save and remind people of the good inside them. Now, we have a woman trapped in an echo Universe, clad all in white, just as River is trapped in the Library computer. Then, there is the idea of lovers separated by time, circumstance, politics, universes. One lover (monster) trapped in an Universe which is the echo of the other (like the Library.)
Let's just talk for a moment about how Emma is River is the Tardis. Emma puts on a crown in order to hold open a connection which will allow those from the symbolic Afterlife to transition into the real world. River puts on a crown in order to allow the 4000 souls saved in the Library Afterlife to transition into the real world. Emma is linked with the Tardis; the gem on the middle of the crown she wears is located over the third eye chakra, believed to be the seat of the psychic powers. The third eye gem is mirrored by the Eye of Harmony which has been wired out of the Tardis. Emma and the Tardis reverse-mirror each other; Emma's mistrust of the Doctor mirrored by the Tardis's mistrust of Clara. River is the Child of the Tardis and was show to be able to communicate psychically with her in let's kill Hitler.
So, really, what i'm saying is that while River may not be here in the episodes, she is very much here symbolically. Everything up til now suggests that she is going to save the world at the end of the series. Song saves.
There was a lot more to this ep than I thought. If i wasn't so meta'd out right now, I'd be writing about links to The Tempest by Shakespeare.
About the most obvious link being that the episode takes place during a storm, just as the beginning Tempest does, and that the house is called Caliburn House, which reminds me of the character of Caliban. Id' probably write a lot about how it’s interesting to me that there may be links to the Tempest, because I think that current Who is very self aware of itself as modern myth, and is deliberately positioning itself as such, while the play is very much concerned with its own nature as a play... Like the links that are drawn in The Tempest between Prospero’s ability to weave magic and the ability of Theatre to weave illusions, and the Doctor's ability to weave seeming magic and the show's ability to weave illusion. I'd likely write a lot about the Docotr as Prospero. About how Ariel the spirit of the air appears as a number of characters from Classical mythology, just like characters in Who manifest different archeytypes. About how The end of The Tempest breaks the fourth wall, when Prospero bids the audience to release him from the island through their applause, and the fact that the core Question at the heart of this arc threatens to break the fourth wall.
But...brainpower and time are in short supply now, so thank you for reading this.