Doctor Who Revival S08E06 -- The Caretaker (boxed spoilers until aired)

Cafe Society
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What I find notable about the nuWho episodes is that the British seem to have accepted the existence of aliens and visitors from the future with kind of an outward grace, like they’re new neighbors who may be eccentric, but that’s no reason not to invite them over for tea.

Pink doesn’t go bonkers when he discovers the horrible truth. He’s more upset at Clara for concealing it. Plus, Courtney manages to worm her way into a ride in the TARDIS, but doesn’t gape in wonder and awe at the mysteries of the universe. She gets seasick instead. I think she’s going to be like the kids Clara was babysitting in Nightmare in Silver. They’ll only appear in one or two episodes and not consider time travel anything shocking or unusual, because they’ve seen it in cartoons and storybooks frequently and haven’t learned that it can’t exist.

42

Yeah, the “PE” bit pinged my racism detector too (as did the “disruptive influence” being black and the “A+, just needs work on her handwriting” kid being white), but I chalked that up to me being American. I have no idea what race relations are like in the real UK, let alone the DW version. Maybe that doesn’t raise an eyebrow over there… Also did not like Danny’s ultimatum (and I had liked him up to that point.) Clara’s a big girl, thanks. His flip over the alien was preposterous too. (Between that flip and the look of the alien, I believed I was watching a “kids’ show” for the first time.)

Overall the ep was forgettable. Lots of banter that didn’t seem to go anywhere. While the doctor remembers River, among other bits of his past lives, he doesn’t seem to remember his fondness for humans, or how to blend in among them. Nor does he remember that he needs and trusts Clara. (why was he keeping her in the dark again?) (And was he honestly saying that Danny looked nothing like Orson? I thought he was pulling her leg, but then he really seemed to think the Matt Smith look-sort-of-alike was the boyfriend, (I did like that bit… cute.) so I’m forced to conclude he was serious about Orson, which is stupid.)

I’m glad Clara doesn’t have to hide the Doctor from Danny anymore because that was getting old, but otherwise not much happened of note here, IMHO.

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It’s been my experience that men tend to want to protect the people they care about even if said people can take care of themselves. Girlfriends, wives, children, best friends, fellow soldiers… I think (strictly my opinion) it’s how men express their nurturing feelings.

Sure, it can be overdone but a man expressing the desire to protect someone he cares about is pretty normal, really.

The Doctor was friends with the Brigadier pre-Time War, and there was a substantial length to that friendship before the Doctor was forced into the Time War. I think it makes a difference.

Also, isn’t it obvious to anyone else that the Doctor’s current extreme loathing of soldiers is stemming from his own self-loathing? It’s not just the Moment - he probably did a lot of other horrific, nasty things in the Time War that are weighing on his conscience. That was part of the point of Pink calling him out - oh you hate soldiers, do you? YOU ARE ONE! Pink acts as a counselor to soldiers coming from war back to civilian society, you think he doesn’t recognize what’s going on with the Doctor? The Doctor never had help recovering from being in war, in fact, he’s been terribly, terribly isolated in many ways.

I’d like to see Danny Pink wind up acting as counselor/confessor to the Doctor - Clara and the other companions can’t do that because they haven’t been to war, they haven’t killed people, killed people which undoubtedly included innocents as well as fellow soldiers. Pink never tried to commit genocide, but he’s a lot closer to understanding how a person could wind up in that situation than a civilian would be.

The Doctor wants forgiveness but he can’t forgive himself. He can’t (as of yet) ask forgiveness of his own people. But maybe Pink can offer something of the sort.

Think about it - even though the Doctor knows that Gallifrey and the Daleks still exist he knows he really did intend kill them both to end the war. Bravo he found an alternative, but if he hadn’t he would have done the deed. He spent hundreds of years thinking he had committed double-genocide. Maybe he’s reluctant to bring back the Time Lords because of that guilt, because he’s afraid of how they will react to him, knowing he was intending to kill them all, that he would have done it if he hadn’t been able to shunt them off to a pocket universe.

Yep, that was kind of my point - a modern woman knows slavery existed in those times even if she doesn’t know the details. Is it something she’d be at risk of in London? Why would she know that? She wouldn’t - but the concern would be reasonable and real.

That’s sort of how I’d expect the British to react - they have a certain cultural self-confidence. I think that comes from the Empire - all those different peoples and places they interacted with, all the odd customs and strange costumes and so forth. Aliens are just a slightly more intense version of that in the Whoniverse.

What’s horrible about the Doctor being an alien? If anything, it explains a lot - oh, you mean the Caretaker isn’t crazy? He’s just alien? Well, yeah, it makes sense that he doesn’t act quite right.

Frankly, I think getting queasy, or like the kids Clara was babysitting who probably decided this whole travel the universe thing was more scary than fun, would like be a more typical reaction. The Doctor’s companions are unusual types. Most people don’t want a life that exciting.

Let’s face it, Rory Williams was a companion only because his friend/financee/wife was. Given his druthers he probably never would have traveled with the Doctor, or at least not more than once. Craig from “The Lodger” and “Closing Time” even more so - in fact, he never did travel with the Doctor, being quite the homebody, and his first reaction on seeing the Doctor again was “OMG! What disaster is happening?”. Courtney probably looked out into space and got a bellyful of vertigo.

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Is it ‘their’ great-grandson, or Danny’s great-grandson. I remember him specifically referencing his great-grandfather (and not g-grandparents) being a time traveler, and he did not recognize Clara as being one of his ancestors. Granted, I don’t think I’d recognize any of my great-grandmothers if I would meet them in their 20s, but my point is that Orson only said something about a male ancestor being in the time-travel business.

Also, the other people we’ve seen in the afterlife were ones that directly interacted with The Doctor before they died, and could even be said to have died because of his actions. This policeman died at the hand of the MOW before The Doctor was even on the scene. That’s got to mean something, right?

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And apparently he and Barbara haven’t aged!

Back from Peru, now passed away.

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Well, the Doctor did say that the Skovox Blitzer was there because of the Artron energy that built up in the area over the years. So there’s that.

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Plus the fact that the Brigadier is an officer. Not unlike Captain Jack, who The Doctor also got along with. Danny makes the point that the Doctor is something of an aristocrat, and there might be some truth to this.

48

The Doctor is definitely turning more Malcolm Tucker and I love it! :slight_smile:

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I think once Rory found that he survived the worst the universe had to offer, he settled more comfortably into the role. He had to be the voice of reason to keep Amy from flying apart.

Amy: What just happened? Rory: Shrink ray hit us. Amy: How do you know that? Rory: A ray hit us and now we’re small.

(I still hate the way they were written off the show. grumble grumble grumble)

Craig had that affable personality the (Matt Smith) Doctor couldn’t resist poking. He even smothered homoeroticism big time on Craig, but the lad didn’t break. I think the Doctor is constantly on the lookout for an anchor, and those who don’t recoil in horror and can get along with an obnoxious madman fit the bill.

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The Doctor got along with Captain Jack? Say wha?

Danny so far is standing out as one of the few strong, non-fauning, male regulars on the show - other than villians and the Doctor himself of course. At least for a long time. Males have usually served as the supporting characters to the female supporting characters. Danny like Rory does not initially trust this Doctor chap; his insecurities though are more about his own ghosts (and ghosts that we will likely find are not too dissimilar to the Doctor’s), not ones that prevent him from standing up to the Doctor and doing it well.

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thinking about it again - what I liked about this episode was the MotW took a back seat - it was really a show watching other people having to deal with “the Dr” in their day to day.

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Robin Hood made that same observation a few episodes previous, in a more flattering light – That he, like Robin, was born into wealth and privilege and gave it up to heed the cries of the downtrodden.

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Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more real-world history in the show. Everyone seems to have decided, this year, that Doctor Who was a kid’s show all along. So we may as well try to do a reasonable job of teaching history and foreign cultures.

I can understand that the writers are constrained by budget, but I suspect that it’s not all that hard to find a few Latino/East Asian/Polynesian/etc. actors and fudge up some international backdrops. They did a whole Roman camp, along with Roman soldiers. I wouldn’t think that staging a Mongolian war camp would be any more difficult. It’s a bit silly that the Doctor can travel all of time and space, so long as he only flies domestic. And it’s rather a waste to have the potential to show so many things and not be able to put the occasionaly, slightest tidbit of historical or scientific trivia in there.

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Also, the monster was a relatively straightforward, genuine monster. It was a bad thing that was going to kill people, and had to be stopped. It didn’t suddenly turn out that it was looking for its mate, or that it thought that shooting people was the same thing as hugging them, or anything like that.

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One thing we learned:

Never lose your temper in the middle of a door sign.

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[QUOTE=simster]
I liked that it was Danny that gave the Dr the clue to resolve this one.
[/QUOTE]

Oooooh! I hadn’t noticed! I just thought it was ironic that the Doctor acted like a general giving orders to a subordinate after the, “Sir, yes Sir!” scene between him and Danny. Never occurred to me that Danny had inspired him.

[QUOTE=The Hamster King]
{snip} It’s pretty clear they’re recreating the original crew of the Tardis from 1963…
[/QUOTE]

I like this idea!

[QUOTE=minionkat]
{snip} I liked how Clara jumped to the conclusion that the Doctor knew Jane Austen…
[/QUOTE]

Last year I read somewhere that Mark Gatiss said it would be great if the Doctor could meet Jane Austen. I suppose this is as close as the show will come to fitting in Miss Austen this series. Maybe they’ll visit her next series? After all, meeting Agatha Christie was mentioned in one episode, then Ten met her in a later series (The Unicorn and the Wasp, S04EE07).

[QUOTE=Hermione]
Everyone seems to like the Doctor whistling a line from “Another Brick in the Wall.”
But did anyone else notice another little musical shout-out, almost directly before that?
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for bringing that up! I knew I’d heard the references somewhere, but just couldn’t place them.

[QUOTE=grude]
Could Missy in “heaven” BE Susan? {snip}
[/QUOTE]

Ewwwww. Dear Og, I hope not ‘cuz Susan called the first Doctor "grandfather’ and Missy not only calls the Doctor her boyfriend, but is aware that he has regenerated.

[QUOTE=Smeghead]
{snip} But what was the deal with the pre-credits bit where they were chained to posts?
[/QUOTE]

Screw that! I wanna know about the fight the Doctor and River had! He sulked for a month! The make-up time-travel must have been mind-blowing! :smiley:

[QUOTE=Banquet Bear]
[Danny]'s there to emphasis an important point.
Spoilers based on next weeks preview, and on what we know: {snip}
[/QUOTE]

Generally, I agree with you. Where our opinions differ is who will be doing the asking and whom will be asked.

[QUOTE=Baron Greenback]
He’s the current Chairman of the Board of Governers at Coal Hill. {snip}
[/QUOTE]

I think it would be super fantastic brilliant awesome if William Russell could be prevailed upon to return to the show for a few episodes, or even just a cameo. But, the showrunner(s) could claim that by the time of the start of the events of Into the Dalek, Chesterton has already retired (to keep bees on the Sussex Downs or something).

[QUOTE=JohnT]
…Capaldi is quickly growing on me and is saving my interest in the show. Keep it up and he may become my favorite in the NuWho role…
[/QUOTE]

My favorite is Sylvester McCoy, especially when Seven went dark and mysterious. So, I’m enjoying seeing a Dark-N-Snarky[sup]TM[/sup] Doctor. When Capaldi was introduced as the twelfth Doctor, I went, “Oh, he’s the guy who played Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii and What’s-His-Name in Torchwood–Children of Earth.”* When I looked him up on imdb.com, I was surprised to realize I’d seen a lot of the stuff he’s been in and embarrassed to admit I could not remember any of the characters he played. :o

  • I hadn’t seen The Thick of It, In the Loop or The 3 Musketeers. Since then, I’ve seen ItL, and decided not to watch TToI or T3M.

[QUOTE=Sean Factotum]
…the other people we’ve seen in the afterlife were ones that directly interacted with The Doctor before they died, and could even be said to have died because of his actions. This policeman died at the hand of the MOW before The Doctor was even on the scene. That’s got to mean something, right?
[/QUOTE]

What about Ross in Into the Dalek? Where did he end up? Does he fit the pattern? Is there a pattern? The policeman ending up in the afterlife could mean that up until this episode, Moffat was leading viewers to think that the only dead characters who ended up in “heaven” went there as a result of something the Doctor did. He thought this ep would be a good place to throw the viewers a curve ball.

[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
{snip} Everyone seems to have decided, this year, that Doctor Who was a kid’s show all along.
[/QUOTE]

I think it swings like a pendulum. The show goes from Young Adult to Kids Show and back, depending on the showrunner/BBC brass and audience response. And, while it started out intending to be educational, it dropped that pretense pretty quickly. I think the only stories that could be even vaguely construed as educational were ones written by Barry Lett, Malcolm Hulke, and Kit Pedler. And in the case of Lett and Hulke, that assessment would depend on how politically liberal one was.

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No, he wasn’t, and said so when he and Clara were in the Tardis shortly after.

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When? I didn’t catch that. Are you talking about the part where he said her boyfriend had a “resemblance to a certain young time-traveler”? If so, he was talking about Aiden(?)'s resemblance to Eleven. Clara took it to mean Orson and Danny, (which was a very cute double-meaning). But it was clear later by the Doctor’s surprise that he never thought Danny was the boyfriend until he was revealed as such.

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I took it that the Doctor knew the entire time that it was Danny and was just being obtuse as part of Danny’s “test”. After all, all the children knew and he was cleaning up “Ozzie loves the Squaddie” graffiti from the windows.

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Not an aristocrat - an officer. I.e., someone who occasionally sends ordinary grunts like Danny out to die. The Doctor clearly held high rank in Gallifrey’s military - I doubt a private could just stroll into the armory and swipe the Moment - so the Doctor’s probably had to do exactly that.

Moffatt used this joke in an episode of Sherlock - an old university classmate of Holmes sarcastically asks him if he knew the classmate had recently flown around the world from “some special ketchup on my tie that can only be found in Manhattan? Mud on my boots?”

“I’ve just been chatting with your secretary.”