# Doctor Who Series 9 discussion (spoilers as it airs) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 19, 2015, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754 "2015-09-19T11:40:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 31
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/601 "2015-11-30T19:40:08Z")
If those were his skulls at the bottom of the water how did the teleporter get powered up all those times? ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/602 "2015-11-30T19:54:34Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > If those were his skulls at the bottom of the water how did the teleporter get powered up all those times? He burnt his dying self each time to power it, which left a skull lying on the floor. which his next self would find and and eventually place it on a windowsill to fall into the sea below. Each skull was the remains of his last self, millions upon millions. That was the point of his plan: the Veil would kill him in front of the wall, but as a Time Lord he’d still have enough dying strength to crawl to the teleport room and burn himself to power the teleport to generate a new body for the next round. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/603 "2015-11-30T22:44:10Z")
Looks like Peter Jackson might actually be going to direct an episode (video includes PJ and Capaldi): [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w6agKVUCTM) ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/604 "2015-11-30T23:02:33Z")
… and a Dalek… ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/605 "2015-11-30T23:10:31Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > … and a Dalek… I’d hoped that would be a nice surprise for any viewer. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/606 "2015-11-30T23:28:18Z")
[quote=“Baron\_Greenback, post:603, topic:731754”] Looks like Peter Jackson might actually be going to direct an episode (video includes PJ and Capaldi): [/QUOTE] It’ll be three times too long and have pointless characters not in the original script. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/607 "2015-11-30T23:39:49Z")
I first saw the bit with the bird going after the mountain (or something very like it) in The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/608 "2015-12-01T02:55:45Z")
> [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](#): > > Would he have made a dent in a substance x times harder than diamond, with his bare fists, over any period of time up to and including infinity? Diamond is incredibly hard, but also very brittle; that’s how jewelers cut it. I guessed it would have been something like that, like the Doctor was sussing out the fracture lines. The brute force bashing is much more powerful, narratively. > [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Tegan was great on the rare occasions when they let her be more confident and aggressive. They spent too much time trying to make her the damsel-in-distress sort of companion, so she came off as whiny. She would have worked a lot better as a headstrong troublemaker like Leela or Ace. > > Tegan and Nyssa as the brawn and the brains would have been a kick-ass team of companions, and would have nicely complemented Five’s shy sweetness. But the presence of Adric (and an unwillingness to let the girls be heroic) scuttled the dynamic. Janet Fielding eloquently discussed that very subject, and put it in the context of gender disparities in entertainment, in a panel with Sarah Sutton in (I think) 2011: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db8JFimqlcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db8JFimqlcA) ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/609 "2015-12-01T03:09:44Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > The brute force bashing is much more powerful, narratively. My read on it was that a lot of the suffering was the Doctor’s self-imposed penance for Clara’s death. If you think about it, the Time Lords only intended the Doctor to suffer through the castle once, for a few days of reflection, confession and punishment. Harsh, cruel even, but not utterly disproportionate. It was only the Doctor’s refusal to submit and desire to suffer and atone that made go through torment billions of times over. I suppose in a way it was the Passion of the Doctor. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/610 "2015-12-01T03:19:01Z")
But did the Doctor suffer over and over? My take on it is that he did only go through the castle once. Sure, he did it several billion times, but each run-through was a ‘new’ Doctor, having been ‘reset’ by the mechanism in the castle. So although we saw him suffer through billions of years of torment, for him it only ever lasted a few days (unlike Bill Murray’s character in _Groundhog Day_, who lived every minute of the however-many days he spent in Punxsutawney). ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/611 "2015-12-01T03:32:02Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > My read on it was that a lot of the suffering was the Doctor’s self-imposed penance for Clara’s death. If you think about it, the Time Lords only intended the Doctor to suffer through the castle once, for a few days of reflection, confession and punishment. Harsh, cruel even, but not utterly disproportionate. It was only the Doctor’s refusal to submit and desire to suffer and atone that made go through torment billions of times over. I suppose in a way it was the Passion of the Doctor. But this wasn’t like Groundhog Day where the day repeated over and over but he was fully aware. He actually only suffered through one day and died, until the day he won. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/612 "2015-12-01T03:33:46Z")
How, we don’t know, but he explicitly states that when he comes to wall, then, it all comes back to him, he then remembers each and every death … hence the desperation of “can’t I lose just this once?” ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/613 "2015-12-01T04:02:57Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > How, we don’t know, but he explicitly states that when he comes to wall, then, it all comes back to him, he then remembers each and every death … hence the desperation of “can’t I lose just this once?” I took that as him figuring out what was going on, and realizing that he must have died a whole bunch of times, but not actually remembering those deaths. “This place is my own, bespoke torture chamber intended for me only, and all those skulls in the water… How could there be other prisoners in my hell?” sounds more like an inference than a recollection. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/614 "2015-12-01T04:45:06Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > I took that as him figuring out what was going on, and realizing that he must have died a whole bunch of times, but not actually remembering those deaths. “This place is my own, bespoke torture chamber intended for me only, and all those skulls in the water… How could there be other prisoners in my hell?” sounds more like an inference than a recollection. I agree; he doesn’t have any recollection of his past “lives” and deaths, and each time the castle resets he has to learn it anew, but by the time he reaches the wall he understands the significance of Bird and realises how many times he’s done this, and how far he still has to go. He pretty much figures it out at the same time the viewer does, that all the skulls were his, and that in order to break down the wall he’ll have to die, crawt and then burn in order to provide the next, and the next, and the next… ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/615 "2015-12-01T05:24:52Z")
But this > [@](#): > > The Doctor: **That’s when I remember! Always then. Always… then. Always exactly then!** I can’t keep doing this, Clara! I can’t! Why is it always me? Why is it never anybody else’s turn?! ( Chalk taps ) The Doctor: Can’t I just lose? Just this once?! Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. Just tell them. Just tell them, whoever wants to know, all about the Hybrid. ( Footsteps thud and flies buzz ) > > The Doctor: Can’t I just lose? Just this once?! Easy. It would be easy. It would be so easy. Just tell them. Just tell them, whoever wants to know, all about the Hybrid. ( Footsteps thud and flies buzz ) The Doctor: I can’t keep doing this. I can’t… I can’t always do this! It’s not fair! Clara, it’s just not fair! **Why can’t I just lose?! But I can remember, Clara. You don’t understand, I can remember it all. Every time.** And you’ll still be gone. Whatever I do… you still won’t be there. sure does sound like he, at that point, then, remembers it all. Every time. Not just infers it all. Remembers it all. That’s the poignancy, the full scope of what he is doing. Not just billions of separate Doctors each having a very bad weeks, but at the end each deciding to do it again with the full memory of how horrific it has been and will continue to be for … a … very … very … long … time. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/616 "2015-12-01T16:43:49Z")
My friend Scott and I had an intense discussion about this ep. We concluded that each time the Doctor had the re-experience, it was actually a new generation of the Doctor, much like when a species has children. Each generation of species evolves. Innate intelligence changes, internal roadmap is modified, efficient behavior and problem solving ability is improved, much like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. The Doctor learns from his previous mistakes even though he doesn’t remember making them. 2 billion years later, he become the Hybrid prophesied by the Time Lords, not because he merged with another species, but because he improved himself through 2 billion years of evolution. He retained the body because of the reset he kept programming. Thus, while his body did not go undergo change, his mind and soul did. He is now a 2 billion year-advanced version of a Time Lord. The Time Lords intended this as a prison to force him to confess the secret of how he became a hybrid, but he had no such secret. It only came to be after his 2 billion year evolution. Thus, the Time Lords’ prophecy was self-fulfilling. They engineered their own doom. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/617 "2015-12-01T17:49:45Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > We concluded that each time the Doctor had the re-experience, it was actually a new generation of the Doctor, much like when a species has children. Each generation of species evolves. But how would he evolve? I thought each Doctor was a copy generated from the “hard drive” in the teleporter, and therefore identical. ---
**Author:** ![anyrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/618 "2015-12-01T17:59:37Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > But how would he evolve? I thought each Doctor was a copy generated from the “hard drive” in the teleporter, and therefore identical. Yes. This. But somehow he managed to accumulate momories, which he was only able to recall in the last instances. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/619 "2015-12-01T19:10:16Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > My friend Scott and I had an intense discussion about this ep. > > We concluded that each time the Doctor had the re-experience, it was actually a new generation of the Doctor, much like when a species has children. Each generation of species evolves. Innate intelligence changes, internal roadmap is modified, efficient behavior and problem solving ability is improved, much like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. The Doctor learns from his previous mistakes even though he doesn’t remember making them. > > 2 billion years later, he become the Hybrid prophesied by the Time Lords, not because he merged with another species, but because he improved himself through 2 billion years of evolution. He retained the body because of the reset he kept programming. Thus, while his body did not go undergo change, his mind and soul did. He is now a 2 billion year-advanced version of a Time Lord. > > The Time Lords intended this as a prison to force him to confess the secret of how he became a hybrid, but he had no such secret. It only came to be after his 2 billion year evolution. Thus, the Time Lords’ prophecy was self-fulfilling. They engineered their own doom. That’s a bit Lamarckian. ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754/620 "2015-12-01T20:42:53Z")
Didn’t he also say it took a day and a half to crawl back to the tube to regenerate? So it wasn’t really moments. Although to some one who was over 1000 years old at the start of the day( and 2 billion at the end) maybe 36 hours is just a moment. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754.md?page=30) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-series-9-discussion-spoilers-as-it-airs/731754.md?page=32)