#surprise surprise. same metaphor applied to different movie B)

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

burning house as a metaphor for a miscarriage....... IN fear in the night (1972)

[raeynbowboi]

What Are My Ships 2.0

So, a while ago I did a post on my then viewpoints and opinions of ships within the BnHA/MHA fandom, and needless to say my opinions have changed since then, so this is sort of an update to the last time I did a post of this nature. Like last time, I’ll be going from my OTPs to my Favorites, Likes, BrOTPs, and then my NOTPs. However, whereas before I was mostly talking about the ships I liked, I want to expand this one to give an honest opinion on all of the ships, or at least the popular ones. Also, if I say I don’t like your ship, that doesn’t mean I don’t like you or your fellow shippers. I just don’t like the idea of those two characters together. Frankly, I wouldn’t even really say I’m an “Anti” to any ships except anything involving an adult and an under-aged character, and anything involving Mineta because fuck Mineta.

OTPs

So before I get into this one, I want to clarify the meaning of OTP as I use it. When I say my OTP, it means one of two things: Either A) This is the only person I ship with this character, and I don’t care for them being with anyone else, or B) I do like them in other ships, but nowhere near the level of this particular ship. I usually ship in accordance to the canon of the work. I look for evidence in the text itself, and I build my appreciation for relationships based on the evidence provided. Though I’m just as capable of crack shipping as anyone else, I tend to prefer the ships with a lot of canon content. Furthermore, my OTPs are usually a pairing that as far as the text itself is concerned, they don’t really seem to have any other legitimate love interest. Bakugo for example only really has shipping fodder with Kirishima. Bakudeku is more of a rivalry, and Kacchako is really stretching for something that isn’t there. Bakugo shows absolutely no interest in the girls of his class, and Bakudeku is so abusive and toxic that it’s firmly off my radar. So, since Bakugo doesn’t really like anyone other than Kirishima, as far as I’m concerned, Bakugo only has one actual love interest. The same could be said for Kirishima. The only characters other than Bakugo he has canon reasons to be shipped with are Tetsutetsu and Ashido. However, Tetsutestsu is very clearly being shipped with Kendo, and although Ashido and Kirishima are old friends, Ashido isn’t around for Kirishima’s emotional growth moments. Kiri isn’t thinking about Ashido when he reassures himself of his worth. Kiri isn’t making excuses to be around Ashido. Kirishima has little to no romantic dynamics with Ashido, they’re just two kids who went to the same middle school. So, like with Bakugo, I don’t really consider Kirishima to have any other truly viable love interests. And sure, I was using my main OTP as an example, but I apply this same logic to most ships, except for crack ships.

KIRIBAKU//BAKUSHIMA

So I just explained why I don’t ship them with other characters. But bashing other ships is not an argument, it’s just hating on other pairings. So rather than just gushing about my feelings about Kiribaku, it’s better to explain why I ship them. Kirishima and Bakugo have equal and opposite character flaws. Kirishima is a friendly character that lacks self-confidence. Bakugo is an overly confident character that isn’t very friendly. The appeal of Kiribaku is that they both grow from this relationship, which is like writing 101 when writing a good romance. The couple need to both get something out of the relationship. Kirishima is friendly enough to get Bakugo to warm up and be more of a team player, but Kirishima also has enough of a backbone to call Bakugo out when he’s being an asshole. He’s able to appreciate Bakugo for the person that he is, but he won’t allow Bakugo to mistreat him. He forces Bakugo to recognize him as an equal, and Bakugo responds by addressing him by his name. Something which is very clearly a sign of respect, as he also does this on one occasion with Uraraka during the tournament arc. Kirishima’s friendliness and determination to be close to Bakugo earned Bakugo’s trust and respect, and he rewarded Kirishima’s determination by treating him way better than he treats anyone else. Kirishima on the other hand is a character who is deeply insecure. Dying his hair red, spiking it up the way that he does, modeling himself after heroes he idolizes, Kirishima’s character is clearly someone who doesn’t have a lot of confidence or self-esteem, thus why he models his behavior after others who he views as role models. Where Kirishima would doubt himself, Bakugo is self-assured enough to put Kirishima’s mind at ease. And speaking from experience, Bakugo’s method works. Like Kirishima, I too have struggled with insecurities, and Bakugo’s ‘fuck what everybody else thinks, do it cuz you like it’ methodology actually helped me get over my own worries and doubts. I actually was able to get over my fears of self-doubt because of the things Bakugo has said. And I’m a stronger person for it, just like Kirishima.

MIRITAMA

If you’ve been following my page for a while now, you may already know that I love me the relationship dynamic I tend to refer to as Sunshine and Stormcloud. That is to say, when a happy optimistic and friendly person dates a grumpy, sad, or otherwise “dark” character. Unlike Kiribaku, these two don’t really have to fight off other suitors. If either of them is shipped with Nejire, Mirio with Midoriya, or Tamaki with Kirishima, these ships are all small fries compared to this ship. So small that they really don’t pose any threat. These two have a great dynamic, and both motivate the other to succeed. This is also just a super cute healthy supportive couple. Mirio has never once said anything about Tamaki’s anxiety. He just accepts that it’s part of him, and I would not be surprised if Mirio has helped Tamaki through panic attacks in the past. This pairing is just so wholesome and cute, I love it.

HAWKSDEAVOR

Okay, yes. Endeavor is a total trash mammal abusive dickbutt. But guess what? So was Bakugo, and now he’s won 3 popularity polls in a row. I sort of view this ship as the adult version of Kiribaku. Especially since Horikoshi has drawn some not so subtle parallels between Endeavor and Bakugo. And the overall relationship dynamics are similar. An overly-confident and proud asshole learns to care about other people through meeting and befriending a happy-go-lucky and friendlier young man who earns his respect. Now, I’m sure there are people who don’t think Endeavor deserves redemption, but I for one have always been a supporter of the “Love redeems” trope when done right. And Hawksdeavor is doing it right. Because although Endeavor has a past of abuse and general assholery, that abuse was never targeted at Hawks. This is not an abuse victim falling in love with their abuser. It is a neutral third party helping to rehabilitate an abusive asshole into a hero deserving of the title. It’s also worth confessing that I have not been a victim of abuse, so I might have an easier time forgiving Endeavor and wanting him to grow and change than someone who has been hurt by a parent or anyone else in the way Endeavor abused Shoto. And I want to make it clear, I like the ship. That doesn’t mean Endeavor is anywhere near done repenting and groveling for Shoto’s forgiveness because child abuse is a serious issue, and Endeavor does need to work for his redemption. But, I am at least willing to humor his attempts and give him the benefit of the doubt to at least let him try and repair the damage that he’s caused his family, because he’s at least putting in the effort to be better, and that’s worth at least something to me.

INATODO

I like Tododeku. I do. But I love the weird ass dynamic between these two. Plus it’s an interesting yin-yang personality difference you don’t see a lot. The monotone emotionally distant partner and the constantly screaming overly passionate partner. It’s a bit goofy, but I like it. Their quirks can also fight against each other or work together for something much stronger, which I think is a great metaphor for a couple learning to work together and being stronger as a unit.

DAVE MIGHT Okay, full disclosure, I haven’t actually seen the BnHA movie. But it’s cute as hell, and I ship it. Sadly, I don’t have much to say, since I don’t know much about their dynamic, but anything that gives the story more gay is good in my eyes.

TETSUKENDO

Yes, I have straight ship. But in all seriousness, this one is only an honorable mention OTP, not because I ship it with much enthusiasm. It just doesn’t really have any other viable competition for either member, which qualifies it as an OTP.

FAVORITES

TODODEKU

I know full well that Deku probably won’t end up with Todoroki. Despite him and Uraraka having about as much chemistry as a soggy slice of pizza, it’s pretty clear that Izuchako is the canonically viable ship. Too bad they’re boring, bland, and completely unremarkable as far as romances go. They’re cookie-cutter standard, vanilla-flavored, and and just generic. A big part of that of course is Uraraka’s complete lack of defining character traits, more on that here. At least with Todoroki, there’s more going on in their relationship. They have a more interesting dynamic for starters. On top of that, Todoroki is a three dimensional person with a fully realized personality, wants, hopes, dreams, fears, flaws, and backstory. And Uraraka is... cute. And Nice. And... nice. To quote a show from my childhood, I could stand in a puddle of Uraraka and not get my feet wet, that’s how shallow her character is. Which means that Todoroki is not only more interesting, but due to being his own character, he offers contrasting or complimentary viewpoints, life experiences, ideologies, and character traits to clash or mix with Deku’s to create a more rich and interesting narrative. The girl doesn’t even have interests. When a character is so hollow that you can’t even name more than two character traits before you start having to use synonyms, you’re not exactly creating the next Prince Zuko. And sure, I was nicer to Izuchako in my first post, but I also hadn’t yet realized how completely shallow and flat Uraraka was as a character. So yeah, Tododeku is a major step up in my own opinion.

KAMISERO

I wasn’t always the biggest fan of this ship. When the show started, I didn’t really see it. Truth be told, I still don’t really see textual evidence to support this ship, but damn if it isn’t cute. I’ll be the first to admit this is a ship I started shipping because I saw shipping fanart and thought it looked cute. I like the best friends to boyfriends idea that comes with them, and I think they’re cute together. Plus their hero costumes totally go together.

KAMIJIRO

Yes, another straight ship. See I do have them every once in a while. I can’t really say much about this ship compared to last time. I think it’s cute. Kami makes Jiro laugh. They’re in a band together. And they both strike me as laid-back types. Like they could just hang and that’d be enough for them. Like there’s a reason Jiro’s considered an honorary Bakusquad member. She’s really chill and down-to-earth, which seems like a good fit for this sparky doofus.

SHINKAMI

A lot of fans refer to them as Erasermic 2.0 and I’d say sure, with the exception that Kaminari isn’t as annoying as Present Mic. For the most part, I like their dynamic. It’s cute, and I could see it building up to something interesting. Perhaps what’s more curious is the fact that ShinDeku basically fell off the face of hte earth once this ship came around. Because I see way fewer things of Shinso x Deku than I do Shinso x Kami, so something that popular is probably popular for a good reason.

LIKES

TODOMOMO

I’m honestly only including this cuz it’s a popular ship, and apparently probably where the canon ships are heading. Too bad I didn’t even realize they were being shipped together until I literally saw a promotional thing with them together that said that this was apparently one of the biggest ships in the fandom and I didn’t get the memo, cuz I had no idea these two were a thing in fanon or canon at all. At literally no point have I ever seen anything even resembling intimacy or even genuine affection between the two. They work well together, and they’re good teammates, but as a romantic pairing they came completely out of left field. If you ship them, well good for you, but I don’t really see why. Well at least it’s not abusive or toxic and it doesn’t involve Mineta so you do you.

MOMOJIRO

I won’t lie, as a gay man, lesbian ships tend to go right past my radar. The only times I’ve ever gotten really invested in shipping lesbian characters was when there was heavy canon backing to support the ships. But without canon support, I don’t really go looking for it. And frankly, I don’t see it with this or any lesbian pairing in this series.  There’s no romantic spark as far as I can see. But I guess at least within fanon, I see this ship a lot and it’s fine. It works. Lesbians deserve representation too, so I get it. People look for themselves in media. I don’t judge on that front. I mean, a big part of my disinterest is that the girls are secondary characters. I think Hagakure gets two lines per arc. But for me personally, I’m just not really invested in the lesbian ships of this series. But of the lesbian pairings that are even a little bit viable, Momojiro i guess is at the top. MomoKendo is the only pairing I’ve come close to actually shipping, but it’s pretty clear who Kendo is going to end up with.

HATSUMIIDA

I like Hatsume. I think she’s a fun character. I wish they’d use her more because she actually has a personality. And it’s actually enjoyable to be around. But these two are basically just a couple because Iida has gone from Deku’s best friend to background student ever since the stain arc ended. Honestly, this ship is more of a comedic duo. the Comically Serious with the Comically Wacky. And it’s fine.

TSUKOYAMI

Bascially the same thing I said last time. They’re cute, they’re two smart cookies, and they work well together. They haven’t really done anything new together in a while, so it’s a pretty dormant ship right now.

ERASERMIC

The ship is fine, I just don’t particularly like it. It works, but it’s not really something I actively ship. Mostly I just don’t like Present Mic, I think he’s annoying and his tiny mustache is unattractive. I don’t really have a problem with this ship. I don’t particularly care for it either. It exists. I’m okay with its existence.

IZUCHAKO

Okay, I know I bashed this ship pretty hard in my discussion of Tododeku but that doens’t mean i hate it. It means I’m frustrated with it. It has the potential to be good, but it settles for bland mediocrity. There’s nothing here in this boy meets girl will they won’t they main boy must date main girl cishet ship that hasn’t been done to death by a thousand other shows. It’s boring. And yeah, most of that fault lies with Uraraka not being a real person. And before Izuchako shippers get all defensive, honestly answer me this: Name one of Uraraka’s hobbies. Tell me something about her. Give me any indication that she has any character trait other than sweet, nice, or friendly. Sure okay, she can get competitive, but she gets that way. As in, it’s not an inherent trait. It has to be turned on. And okay, she’s selfless enough to want an easier life for her parents. The problem with Uraraka is that she’s forced to remain this perfect porcelain figure. And a lot of my problems with this ship could be fixed by fixing my problems with Uraraka. Make her a real character. Give her a story arc. Give her interests and hobbies, superstitions, quirky behaviors. Anything. Just don’t treat her like a trophy to be handed to Deku when he saves the day. Believe me, I want this ship to be better. Because this is the flagship couple of the series. So they should be better written. But they aren’t and that’s upsetting.

BrOTPs

BAKUJIRO

Let me tell you, as a huge fan of this BrOTP, it was SO vindicating to see them working so well together during the drill against class 1-B. I genuinely believe that after Kirishima (and possibly now Kaminari) that Jiro probably has the best chance of being called Bakugo’s best friend, and I love that. These two feel like they’d just get along due to their punk/emo/goth vibe, and shared aloofness. I feel like Jiro is good enough at keeping her cool that she is one of the few characters who could just stonewall Bakugo’s angry yelling and just reply with a sarcastic quip about him throwing a tantrum without even looking up from her phone. They just seem like they’d get along once Bakugo starts to respect her more, and I look forward to that day.

NOTPs

My opinions on my NOTPS really haven’t changed, so I’m honestly just going to copy and past them. If you’ve read them before, then it’s unnecessary extra reading, and if you haven’t, then it can still look like a fresh opinion.

KACCHAKO

This ship straddles the line for me, as I do like this pairing, but only as a Friend!Ship. I like the idea of Bakugou sort of bringing Uraraka’s more competitive nature to the surface, and the two becoming sparring partners. It’s just the romantic angle I’m less keen on. The main contention I see for this pairing as a romantic couple is that Bakugou didn’t hold back against Uraraka during the Tournament Arc, but I personally prefer to look at it as a great parallel to the battle between Neji and Hinata Hyuga during the Chunin Exams in Naruto, an anime which was a major influence for Horikoshi. In both fights, a genius and prodigy who stood as an elite among the young recruits was set to fight the primary love interest who was significantly weaker than him. In both fights, both Neji and Bakugou completely refused to hold back and wiped the floor with their opponent. The main difference came in how the fights ended. When Neji moved in for the attack as Hinata was defeated, multiple supervising teachers had to restrain him from killing her while she was barely able to remain standing. Comparatively, the instant Bakugou noticed that Uraraka was collapsing in defeat, he stopped his attack. Heck, part of me even expected Bakugou to retrieve her tournament jacket and give it back to her, but I suppose that would have been a little out of character. My point with this story is that Bakugou had the mindset of a true feminist. He didn’t show mercy because she was at a lower skill level or because she was a girl. He fought her as if she was a legitimately threatening villain, and when the threat was neutralized, he no longer needed to keep fighting. I choose to read this as a recognition of her as a hero in training and even the building block upon which to build further respect between them. So, I can understand why people might ship this pairing, especially since Bakugou doesn’t really have anything even resembling shipping fodder with any other female character, as he doesn’t really tend to talk directly to the girls in his class. Still, for me, I think these two are much better off as friends who push each other to improve, but if this ship is your jam, I don’t see anything too problematic with it.

BAKUDEKU

This is probably the only ship I’d come close to calling myself an Anti for, but in truth, I don’t have a problem with people who ship these two, I just find it too problematic for me to really have any kind of favor for it. My problem with Bakudeku is that it’s mutually toxic. Midoriya shows very clear signs of abuse, whether it be verbal, physical, or mental, as he flinches at the sound of Bakugou’s voice, and immediately backtracks when talking to Kacchan in an attempt to stop him from getting angry enough to provoke an attack. However, Midoriya is just as bad for Bakugou, as it has been said numerous times that Bakugou’s pride is the direct result of endless praise and affirmation as a child from teachers and peers. Midoriya is a contributor to this problem, as even now, he continues to remark on how amazing Bakugou is, thus feeding his pride and inflating his ego. While it is possible for these two to grow past their rivalry and even enter something of a friendship, I don’t like the idea of such a toxic, abusive, and cruel dynamic taking any sort of romantic shape, as it would be damaging to both boys. Granted, some people enjoy darker pairings and others enjoy it for the idea of the redemption and reconciliation, but this pairing simply is not for me. If you do like this pairing, good for you. I am by no means trying to sway people’s opinions to resemble mine. I am by no means saying you can’t like this ship or that you shouldn’t, I’m just explaining why I do not.

[phantom-le6]

Film Re-Review - Star Trek: Nemesis

As I’m very much feeling a case of Trek fatigue at the moment, and because I’ve been neglecting other projects to focus on completing these reviews, I’ve decided to make this weekend a quick two-for-one posting weekend, and I present my re-review for the fourth and final TNG movie.  For those now following me on Tumblr who don’t see my posts on Facebook regarding these reviews, just to let you know this won’t be the last bit of Trek I do. I did Deep Space Nine years ago when I used to post my reviews on Facebook, and while I’m not aiming to repost those reviews, I am planning to review the Voyager series after I take a break with some non-Trek films and the Batman animated series.  Also, in the very short term I’ll be making up lost time on some novel prep, so if my posts are bit infrequent for a little while, don’t worry.  Now, with that bit of house-keeping out of the way, let’s have a look at Nemesis.

Plot (as given by Wikipedia):

During a session of the Romulan Imperial Senate, the military offers the plans to join forces with the Reman military and invade the Federation, but the Praetor refuses. As such a green thalaron radiation mist is released into the room by the military and everyone is killed. Meanwhile, the crew of the USS Enterprise-E prepares to bid farewell to long time first officer Commander William Riker and Counselor Deanna Troi, who are soon to be married on Betazed. En route, they discover a positronic energy reading on a planet in the Kolaran system near the Romulan Neutral Zone. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Lieutenant Commander Worf, and Lieutenant Commander Data land on Kolarus III and discover the remnants of an android resembling Data. When the android is reassembled it reveals its name is B-4, and the crew deduce he is a less advanced earlier version of Data.

 Vice Admiral Kathryn Janeway orders the crew to conduct a diplomatic mission to Romulus. Janeway informs Picard that the Romulan government has undergone a military coup and is now controlled by a Reman named Shinzon, saying he wants peace with the Federation and to bring freedom to Remus. This is a surprising development as the Romulans had regarded Remans as an undesirable caste used principally as slave labour and shock troops during the Dominion War, due to their long history of prejudice.

 Upon their arrival on Romulus, the crew learns that Shinzon is actually a clone of Picard, following a secret experiment conducted by the Romulans to take Picard's place in Starfleet as a spy; however, he and the project were abandoned after a political change in the Romulan government left him cast away to Remus as a slave. It is there that he meets his Reman brethren and effects his rise to power. It was also on Remus where Shinzon constructed his flagship, a heavily armed warship named Scimitar, with a completely undetectable cloaking device, an arsenal of weapons, and virtually impregnable shields.

 Though the diplomatic mission seems to go smoothly, the crew discovers that the Scimitar is emitting low levels of extremely dangerous thalaron radiation (the same radiation used to assassinate the Romulan senate), several unauthorized computer accesses take place aboard the Enterprise, and Troi is mentally attacked by Shinzon while she is having sex with Riker. Shinzon captures Picard for reasons he does not make clear, though later Dr Beverly Crusher informs Picard that Shinzon is slowly dying from the accelerated ageing from his cloning process, and thus needs Picard's blood to live. Shinzon also transports B-4 aboard the Scimitar, revealing that Shinzon was behind the placing of B-4 on Kolarus III in order to lure Picard to Romulus. However, the B-4 Shinzon transported is actually Data posing as B-4 — he rescues Picard and they make their escape back to their ship. Realizing that the Scimitar is a weaponized thalaron emitter with enough power to destroy all life forms in a fleet of ships as well as an entire planet, Data deduces that Shinzon is using the warship to conquer the Federation and destroy Earth.

 The Enterprise races back towards Federation space, but is soon ambushed by the Scimitar, disabling the Enterprise's warp drive in the process. In the ensuing assault, the Enterprise is outmatched. Two Romulan warbirds arrive and assist in the assault, but Shinzon destroys one warbird and disables the other. Refocusing his attention on Picard, Shinzon further damages the Enterprise.

 Refusing to surrender, Picard uses his heavily damaged ship to ram the Scimitar, causing moderate damage including disabling the disrupter banks. Shinzon then initializes the Scimitar's thalaron weapon in a desperate attempt to take the Enterprise down with him. Picard boards the vessel alone and faces Shinzon. Unable to prevent the weapon's activation, Picard kills Shinzon by impaling him through the abdomen with part of a metallic support strut. Data arrives with a single-use personal transporter, using it to quickly beam the captain back to the Enterprise before destroying the ship at the cost of his life, shutting down the weapon in the process.

 While the severely damaged Enterprise is under repair in a space dock in Earth orbit, Picard bids farewell to newly promoted Captain Riker who is off to command the USS Titan, to begin a true peace negotiation mission with Romulus. Picard then meets with android B-4, whereupon he discovers that Data had succeeded in copying the engrams of his neural net into B-4's positronic matrix not long before his death.

Review:

Having re-watched Nemesis, and then looking back at how I reviewed it originally when I was considering these films just as a film series, I can’t say my feeling about this instalment in the franchise has really changed much.  It’s not the best TNG film, but I think some of the negative rep it has gained isn’t deserved.  Only some, mind; I have to agree that the film was a bit too dark in places, especially the ‘psychic rape’ scene Troi is subjected to mid-film.  Not only was that excessively dark in the film that had little light to it, but the show had already done this kind of thing before, albeit more metaphorically.  It wasn’t necessary and spoke to the fact that the director Stuart Baird was the wrong choice.  Frakes, or failing him another Trek actor-turned-director like Stewart or Burton, should have been at the helm.  Baird’s poor performance as director proves that Trek is best handled ‘in-house’ when it comes to behind the camera talent.

 Now as to what makes Nemesis good, I’m going to begin by quoting a couple of paragraphs from my original review;

“So, what is it that makes Nemesis a good film? Well, aside from quality action and special effects, the plot examines issues relevant in modern society, which of course is what the best of Trek always does.  In this case, Picard and Data are confronted by would-be duplicates of themselves in the characters of Shinzon and B-4, and this brings up the issue of whether or not we’re seeing two of each character or four separate characters. In essence, Picard facing his clone is a metaphor for our current-day issue of whether cloning is acceptable, whether such a science robs us of our individuality or not.

 Of course, the answer is it doesn’t – as Data points out in one scene, B-4 and Shinzon lack the desire to better themselves possessed by Picard and Data.  For all their similarities, too much about the circumstances in which each character was created and raised is different for them to be the same, and the same applies to any clone.  If you cloned an adult, that clone would have to go through their own childhood, and the difference in environment, from the people in their life to the culture they’re exposed to, would be too different from what the DNA donor experienced growing up, and consequently you would end up with a new, different individual. Cloning may produce a genetic replica of someone, but it can never replicate someone in their entirety, can never copy that which makes any one person truly unique.”

 The film also brings a lot of closure to the TNG franchise, which is strange considering a fifth TNG film was supposed to be in development at the same time Nemesis was in production.  Riker’s promoted and off on the Titan with Troi, Data sacrifices himself, and I can’t really see B4 as a substitute Data, nor Riker serving under Picard now that they’re the same rank.  To do a fifth film with just the TNG cast, you’d have to demote Riker and either not use Data at all or pull off some last-minute cross-time beam-out on Data.  However, it seems that the fifth film might have included more alumni from the spin-off shows, and that’s an idea that I think could have worked.  In fact, at some point I really want to try and write my own version of such a story, because I think Trek hasn’t really capitalised on its own cross-over potential much down the years.

 In terms of Data’s part in the story, I think he gets a good ending to his story within the world of Trek.  Self-sacrifice for friends, family, duty and the service of a worthy cause are one of the defining attributes of humanity, and given that Data has always been about exploring the human condition, it is fitting that he goes out in the most human way imaginable.  However, some aspects of his story are somewhat flawed in terms of continuity.  First, we find a random brother of Data’s and what does the crew do?  Do they stop and think ‘hang on, we don’t know anything about this android, let’s give it a real work over’?  No, they just reassemble it, which in the series was exactly how the crew was almost destroyed by Data’s other brother Lore.  Picard’s crew must have a flat line for a learning curve to have not learned the error of their ways by now.

 Second, this film makes absolutely no reference to Data’s emotion chip, something all of the past three movies did to some extent. In Generations it was a key plot point, and in First Contact, while in Insurrection it got one mention before presenting a point of inconsistency in Spiner’s performance as Data.  In this film, it’s neither heard from nor seen, and it seems annoying that Data’s final appearance essentially regresses him to an earlier point in his evolution as a character.  Even more disappointing is that he never got to return to any concepts that failed in the series because he lacked the emotion chip.  A proper Data romance of some kind would have been nice to see in the TNG films before he was killed off, for example.

 On the plus side, the film doesn’t lack in terms of the quality of its guest cast; you’ve got Whoopi Goldbery and Wil Weaton giving their final performances as Guinan and Wesley Crusher, for starters, as well as Kathryn Janeway from Voyager making an appearance.  Add to that a brief appearance by Alan Dale and the inclusions of such notable actors as Tom Hardy (then at the start of his acting career), Ron Perlman (he of Hellboy and Blade II fame, among other things) and Dina Meyer (who I mainly know from Starship Troopers and guest-appearances on Friends and NCIS), and it’s a decent compliment to line up alongside the main TNG cast.

 However, all the great casting in the world and all the wonderful issue exploration that is the heart of good Trek can fully redeem Nemesis.  Leaving aside outside factors like releasing alongside the fourth of the Brosnan Bond films and the second Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings films, the film is mostly undone by writing flaws and a bad choice of director.  I also think it’s strange that instead of putting the failure of Nemesis down to all of this, the powers-that-be further linked in the poor performance of prequel series Enterprise and the previous TNG film to conclude it was a case of ‘franchise fatigue’.  With the correct writers and directors, and if Trek had moved forward with its shows instead trying to regress backwards with a pre-Kirk series, not to mention a better choice of release date, more Trek could easily have been done and accepted gladly.  This wasn’t franchise fatigue; it was creative blunders plain and simple.  For me, Nemesis scored 8 out of 10 originally, and while I am inclined to mark it down this time, I only do so to 7 out of 10.

[noona-clock]

Study: Dong Youngbae

In which we dig deeper under the surface of our favorite KPOP idols.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the gifs used in this post. I am not an astrologer nor am I a professional psychologist. These are my opinions based on the research I have done personally/as a hobby. If you disagree with any of these statements, please do so respectfully.

-Admin B

Sun Sign: Taurus (Earth)

Knowing what I do about Youngbae, he relates to his Sun Sign probably the most out of any of his signs. As I did some more research on Taurus, I kept nodding and saying ‘Yep, that’s him’ to myself. Personally, I relate to my moon sign a bit more than my sun sign, so it’s always interesting to me to see what other people think of theirs! (If only I could actually ask Youngbae what his thoughts are).

Taurus are very down to earth people (they are an Earth sign, after all); they’re reliable, genuine, and authentic. They have no apologies for being who they are. Youngbae is most definitely a Taurus in this aspect. He’s one of the most humble and down to earth idols, and he’s so true to himself it’s not even funny. He is who he is, and he won’t say sorry about it (unless he does something others might deem disrespectful, of course). They are also great friends because they’re so genuine, and they’re also very loyal to the people they love. Youngbae demonstrates this by being such a caring, loving friend to the other members of BigBang.

Taurus also prefer to live stable, chaos-free lives, and this is very evident when you watch his episode of I Live Alone. He likes to balance out the hectic life of being an idol with a very calm, quiet life at home. If he’s at home, he’s going to just sit around and do whatever he feels like doing - in his pajamas. Speaking of pajamas, Taurus like to collect things. If they like something, they have more than one of them. And, apparently, Youngbae likes pajamas! Taurus also really value permanence; they like things to basically stay the same, and I think we see that when Youngbae talks about BigBang’s futures. He’s always promising VIPs they’ll be back, and he loves to talk about where they’ll all be years from now. He definitely doesn’t want anything about BigBang to change for as long as he can help it. We can also see this side of him in the fact he just got married to the only girl he’s dated since debuting as an idol!

Another Taurus trait Youngbae fully embodies is that they’re tough and resilient but very sensitive on the inside. Youngbae is pretty emotional, and he has some deep feelings (which you’ll see in his MBTI), but he doesn’t often show it because he is so tough. He’s a very strong person emotionally and mentally. Taurus do tend to take things personally, and I think this might be why Youngbae likes to make fun of himself - in a good way. One of my favorite things is when he’ll post a picture on Instagram of himself as a meme. I just love that, while he is a very serious person, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He has such a delightful sense of humor!

A Taurus’ career is very important to them, and they will work extremely hard to be successful and become financially stable. Bigbang in general are some of the hardest working idols out there, and Youngbae could even be one of the hardest working in the group. He’s very passionate about his music, and one of his main concerns is making sure VIPs are happy. A lot of Taurus do find they love to creatively express themselves and become performers. Funnily enough, Taurus is ruled by the throat, so... is it any surprise Youngbae is such an amazing singer?

Moon Sign: Gemini (Air)

Gemini is one of the craziest signs in the Zodiac because they have so many different sides to them. Not a lot of them apply to Youngbae, but I did pick out some aspects I think fit him pretty well! Like I said, he probably relates more to his sun sign than his moon sign - Taurus fits him so well, don’t you think?

Gemini are very persistent! They will not give up until they’ve achieved what they want to achieve. There are quite a few politicians (and rappers) who are Gemini; they know what they want, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get there. Gemini also have constantly working minds, and sometimes they show that by being extremely talkative. The really smart Geminis don’t always share their thoughts, and we all know Youngbae has his Master’s degree (something I actually have in common with him!).

Gemini are also very confident in their abilities, and they know they can the best job possible when trying to achieve something. Youngbae definitely knows he’s an amazing singer and dancer - he’s always showing off his skills! They also tend to have good people skills, and they know how to make people happy which only aids them in achieving the success they know they deserve. Youngbae, as I’ve mentioned, cares so much about making VIPs happy. He’s always so sweet, and he takes his time when meeting fans outside of concerts. On the flip side, Geminis can be savage. And if you think Youngbae can’t be savage, just think of his Instagram. The horse teeth one he posted in December. He comments on fans’ pictures of him (caption: youngbae is so charming. comment: am i charming? caption: youngbae slayed my life. comment: did i?). He commented “thank u” on CL’s selfie captioned “Okay, I’ll stop.” He’s even savage to HIMSELF. So... yes. Youngbae is savage like a Gemini.

Chinese Astrology: Earth Dragon

Like Jiyong, Youngbae is an Earth Dragon. There’s a reason these two are best friends!

Dragons really like to be the center of attention, and we all know Youngbae does, too. He is definitely not shy in any sense of the word, and Dragons are usually extremely outgoing and great at attracting publicity and attention. A lot of Dragons are known for being showmen, and they have such attractive personalities, they rarely ever lack an audience.The Instagram video Youngbae posted from his wedding was Prime Dragon.

Dragons are known to be the luckiest sign in the Chinese Zodiac, and they have a tendency to be very successful. Their self-assuredness and desire to succeed help them go far in their career, and obviously Youngbae fits this description. While he is super outgoing, he’s also very serious, and he takes his career seriously, as well. Some people might mistake his seriousness for being quiet, but he’s really not.

In addition, Dragons really like to give it their all in whatever they do. Youngbae is very passionate about music, and he’s an extremely hard worker. He’s described himself as an over-achiever before, and that’s definitely the Dragon in him.

Numerology: Life Path 4

Like Seunghyun, Youngbae has a Life Path number of 4. 4s are known as “The Teacher,” and I think we see this in Youngbae as a hyung (or even a dongsaeng). He not only likes to impart his wisdom on his members and fans, but he likes to take care of them, teaching them about self-care and giving advice. He certainly loves to help people (as we will discuss a bit more in the next section). 

Home life is very important and prominent in the life of a 4. If you watched Youngbae’s episode of “I Live Alone,” you will immediately know this is true for him, too. His home life is very quiet and peaceful. He takes the time to cook for himself, he stays in (different pairs of) pajamas all day to feel as comfortable as possible, and he loves to just be at home.

In fact, having a quiet home life is essential for 4s because of the way they take in and process information. Since they are known as Teachers, they love to devour information in hopes of sharing it with the world. They sometimes process so much it leads to sensory overload. This is where a quiet, secure home life comes in handy - to keep the brain calm.

MBTI: INFJ

Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging

It took me far too long to realize/admit that Youngbae is Introverted. But then I watched him on “I Live Alone,” and I understood everything. He’s definitely an Introvert (he likes his alone time), but he’s a VERY outgoing Introvert, which definitely tricked me into thinking he was an Extrovert. 

Those who are typed as Intuitive are more interested in the possibilities of what could be, so they tend to look more toward the future than the past. I believe Youngbae would type as an N because he’s one to quickly answer whenever an interviewers asks them where BigBang will be in 10 years (or which one of them will become a father first). At concerts, he’s always telling VIPs to wait for them, promising us they’ll be back because he has the ability to imagine what might happen in their future as a group. As an Intuitive, Youngbae also trusts symbols and metaphors more than his actual life experiences, and I believe this is why he’s religious. He has so much faith, and he’s proud of it since he’s tattooed more than one religious symbol on his body. Obviously, not all Ns are religious, but I think they probably have a greater propensity to be.

Anyone who knows Youngbae will agree he is certainly more Feeling than Thinking. He’s very emotional and sensitive, and he’s so, so thoughtful. I will always remember the letter he wrote to Seunghyun while he was filming his movie in Europe. That has ‘decision made with the heart’ written all over it. INFJs are known as “The Advocate.” We love to help people, and Youngbae is very much a helper. He wants to help people with his music, and he’s said before he would much rather become known as a meaningful singer.

When a person is typed as a Judging personality, it means they most interact with the outside world when they’re making decisions (whereas Perceiving types interact with the outside world when taking in information). This is connected to the F/T dimension, and Youngbae has shown signs of his Feeling dimension being more dominant. His stage name, Taeyang, means “Sun,” so that shows you just how outwardly his heart shines. Judging personalities also tend to be more structured in how they live their life, but this is not always the case.

Fun fact: Both Admins are INFJ, though Admin B is most definitely a shy introvert, so it seems hard to believe Youngbae is the same type!

Other Studies: Kwon Jiyong, Choi Seunghyun, Kang Daesung, Lee Seunghyun

Master list // RULES // Submit a Request! // Read About the Admins

[askpetethelibrarian]

Why Don’t Men Read Romance

This article is a lot better than the title would indicate, speaking also about why women don’t read WWII books and the like. As a “men” of sorts, I feel uniquely qualified to talk about why I don’t read romances. Keep in mind, I’m going to tell you why I, an individual, don’t get down with romances, not why men, as a whole, avoid them. But if you want to take what I say and assume there are kernels of truth in there in regards to a large segment of the male population...I’d say you’re probably right to consider it. 

By the way, blanket statement: This is my opinion, but I don’t necessarily recommend others live this way, and it’s not my opinion that romance is inferior or bad or whatever. I read books with titles like “Tumor Fruit,” so I’m the the transparent-est of glass houses. Just know that this is my opinion of the little bits of romance I’ve experienced, not a demand that anyone else change their reading habits.

1. They’re Boring

I find most romantic subplots in movies very boring. Creed? Terrible. Nobody should fall in love with their loud-ass neighbor. That person is rude and inconsiderate. Avengers? Why are Hulk and Black Widow in love all of a sudden? When did that happen? And is there not enough stuff going on that we really need that?

Usually, to me, the romance part of a movie is the most boring part, the piece I could do without, and I tend to like movies that have little to no romance. I just re-watched Beetlejuice for the 1000th time, and there’s very little romance. Army of Darkness? Not much romance. 

I also find sex scenes boring. What can I say? The 80′s are over, and I think the most common nudity in movies these days is male butts. I find male butts boring, I find it mostly awkward to watch people on a screen have pretend sex. Sue me.

And I’m not really a fan of “how we met” stories, either. In real life, when I know the people. Once in awhile you get a good one, but most of them are same-y. I know they’re very exciting for the people who lived them, but for me, meh.

Being boring is no great sin, it’s just something that keeps me away from romance. I’ve been bored by the majority of romantic plots and subplots I’ve experienced, so taking a deeper dive seems antithetical. 

2. Predictability

I hope I’m not saying something hurtful to people who like romances when I say they’re predictable. I mean, they’re sort of meant to be, right? The Happily Ever After and all. 

I don’t really like reading a book or watching a movie and trying to predict what happens. I think it’s a weird way to experience something, honestly, because...it’s a fictional story being presented to you. OF COURSE you can make predictions. Because you’re not really predicting what happens, you’re predicting how someone would tell a story of this type. You’re predicting fiction writing. It’s not a huge achievement.

I know I’m wrong about this, but this is how I experience stuff. Most people love uncovering a mystery, and as far as I’m concerned, go for it. 

That said, I find it hard not to read and predict with romance. I think you’re meant to think ahead of what you’re reading, wonder how the story goes from Point A to Point Happily Ever After. I feel similarly about mysteries, too. Predicting plot isn’t interesting to me, so plot contortions aren’t all that thrilling for me.

The things I like either tend to have very unusual, unpredictable plots, or tend to be less centered on plot, more on characters, writing style, and so on. 

3. There’s Just Other Stuff I’d Prefer

I don’t know who these people are that don’t have a thousand books that they would really like to read. I have such a long list of books that I’d LOVE to read, and romance isn’t on that list. I suppose it could be, given the right options, but I’m just not looking to add a genre, honestly. If my reading habits were a marriage, I’d say that we’ve been pretty steady for a good decade now, I’m very happy, and I’m not really looking for anything else. 

Point being, it’s not like I’m avoiding romance and reading nothing. I’m reading other things I’d prefer. 

When I finished library school, one of the things I was most excited about was reading whatever the hell I wanted without a sense of obligation. This hasn’t always worked out, but I try to read things I like anymore, avoiding things that I feel like I “should” read. 

Some might feel this makes me an inferior librarian, that I’m not able to make recommendations outside my taste, but I haven’t found that to be true. In 15 years, I don’t think I ever recommended books to anyone who I would say had remotely parallel tastes to my own (Tumor Fruit, remember?). Additionally, I think a better method, rather than trying to read everything out there, is to find go-to people you can rely on. Even if I read a couple romances a year, I’d never compare to my co-worker, who read these things by the dozens, spoke the lingo, and knew what was happening in the romance world. 

What I’m doing is giving myself permission to read stuff I like, which is what I’m always trying to instill in other readers anyway. 

Not a popular librarian opinion, but hey, I wasn’t blessed with a high tolerance for books I dislike, and I would be happy to test my skills against other random librarians in a random genre recommendation contest. I don’t think I’d be the champ, but I think I’d be comfortably in the middle. 

4. That Stuff is For Girls

While I’m on unpopular opinions...

While I understand that gender lines are being blurred, moved, and erased, you have to understand, I didn’t grow up that way. I’m a guy. I wouldn’t call myself manly, but I tend to like more traditionally masculine things. 

Hey, I have no problem with other people being wherever they find themselves on the gender spectrum, I’m happy to hang out and have a beer with whoever, and I certainly support efforts to make things like books more gender neutral in terms of their covers, marketing, and so on. If I had a dudebro friend who liked romances, I would probably be curious, but whatever!

But I’d be lying if I said romance doesn’t seem designed with a female audience in mind. 

Yes, I’m aware that romance is often at the forefront of developing new authors, storylines with non-traditional romances of all stripes, and basically mixing it up and experimenting with narratives. 

That said, most of the writers are women. Even of man/man romances. Most of the readers are women (between 85 and 90% it appears). So, most times, even a romance intended for a male reader (or, to move away from a binary, intended for anyone other than a traditional female reader), is very likely coming from a female writer working within a very female-influenced tradition. I don’t have a problem with women writing men, even straight women writing gay men. I just highly suspect these narratives aren’t created to please me and people like me.

We shouldn’t be surprised that men aren’t reading a ton of these. They’re not really intended for us. It’s the same way I feel about, I dunno, Frozen. That’s obviously not intended for me, so I don’t have much interest in it, and that’s fine. Would it expand my horizons to watch Frozen and sing along? Maybe. But most likely, I just wouldn’t enjoy it. Because that’s not the goal its creators had in mind. 

5. Rejection or Passivity? 

And keep in mind, this isn’t me refusing to watch Frozen. This is me, in a 2019 world of infinite streaming possibilities, choosing other things without Frozen even entering into the equation. As an adult man with no kids, I’m not really presented with the choice to watch Frozen or not. Likewise, I’m not really presented with the choice of a romance novel that I’m turning down. 

This really is a key concept. There’s a world of difference between, say, refusing to take my son to watch Frozen because “it’s for girls” and me not going out of my way to watch Frozen because it’s for girls. Turning down a romance novel as opposed to just never picking one up. 

I’d have to reach out to romance as opposed to romance reaching out to me, and that’s probably not going to happen. There are plenty of forms of entertainment designed with me in mind, and I’ll probably enjoy the (Tumor) Fruits of those labors. Because I have a higher chance of enjoying what I read. 

It’s always a numbers game with books, always a gamble. I’ll invest X time in hopes of getting either Y enjoyment or Y+B enjoyment plus information. Or B-Y, information minus enjoyment. There’s a lot of equations at play here. It turns out this is a bad metaphor because it makes things more complicated instead of less. 

Anyway, if a book isn’t designed to please me, it’s a lot less likely that it will. So, when I’m betting on a good return on my time investment, the likely winner is something that’s geared towards me. There, that was a lot simpler.

~

There ya go. That’s why I don’t read romance. Argue with me if you’d like, but you’re really arguing a matter of taste. Romance novels are not to my taste, and that’s why I don’t read them.

Whether you think what I’ve said applies to men in general, I’ll leave that to you.

[tardisgirlepic]

Ch. 1: “The Pyramid at the End of the World” Analysis Doctor Who S10.7: Big Payoff Coming, Don’t Trust What You See & Love Is Slavery Theme

My apologies.  I was hoping to get this up here on Tumblr before the next episode aired, but I went out of town.  I did get it posted on AO3 before "The Lie of the Land” aired, as I post there first and then cross-post with photos here.  Because I posted whatever I had on AO3 before I left and hadn’t finished, I went back making some changes to make things clearer before the airing.  At the same time, I had some revelations.  I updated AO3 2 times with the revelations. [See AO3]

Update: As I was working on some changes, I had a major revelation about a Star Trek reference.  I added a bunch of sections talking about the Doctor blowing up the lab and what it references.  Also, I didn't get to finish the part about what was coming up, so I added some more things at the bottom of the chapter.

Update 2x: Another Star Trek reference connects to the Wolf. (Search for UPDATE.)

All links to my other analyses referenced in this chapter go to AO3.  I apologize for that, but I just don’t have time to do lengthy analyses and update the links here.  Check out my Meta Archive on Tumblr for the chapters with photos here.

Note: TPEW = “The Pyramid at the End of the World,” the episode with the incredibly long name that I’m not going to spell out again, unless I have to.  Yikes!

So Much to Say, So Little Time

Sadly, there just isn’t enough time to cover TPEW.  There are tons wrong with the episode and tons to say.  However, I want to get out the main points.  TPEW is very important, and tells me a lot about what is really happening, which is basically the opposite of how it looks.  I’m going to forego most images, except where absolutely necessary, due to time restrictions.

This whole pyramid ploy and impending disaster are part of an engineered plot, not a mistake as the Doctor says.   Most everything in this episode is a lie.  And you may be surprised at what the subtext says about who is part of this plan.  Before we get to the lie and how to tell, let’s look at a few other things, including the purpose of what is happening.

Tips on Learning to Read Subtext

I’m trying to break down what I do, so you can understand how I do it.  Therefore, a situation a couple of days after TPEW aired, where my husband questioned me about how I connected 2 pieces of information, prompts me to explain something. 

I had the pleasure of sitting down and re-watching TPEW with my daughter, who is an excellent subtext reader, and my husband, who is learning the basics and applying what he knows to other shows.  When he’s motivated, he actually does a little research to look up something the dialogue or subtext suggests.  If you want to read subtext at more than a basic level, you have to research stuff.

As an example, before we sat down to re-watch the episode, I saw that the actor who plays the UN Secretary-General was in the movie Eyes Wide Shut.  Many times, actors bring with them subtext from what they’ve previously done, and this doesn’t just apply to DW.  Because I had no idea what the movie was about, I looked it up.  Nothing in the description jumped out at me as making a big subtext statement for DW.

Surprisingly, I came across something in the episode with my newfound understanding.  Now, I had a new appreciation for the line

DOCTOR: Hello, I'm the Doctor, saving the world with my eyes shut.

He questioned how I arrived at this connection between the line and the movie title.  Going with the principle of no coincidences, the line was too close to the movie title to ignore. 

This made me realize I need to show you, at times, how I think in other ways than I already do.

After we finished the episode, I went back to the Wikipedia page on the movie because there was a link that I hadn’t followed.  The movie is based on a 1926 novella by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler.  It is called Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, also known as Dream Story (German: Traumnovelle).

It’s absolutely connected to what is happening in this episode and the others.  Based on this and some other new information in the episode, I believe I know where people are.

BTW, 1926 is an important year because this brings in more subtext, too, whether it’s coincidental to the novella and DW or not.  It refers to the 3rd Doctor story “Carnival of Monsters” and brings in the idea of miniaturization of people, as well as a device called the miniscope, which the 12th Doctor mentions as a possibility that he and Clara could be in during “Robot of Sherwood.” 

The miniscope allows the operator to change the emotions of the creatures inside, even making them forget that they have done something multiple times.  We’ve already seen these ideas used in nuWho but in a different way.

The idea of changing people’s emotions is what happens in “The Bells of St. John,” where Clara and others get uploaded to the Wi-fi.  Miss Kizlet, who works for the Great Intelligence, changes her employees’ emotions from a computer tablet. 

Also, this also brings in a connection to Amy.

The novella, BTW, very much pertains to the Doctor, River, Clara, and others.  That’s for a future chapter.

Ploy to Possess the Doctor: The Eagle Abducts Ganymede

The big payoff is coming! Here we see Ganymede getting abducted by the UN and Colonel Brabbit.  Where is UNIT, BTW?

The Eagle

Colonel Brabbit represents the eagle.  In the image below, there is an eagle on his uniform sleeve (red arrow).  It’s true an eagle represents a colonel in the US Army. This, however, is not a real army uniform, nor is it a real colonel’s eagle.  This is all a lie.  Besides, no colonel would be making unilateral decisions for the entire nation.

Brabbit has 4 stars in 2 different places (white and yellow arrows) on his uniform.  The 4 stars represent the Library, so this is taking place in the Library metaphor.   He also has 13 stars on his hat.  The number 13 represents a Doctor.  Here is where the Doctor is both Ganymede and an eagle.

The 12th Doctor in the subtext in seasons 8 and 9, because he has multiple faces, can be labeled 0, 1, 2, and 3, or he is 12, 13, 14, and 15.  He can also be some multiple of 12 in a series of numbers, such as 24, 25, 26, and 27.  Season 10 is running a bit different, but that will have to be topic for another chapter.

Brabbit, then, would represent the Doctor.  Also, Brabbit = “rabbit” with an added “B.”  Rabbits, as of “Thin Ice,” are associated with redemption.  Unless I missed the horse, there wasn’t any this week for once in many weeks.  This is about the Doctor’s abduction and how it happened.  The rabbit would suggest this is part of getting redemption. Abduction is opposite of rescue, which goes along with how basically everything in this episode is a lie.

This capture may come back to several things, one of which is the Doctor’s words from “Robot of Sherwood.”

DOCTOR: Quickest way to find out anybody's plans, get yourself captured.

I’m expecting the Doctor to be one step ahead, even if it doesn’t look like it.

Ganymede

Both Bill and the Doctor represent Ganymede.  They are abducted and flown to the proverbial Mount Olympus with the pyramid and the Monks. But this all has to do with the Library metaphor.

Bill can represent the Doctor because she is one of his faces. 

Bill’s Cyan Jacket & “The Fires of Pompeii”

Bill is wearing a really interesting jacket.  It’s cyan (a theme color of this episode) with black highlights.  However, before I get to that, the back of her jacket is very important and gives us a lot of information.

The white arrow points to Okinawa.  The red arrow points to a volcano, a symbol of Lobus Caecilius, Capaldi’s character from “The Fires of Pompeii.”  (Caecilius means blind, which is another reason the Doctor most likely had to be blind.) However, that’s not all…

The volcano isn’t just a volcano, and that was the shocking part to me.  Okinawa didn’t make sense when I first saw this.  The volcano looked like Mount Fuji, a sacred symbol in Japan.  When Mount Fuji is stylized like this, I’ve frequently seen a sun and flowers, like cherry blossoms, with it.   Japan is known as the Land of the Rising Sun, so the sun represents it. 

Wow, this also tells me why in TRODM, Nardole and the Doctor go to the Harmony Shoal office in Tokyo! Mount Fuji is near Tokyo.  Before TPEW, I had no clue why Tokyo was important.

Harmony Shoal hasn’t gone away.  They are truly part of this war with the Doctor. 

Anyway, I really doubted this volcano represented Okinawa, so I looked up volcanoes on Okinawa, which is at the southern tip of the Japanese islands.  There aren’t any volcanoes there.  The volcano on Bill’s jacket is Mount Fuji.

Why Okinawa? 

Names, as well as places on Earth, are always important.

I knew several things that Okinawa was famous for: the longest lived people in the world, who aren’t vegetarians; Okinawan martial arts; and the Battle of Okinawa from WWII. None of these explains why Okinawa is so important.

So I looked up Okinawa and read about the history.  Something important related to the Doctor’s subtext story jumped out at me.  Things will start jumping out at you once you understand the basic story and can connect the dots.  However, you first have to build the context into which to put the details.  This is what I’ve intensively done for the past 4 years and beyond.  I may look like I pull things out of a hat, but I don’t.  So I want to show you how I do this.  It’s all based on research that I’ve done, as well as recognizing patterns, seeing things that tend to hide in plain sight, and connecting the dots.  Everyone can do this too.

I am writing more about this than I planned, but this part is really key and is another example of how I piece together the parts of the puzzle.

Anyway, the importance of Okinawa is about usurpation.  And we just saw in previous analyses that usurpation had to be important. 

A Hungarian-born, Jewish man named Bernard Jean Bettelheim converted to Christianity and became rather zealous about preaching the Gospel.  He became, according to Wikipedia, “a naturalized British subject sometime later, married the daughter of a prominent thread producer, and, in 1844, his first child was born; she was named Victoria Rose.”

Wow, there are a couple of things here, as well!  Conversion is important because the Doctor is going through the Great Work. In fact, TPEW had a reference to “My Fair Lady” where the Doctor says, “She's got it.  By George, she's got it!”  My Fair Lady is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, where Eliza is given speech lessons so she can pass as a lady. In the 7th Doctor story “Ghostlight,” the Doctor referred to Ace as Eliza.  This is a conversion of sorts.

Also, Victoria Rose is another link.  Rose is linked to Victoria in “Tooth and Claw,” which is a story of usurpation where the Scottish boy is stolen by Monks and then possessed by the werewolf!  In Chapter 14 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who, we saw how the 10th Doctor, playing the 12th Doctor in the subtext, is half him and half werewolf.  The usurpation story in DW is very old, so many of these references were set up long ago, actually going back to Classic Who. 

BTW, if you can go back to most DW stories, classic or nuWho, and tell something of how at least parts of any episode fit into the main subtext story, you then know every episode of DW is connected.  I want you to know what is possible, depending on how motivated you are.  I would understand more of the details, I’m sure, if I had watched all the Classic Who episodes that still survive.

So my advice is to go back to Classic Who and watch some of the episodes, if you haven’t already, especially ones that I might point out that are relevant to what we are watching at the time.  However, concentrate mostly on nuWho to begin with, especially seasons 8 and 9, which don’t have all the timey-whimey bits of the 11th Doctor stories.

Anyway, Bettelheim, as a missionary, went to Okinawa with “his wife, Elizabeth M., their infant daughter, Victoria Rose (born 1844), their infant son, Bernard James (born November 1845).… The local officials offered the family shelter in the Gokoku-ji temple for the night, and the priests in residence there left, out of respect for the women's privacy. The following morning, the Bettelheims refused to leave.  They would remain in the Gokoku-ji for seven years.”

Wow, he and his family usurped the temple for 7 years!  Temple is a term DW uses for the Doctor’s body, which may come with a number, corresponding to the number of the Doctor.  So in “Oxygen,” we saw “He’s in Section 12,” which felt like it had a lot more meaning beyond the episode, and now I see why.  It was, indeed, foreshadowing to find the Doctor. They linked Bill to the Doctor, and found him through her.

So Bill’s jacket is saying the sacred volcano is usurped, meaning Caecilius is the Doctor.  We’ll see how his body is appropriated/possessed/mind controlled.  And that is exactly what we’ve been examining in multiple chapters.  He puts on the beetle, just like Donna, in “The Fires of Pompeii.”  Donna’s beetle spins off a parallel world for her, so we should expect the same with the Doctor.  However, he’s a happy slave before he even puts the beetle on.

How cool is it that the Land of the Rising Sun becomes a symbol of the Doctor?  And how it ties into the amazing subtext stories that surround the symbol?  The Sun metaphor didn’t even occur to me when TRODM Harmony Shoal office was in Tokyo. This is another example of how DW repeats things in multiple ways, so if you miss it in one context, there will be others. 

So this is a subtext reference, too, showing us Harmony Shoal is involved.  The Doctor is in a psychological war with himself, which we already saw in a different context.

We know we are reading the subtext correctly when all kinds of pieces start falling into place. Things move from hypotheses to conclusions, waiting to be shown in canon.  This is the really exciting thing for me, seeing how this all comes together.

BTW, Clara, too, is connected to Japanese things since she had various Japanese items in her apartment, as well as the house in “Last Christmas.”

Bill’s Red Jacket & “The Return of Doctor Mysterio”

In the opening scenes of the episode, Bill isn’t wearing a cyan jacket.  The 2 birds on the front look similar to those on the cyan jacket, but her jacket is more of a pinkish hue with red highlights, shown below. The really interesting things about the birds are that they are phoenixes.  They also look like a forward “C” and a backward “C.”   That’s significant and refers back to TRODM, Harmony Shoal, and the Eye of Harmony, which I’ll talk about more in a few minutes.

Why does Bill have 2 jackets?

I believe part of the answer to why Bill has 2 jackets can be derived from looking at the 6 elephants in Moira’s house, shown below, from “Extremis.”

In the second image, shown below, of the elephants, there is a mirror with 2 elephant images on the right. However, those images do not match the ones we see in the elephants on the left.  The two in the mirror are ghosts.  So we, most likely, are dealing with 3 people as One and a duplicate 3 people as One.  Perhaps this is a real timeline and an altered timeline.

Both Bills can be real like Donna and alternate-Donna.  From what happens at the beginning with Penny, they are most likely in a shared dream.

The Phoenix

Because Bill’s jacket is about Japan, at least on the back, we not only need to look at the phoenix of Greek mythology, but also we need to examine its meaning in Japan.  Then, we need to try and decide from context which version we are meant to use.  Or maybe we need to use both.

The Phoenix in Greek Mythology

According to Wikipedia:

Associated with the Sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor. According to some sources, the phoenix dies in a show of flames and combustion, although there are other sources that claim that the legendary bird dies and simply decomposes before being born again. According to some texts, the phoenix could live over 1,400 years before rebirth. Herodotus, Lucan, Pliny the Elder, Pope Clement I, Lactantius, Ovid, and Isidore of Seville are among those who have contributed to the retelling and transmission of the phoenix motif.

In the historical record, the phoenix "could symbolize renewal in general as well as the sun, time, the Empire, metempsychosis, consecration, resurrection, life in the heavenly Paradise, Christ, Mary, virginity, the exceptional man, and certain aspects of Christian life".

Certainly, the phoenix’s long life, death, and rebirth describes the Doctor.  It’s associated with the Sun, which again is the Doctor. And we come back to the Christian connection and the Trinity.  It’s a symbol of transformation, which, of course, we see over and over, from the normal Doctor definitions to usurpation and “My Fair Lady.”

However, Donna’s “Turn Left” alternate universe was a living hell.  Therefore, instead of paradise, the Doctor will most likely be a slave in a living hell.  CAL, too, was enslaved in a living hell until the end.  She didn’t see it that way while the dreams were her “real life.” The Doctor probably will be very mind controlled at first, believing he’s in paradise, so he won’t see the living hell, either. 

The Sacred Phoenix in Japanese Mythology

The sacred Japanese phoenix originated in China and has different origins from the Greek phoenix.

According to Japanese Buddhist Statuary:

Chn. = Fèng Huáng, Feng Huang 鳳凰 Jp. = Hō-ō 鳳凰 or Hou-ou, Ho-o, Hoo-oo Feng 鳳 represents male phoenix, yang, solar Huang 凰 represents female phoenix, yin, lunar

Often depicted together with the Dragon, either as mortal enemies or as blissful lovers.

One of Four Celestial Guardians of Four Directions Considered equivalent to the Red Bird | Big Bird

In Japan, as earlier in China, the mythical Phoenix was adopted as a symbol of the imperial household, particularly the empress. This mythical bird represents fire, the sun, justice, obedience, fidelity, and the southern star constellations.

According to legend (mostly from China), the Hō-ō appears very rarely, and only to mark the beginning of a new era -- the birth of a virtuous ruler, for example. In other traditions, the Hō-ō appears only in peaceful and prosperous times (nesting, it is said, in paulownia trees), and hides itself when there is trouble. As the herald of a new age, the Hō-ō decends from heaven to earth to do good deeds, and then it returns to its celestial abode to await a new era. It is both a symbol of peace (when the bird appears) and a symbol of disharmony (when the bird disappears). In China, early artifacts show the Phoenix (female) as intimately associated with the Dragon (male) -- the two are portrayed either as mortal enemies or as blissful lovers. When shown together, the two symbolize both conflict and wedded bliss, and are a common design motif even today in many parts of Asia (see below).

All of this is important, too.  Interestingly, the Chinese and Japanese phoenix ties into the concepts of yin and yang, lunar and solar, which ties back into what we looked at with the taijitu in the 2nd chapter of my analysis on “Extremis.”   The lunar and solar aspects also tie back into what we’ve looked at with the Great Work and the Moon and Sun metaphors.

The “One of Four Celestial Guardians of Four Directions” probably relates to the Library, which is represented by four directions.

Once again, we have a reference to a royal bloodline related to the Doctor, especially the empress. The Doctor was associated with the Mother of God in “Extremis.”  While empress doesn’t necessarily mean “Mother of God,” the meanings in the context of DW are very similar, and the genders are the same.  Certainly, Bill and Nardole could also be of the royal bloodline.  I’m expecting it.

The Doctor has been abducted, so symbolically he has disappeared.  Disharmony or harmony, all of this isn’t so simple because of the lies, like with CAL in the Library.

The dragon is interesting because Peter Harness co-wrote this episode.  He also wrote “The Zygon Invasion” and “The Zygon Inversion,” as well as “Kill the Moon,” where the dragon hatched from the moon.  The dragon represented the Doctor.

Wedded bliss turns into mortal enemies, so this all makes sense because the altered timeline represents a threat to the main timeline if we go by “Turn Left.”

Interestingly, in southern China, regarding the Red Bird:

Its plumage is of the five mystical colours - black, white, red, green and yellow, and it has twelve tail feathers, execept in years when there is an extra month, when there are thirteen. It feeds on bamboo seeds, lives in the branches of the dryandera tree, and drinks from fountains of fresh water.

This is really interesting because 4 of the 5 colors relate to the Great Work.  Also of interest are the 12 tail feathers, which relate to the 12th Doctor, and so do the 13.  However, 13 here could also relate to Brabbit.

One more interesting thing from Wikipedia:

Phoenix talons (S:凤爪 T:鳳爪) is a Chinese term for chicken claws in any Chinese dish cooked with them.

Therefore, a chicken can substitute for a phoenix in certain cases.  Rory is associated with chickens.  He certainly is a phoenix, dying multiple times and being resurrected.  However, Bill and Penny are both associated with the chicken dish in Moira’s kitchen.  Bill is a phoenix in that she flatlined according to the audio in “Oxygen,” so she died and got resurrected.  Penny is associated with the 12th Doctor.

Usage of Colors in TPEW

One of the really interesting things about TPEW is how color is used.  I’ll have to go back and reevaluate previous episodes with these new concepts in mind.

The Story of One Bottle, 2 Images

Douglas in the lab is hung over and talks about breakages.  However, we only see one breakage the first time, which made me question that.  Not only that, the first time we see a green bottle, I thought it would be empty.  However, when it breaks, brown liquid spills out. That’s even odder, given the bottle isn’t darker.

Later, we see a brown bottle until the camera shows the green top.  This bottle looks odd too.  I’m not going to post more photos here.  If you watch the episode again, watch the bottles break exactly the same both times, which is impossible.  (Keep an eye on the cracks of the largest piece of glass.)  No two bottles will break exactly the same.  There is a point DW is trying to make, which I’ll get to below.  The bottles are the same but colored digitally incorrectly on purpose for a reason.

DW wants us to notice there is one bottle but 2 flavors, so to speak.  This relates back to the Trinity where 3 people are One.  And then we have 2 versions of Bill.  Could there be something else, too?

Bill’s Jackets: Cyan and Red

Red and cyan are both complementary colors, or in photography they are the negative of each other.  Both of those concepts give us some information.

In modern color theory, complementary colors are pairs of colors that cancel each other out when combined, producing a grey-scale color like white or black.  Modern color theory uses red/cyan, green/magenta, and blue/yellow.

The traditional color model says that complementary colors are pairs of colors that are opposite one another on a color wheel, like red/green, purple/yellow, and blue/orange. When they are combined, they produce brown.

So cyan and red are part of the modern color theory.  It’s the terminology with the colors that I find interesting.  Negative and cancelling each other out seem quite significant, especially when talking about CERN, particle physics, and Dan Brown’s novel Angels and Demons with an antimatter bomb.  This is especially relevant, too, when talking about Ragnarök and the destruction of the world.

The symbology may be that one set of people is like matter and another like antimatter.  When both are brought together, they annihilate each other, which is mostly what happened in Ragnarök.

Interestingly, Nardole is wearing cyan and red; Bill most of the time is wearing cyan and black with gray and a red stripe; and the Doctor is wearing red and black.  Since when does he go around with his button-down shirt not tucked in?

Since complementary colors cancel each other out, producing a gray-scale color, it’s possible the Doctor’s calling card is meant for 6 people as One.  The TARDIS, after all, is meant to have 6 pilots. 

Colors & the First Aid Kit

There’s a green first aid kit on the wall (yellow arrow) in the lab.  However, it’s not the normal color.  Maybe it’s a European thing, but most first aid kits that I’ve seen in the US, if the cross is not within a circle, are red with a white cross. Regardless, this may have additional meaning.

Both Erica and Douglas are not who they seem to be.  Erica has a hidden face.  She, Douglas, and the Doctor are all associated with the first aid kit, which may have something to do with the color.  It’s a fact that they are associated with the cross.

The Greek Cross is associated with the church or temple, which comes back to the Doctor’s body, regardless of a number.  Erica and Douglas are both faces of the Doctor.

Since modern color theory is used with Bill’s jackets, green becomes suspicious because it is used with the traditional color model and opposite the red of a first aid kit. Modern and traditional could be used to describe the duplicate sets of 3 people, where traditional is meant as the originals.  I’m thinking aloud here to show you that DW does get quite obscure like this. 

Also, I’m spelling out my thinking process here, so you can see how I connect ideas.  If you want to read subtext, you have to be able to do that and think outside the box.

Duplicates & Truth or Consequences

The Zygons metaphorically are showing up again here; however, the references, writer, and the setting of the Zygon episodes may be as close as we get since Capaldi is leaving. Zygon references had to return because of the duplication of the Doctor.

Like “The Zygon Invasion” and “The Zygon Inversion,” TPEW has similar weird dialogue and plenty of wrongness, which we’ll look at in a bit.  However, there are some other very important references.  First of all, the setting of Turmezistan is the same, so that brings in the Zygon training camp and splinter revolt.  Second, it brings in Truth or Consequences from New Mexico and the Doctor’s war speech with the boxes. 

Another reason for revisiting Zygon references, which TPEW pointed out, was how the Doctor should have received Consequences and died in TPEW.  Instead, it looks like we will get Truth, which is a lie because Bill sold Earth’s soul to the devil, so to speak.  This looks like it might be like the Doctor Faustus contract.

Bill signed the contract without fully understanding the terms.  She asked questions that were not answered or fully disclosed.

Also, there’s the idea in the Zygon episodes of usurping someone’s identity, which, of course, is the point of the duplicate, but once again here’s the usurping theme.

So modern and traditional could be related to the original person being kept prisoner in dreams, like Clara was, while the duplicate assumes the original’s role. 

Is Rassilon Back & Taking Prisoners?

In a previous chapter, we looked at an image from “The Five Doctors,” which showed Rassilon’s insignia.  According to the Doctor’s calling card, Rassilon may be a face of the Doctor.

It looks like Rassilon will be back because the insignia shows up below on the lab, but in the opposite direction, like the backward “C” on Bill’s jacket.  Not only that, but check out the 6-spoked pattern to the left of Rassilon’s insignia at the bottom, which I forgot to mark.  This building is a prison, referring back to Prisoner 6 from The Prisoner.

So it’s not surprising at all when 2 chains show up in the lab (red arrows).  I would have been surprised if there weren’t any.

Here’s a close up of a chain, which is odd, although the Monk’s round camera is there, which could have meaing. This photo is odd because it’s a close up without a person near it.  This may mean The Ghost is a prisoner, which would make sense, or it could mean something else.  This is the 1st time I’ve seen something like this, which is why I am questioning its meaning.

It’s a little hard to tell here, but there is a chain behind Douglas, shown below (red arrow).  He is a prisoner and is being controlled.  The whole impending disaster/non-disaster was engineered.

Not surprisingly, the Doctor has a chain behind him, which has nothing to do with him being locked in the lab.  There would be no need to use a chain for something obvious.  He is a prisoner before Bill sell’s his soul to the devil. Caecilius was a happy slave before he put on the beetle.  Why?  I expect that we’ll find out.

Most likely, the best thing to do is to think of the Doctor as CAL in the Library with Doctor Moon brainwashing him into thinking the real world is a lie and the dream world is real.

OMG, That Lab & the Silliest Dialogue!

OMG that lab dialogue, imagery, etc.!  Quick, someone call the regulatory agency in Yorkshire for, well… I’ll go over a few highlights

Most of the intentional wrongness in the episode shows up in the lab.  If you’ve ever been in a lab or have knowledge of lab practices, you may have been cringing, or maybe you played spot-the-problems like my daughter and me.  It’s a textbook case for how not to build or run a lab.  Students, don’t try these things in the lab!  There are so many wrong things in the lab, but I’ll just call out a few.

Initially, I was cringing when Erica came in with coffee (red arrow), which then started the spot-the-problems game. Douglas calls her an angel.  Um… no!  He looks poisoned when he dies frothing at the mouth, and his blurriness starts right after he drinks the coffee.  Where’s the big sign that says, “No food or drink in the lab!”?  Health and safety violation.

Also, why are they testing bacteria on live plants?  The plants should already be harvested. 

Then, Erica and Douglas are not even looking at bacteria on the monitor.  The little creatures are more complex than bacteria and much bigger. I recognized a paramecium, the big slipper-shaped thing zooming by.  Bacteria are tiny and come in specific shapes.  This is when Erica says the silliest dialogue:

ERICA: It's gone crazy. It's much too strong. It's not just breaking the root system down, it's killing the whole thing. We have to seal off the lab, the greenhouse, everything. This can't be allowed to get into the atmosphere.

Wow!  What exactly has gone crazy?  Um… why is a scientist who works with plants surprised that if you kill the roots of the plant, the whole plant dies?  How can she even tell what’s happening since there are no plant parts there? This, most likely, is a slide of pond life since paramecium are quite abundant in ponds.  Is that a clue to Amy?

And why is a biohazard lab venting hazardous materials into the atmosphere?  Where is regulatory when you need them?

Douglas running out of the biohazard lab with a sample was not a mistake.  It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway because the airlocks weren’t designed properly.  They are supposed to use pressure to force pathogens back into the lab.  People can’t run in and out of the doors like they did. 

And not wearing a biohazard suit…

I could go on and on.

One more thing, the butterfly effect comes up again with small things having a big effect.  The butterfly is a symbol of transformation.

The Lab, the Doctor, Star Trek & the Legend of the Changeling

Blowing up the lab is an absurd move by the Doctor, but he, too, is being controlled.  I feel like he is the Nomad probe from the original Star Trek.  It got damaged and had its programming changed.  Sterilize…sterilize.  It tried to sterilize everything, destroying whatever was imperfect.  (The Doctor tries to destroy non-human Heather in “The Pilot” by sterilizing her in Dalek gunfire, which doesn’t make sense.)  Sterilizing things in fire, requires a certain amount of time in the heat.  There is no way a bomb blast will do anything good, except spread the plague faster through the high-speed blast.

*** I’ve added the sections below ***

Wow, OK, I’ve had a major revelation about this whole sterilization thing.  I was going to go back and put in the Star Trek episode title “The Changeling” in the paragraph above when it dawned on me why the Doctor wants to sterilize things in ways that don’t make sense.

Spock, Rose & the Doctor

DW really is making a reference to the title of the episode “The Changeling,” which is based on an Earth legend.  Before I get to that, I forgot to mention that there is a very important original series Star Trek reference in the 9th Doctor episode “The Empty Child.”  Rose tells Captain Jack Harkness that the Doctor’s name is Spock. 

If you don’t follow Star Trek, First Officer Spock is a half-human, half-Vulcan science officer on the starship Enterprise, and he is brilliant and telepathic, like the Doctor.

Spock’s name comes up 5 times in “The Empty Child.”  Here is one of the conversations:

JACK: Good evening. Hope we're not interrupting. Jack Harkness. I've been hearing all about you on the way over. ROSE: He knows. I had to tell him about us being Time Agents. JACK: And it's a real pleasure to meet you, Mister Spock. (Jack walks forward to the ward.) DOCTOR: Mister Spock? ROSE: What was I supposed to say? You don't have a name. Don't you ever get tired of Doctor? Doctor who?

So Spock, a hybrid, is associated with the Doctor.

The Changeling: A Legend of Usurpation

Captain Kirk in the episode tells Spock about the changeling legend:

KIRK: An ancient Earth legend, Mister Spock. A changeling was a fairy child that was left in place of a human baby. The changeling assumed the identity of the human child. So, it is to sterilise, and for sterilise read kill.

Wow, here is yet another reference to someone being usurped!

In this case, the changeling is the probe, which the Doctor is, at times, emulating.  Initially, the Nomad space probe was launched from Earth during the early 21st century, and its mission was to explore the galaxy.  Clearly, something has changed in its mission, so Spock mind melds with the probe to find out what its purpose is.

SPOCK: Fascinating, Captain. The knowledge. The depth. KIRK: What does it mean, we are Nomad? SPOCK: It was, it was damaged in deep space. Undoubtedly, the meteor collision. Its memory banks were destroyed, or most of them. It wandered without purpose, and then it met the other. The other was an alien probe of great power. Somehow they merged, repaired each other, became one. KIRK: Then it isn't Nomad? SPOCK: Not the Nomad we lost from Earth. It took from the other a new directive to replace its own. The other was originally programmed to secure and sterilise soil samples from other planets, probably as a prelude to colonisation. KIRK: A changeling. SPOCK: I beg your pardon?

KIRK: An ancient Earth legend, Mister Spock. A changeling was a fairy child that was left in place of a human baby. The changeling assumed the identity of the human child. So, it is to sterilise, and for sterilise read kill.

SPOCK And it has the power and sophistication to do it. KIRK: Yes, it's powerful, it's sophisticated, but it's not infallible. It's space-happy. It thinks I'm its mother.

This sounds suspiciously like what has happened to the Doctor or will happen.  Nomad gets reprogrammed and seeks out biological infestations to destroy them. Um… this sounds ominous, but we know the Doctor has killed a lot of people.  In fact, that was certainly made clear in “Extremis” on the execution planet.

Purpose of a Changeling

This might explain why the Doctor is in an orphanage as a child.

According to Wikipedia:

One belief is that trolls thought that it was more respectable to be raised by humans and that they wanted to give their own children a human upbringing. Some people believed that trolls would take unbaptized children.  Once children had been baptized and therefore become part of the Church, the trolls could not take them.

Beauty in human children and young women, particularly blond hair, was said to attract the fairies.

In Scottish folklore, the children might be replacements for fairy children in the tithe to Hell; this is best known from the ballad of Tam Lin. According to common Scottish myths, a child born with a caul (head helmet) across his or her face is a changeling, and of fey birth.

“Night Terrors” & Another Type of Changeling

In “Night Terrors,” 8-year-old George, a mirror of the Doctor, contacts the Doctor via psychic paper, asking to be saved from the monsters.  George has very strong powers, such as the ability to use perception filters. Also, he has telekinetic powers, among other things, and sends all the things he is afraid of to the dollhouse.

His adoptive/foster parents didn’t remember they couldn’t have kids because George made them forget with the perception filter. The Doctor talks to his adoptive/foster father, Alex.

DOCTOR: George is a Tenza. Of course he is. ALEX: He's a what? (Peg dolls are approaching from all directions.) DOCTOR: A cuckoo. A cuckoo in the nest. A Tenza. He's a Tenza. Millions of them hatch in space and then whoomph, off they drift, looking for a nest. The Tenza young can sense exactly what their foster parents want and then they assimilate perfectly.

Cuckoo birds lay their eggs in another bird’s nest, letting the young be raised by foster parents. Certainly, the foster parent sounds like Moira with Bill.  And Bill is a face of the Doctor.

Interestingly, Wikipedia says

In Greek mythology, the god Zeus transformed himself into a cuckoo so that he could seduce the goddess Hera; the bird was sacred to her. In England, William Shakespeare alludes to the common cuckoo's association with spring, and with cuckoldry, in the courtly springtime song in his play Love's Labours Lost. In India, cuckoos are sacred to Kamadeva, the god of desire and longing, whereas in Japan, the cuckoo symbolises unrequited love.

We have 3 connections here: Zeus turning himself into another bird (Zeus or his proxy is the Doctor), Love’s Labours Lost in “The Shakespeare Code,” and the cuckoo in Japan with the Harmony Shoal connection with Bill’s jacket.

The Lab, Pi, Star Trek & “Wolf in the Fold”

*** This is a whole new section UPDATE 2x ***

Wow, this has just blown my mind how Star Trek is being used!  I had another revelation of something in the lab that didn’t make sense.   On one of the monitors, there is the Greek letter pi, which my daughter caught.  It was very out of place because it wasn’t part of the screen, which was blank, except for a big white pi, like more as a reflection-type thing.  Obviously, it had been digitally added.  However, it didn’t make sense at the time.

Now, I get it.  With the Star Trek reference above for “The Changeling,” I see how DW is using Star Trek.  I need to modify my thinking to include Star Trek episodes and titles.

Star Trek was my favorite TV show growing up here in America, so I'm geeking out about the Star Trek references in DW.  Not having watched the episodes in a long time, I couldn't remember which Star Trek episode had the computer calculate pi, so I looked it up. 

It’s an episode called “Wolf in the Fold,”where Scotty, the engineer on the Enterprise, is suspected of murder.  Memory Alpha says,

However, a more sinister force may provide a connection between this murder and many previous around the galaxy, including a rampage on ancient Earth.

The sinister entity can possess people, so here is yet another reference to usurpation.  The Doctor has to get usurped.  This theme is just coming up all over the place, and it’s an example of why my hypotheses get moved to conclusions, which are head canon, waiting to show up in real canon.  When a theme or topic from the subtext keeps hitting you over the head, you know it has to happen.

Check out the connection to fear and usurpation, which we’ve seen in previous chapters, and I talked about it below before adding this new section.

SPOCK: An entity which feeds on fear and terror would find a perfect hunting ground on Argelius, a planet without violence, where the inhabitants are as peaceful as sheep. The entity would be as a hungry wolf in that fold.

People who were afraid were easily taken over.  The Doctor is very afraid right now.

The entity entered the computer, and Spock told it to calculate the value of pi, which is never ending.  The crew ended up getting rid of the entity

So here is a connection to the Wolf, which goes with the werewolf and the Doctor from “Tooth and Claw.”

References to “Oxygen”

There are quite a few references in the lab that relate to “Oxygen,” although the first thing I recognized was something in the command center. 

Duct Pattern

The pattern on this duct (red arrow) was on the space base in “Oxygen.”

We see the same pattern on the duct in “Oxygen.”  They are reused to draw a comparison.

Hazardous Similarities

The biohazard lab was very similar to the dangers on the space station.  Both require special suits; both have airlocks; both have deadly environments; both are engineered to fail.  Douglas and the Doctor go without full biohazard suits, like Bill and the Doctor in “Oxygen.”   People in the lab are being watched, like the “Oxygen” suits.  The deaths were engineered just like in the lab.

Plague & Pyramid References

Both TPEW and “Oxygen” refer to plagues.  The TPEW plague is obvious, although there is also a plague cross on the plane. However, the plague in “Oxygen” is only in the subtext.  Check out the photo of the Doctor’s suit (red arrow).  There is also a pentagon, meaning a weapon of mass destruction.  

However, also notice the triangle (yellow arrow).  I had wondered about this.  Of course, it can refer to The Ghost with 3 sides, which I assumed.  However, I figured it might have some connection to a pyramid because of the shape being the side of a pyramid and because of what the pyramid shape means.  “The Wedding of River Song” took place in a pyramid in an alternate timeline.  The Bank of Karabraxos in “Time Heist” was the shape of a pyramid, where the Doctor metaphor is a slave.  Pyramids also have a connection to the 4th Doctor story “Pyramids of Mars,” where the Doctor’s body gets usurped. 

So here’s how these pyramid stories are tied into the 12th Doctor through TPEW.  It was inevitable that we had to come back to a pyramid, especially because the subtext shows the Bank of Karabraxos is on a rift, which ties in the Sisterhood of Karn and the Sybilline Sisterhood in “The Fires of Pompeii.”

As far as triangles go, the Monks monitor has triangular sides, so they can easily be related to the problems in “Oxygen.”

One more thing about the plague and TPEW: when connected to the volcano on Bill’s jacket, that connects to “The Empty Child,” “The Doctor Dances,” and “The Fires of Pompeii.”

Health & Safety Violations

Then, there are the health and safety violations in the lab.  This was also mentioned in “Oxygen” when people try to pick up Bill in her suit. The suit complains.

VELMA: Warning. This is an illegal manoeuvre. ABBY: The suit won't let us. Health and safety. NARDOLE: Health and safety?

More to Come from “Oxygen”?

This all makes me wonder if part of this dreaming is damage from lack of oxygen, like hallucinations. Or did the Doctor make a bargain with the devil to save Bill.  Regardless, it feels like there must be some other connection here that we haven’t seen that goes back to “Oxygen.”

The Lie of the Engineered Impending Disaster

If you didn’t catch all the images that flash by when people are looking at the Monks’ simulation, life still exists on Earth.  For lack of time, I’m not going to post them.  It’s a lie that everything is dead.  All the images are of natural disasters, except possibly 1 where there is a fire coming out of a building.  This is not about the plague at all.  Here are the images shown:

·      Forest fire with many burned trees

·      Flood and damage

·      Storm clouds

·      Huge flood where houses get submerged, except for the roofs.

·      Tornado/hurricane damage with a car turned over

·      Fire coming out of a building

·      Hurricane with palm trees bending severely

BTW, I have a really hard time believing the Monks have modeled every event in human history. The amount of computing power needed would be staggering, unless we are using all the dead Time Lord brains in the Matrix and all the knowledge of human history on the Library planet.

Those threads on the simulation machine are interesting.  The first thing I thought of was string theory, but I also thought of weaving a tapestry, which reminds me of the Moirai from Greek mythology or in English the Fates.  We examined fate in a different way with the Magic Haddock story from “Smile.”

The Fates & Moira

The Fates, according to Wikipedia,

were the white-robed incarnations of destiny; their Roman equivalent was the Parcae (euphemistically the "sparing ones"). Their number became fixed at three: Clotho (spinner), Lachesis (allotter) and Atropos (unturnable).

They controlled the mother thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. They were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction. The gods and men had to submit to them, although Zeus's relationship with them is a matter of debate: some sources say he is the only one who can command them (the Zeus Moiragetes), yet others suggest he was also bound to the Moirai's dictates.  In the Homeric poems Moira or Aisa, is related with the limit and end of life, and Zeus appears as the guider of destiny.

…

The ancient Greek word moira (μοῖρα) means a portion or lot of the whole, and is related to meros, "part, lot" and moros, "fate, doom",[6] Latin meritum, "dessert, reward", English merit, derived from the PIE root *(s)mer, "to allot, assign".

…

Moira is a power acting in parallel with the gods, and even they could not change the destiny which was predetermined.

This also reminds me of the 3 witches in “The Shakespeare Code.”

Since it’s the Monks who have threads that simulate Earth’s events, they seem to be playing the Fates’ roles.  Interestingly, Bill’s foster mother is Moira, so it seems there may be more to her than it appears.  In fact, this all may suggest the Doctor’s entire life has been controlled by those represented by the Monks.  Certainly, the 12th Doctor has been a prisoner for his entire life, so this makes sense.  We know someone is controlling him.  Part of it, obviously is love, but why was Caecilius a happy slave in “The Fires of Pompeii” before he put on the beetle?

BTW, the actress who plays Moira played a woman in “Grid Lock,” who was married to the cat man named Brannigan, and they literally had a litter of kittens together in their Motorway car.

The Love Is Slavery Theme

In TPEW, the Monks must be loved

MONK: We must be wanted. We must be loved. To rule through fear is inefficient.

DOCTOR: Of course. Fear is temporary. Love is slavery.

Love is slavery has been a long-time theme.  Here are a few examples.

“Human Nature” & “The Family of Blood”

We’ve examined this very metaphorical image, shown below, multiple times from “Human Nature” where the 24th Doctor (Roman Doctor) is trapped in the Library metaphor. It really is one of my favorites because it tells us so much.

If you missed it, my lengthy examination is in Chapter 13 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.  Here’s an excerpt:

The gyroscope, which is centered on the Doctor’s heart at the bottom center, has an arrow through it. Gyroscopes balance themselves and provide stability or maintain a reference direction in navigational systems, automatic pilots, and stabilizers, and gyroscopes are part of an inertial guidance system.

However, this gyroscope has an arrow through it, so the system can’t balance itself. It represents Cupid’s arrow shooting through the Doctor’s heart, causing him to lose his sense of stabilization and direction.

Love has unbalanced him, which very much matches up with what we saw in the episode and its second part “The Family of Blood.

He’s trapped and framed in, meaning he is being used against his will, and he has strong fears.  He is a slave to love.

“The Shakespeare Code” & the Number 57

In “The Shakespeare Code,” the 3 witches (Carrionites, who are yet another species from the Dark Times) cast a spell on Shakespeare, enslaving him to write his lost play Loves Labour's Won, which is possibly a sequel to his play Love's Labour's Lost.  Through the power of his words and a string of numbers, a code, spoken in the Globe Theater, a gate opens allowing other Carrionites to come through.

This episode not only specifies how important words are, especially Shakespeare’s, it tells us how important numbers and shapes are, too.  Additionally, there is a hint given to us to help decipher some DW numbers, including the number 57, which comes up quite a bit.  The 10th Doctor uses it in “The Shakespeare Code.”

DOCTOR: Come on. We can all have a good flirt later.

SHAKESPEARE: Is that a promise, Doctor?

DOCTOR: Oh, fifty seven academics just punched the air. Now move!

Some numbers in DW refer to Shakespeare’s sonnets.  In fact, Sonnet 57 is about being a slave to love:

Sonnet 57

Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? I have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do, till you require. Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you, Nor think the bitterness of absence sour When you have bid your servant once adieu; Nor dare I question with my jealous thought Where you may be, or your affairs suppose, But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought Save, where you are how happy you make those.    So true a fool is love that in your will,    Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

When I hear this poem, I can’t help but think of the original Star Trek.  Captain Kirk spoke the first few lines in “Plato’s Stepchildren.”  Interestingly, I’ve thought of this Star Trek episode several times lately in regards to DW, but for other reasons.  Star Trek may have a broader significance to the current events than I’ve realized so far.  Update: Once I wrote this, I started thinking about it.  Yes, it does have a broader significance, as my updates suggest, but I’m betting I’m missing a whole bunch of Star Trek connections because I haven’t thought of this previously.  This is how these things happen with subtext references. Something can radically change how you view things.  Then, you have to rethink a bunch of episodes.  The color scheme I’ve showed you in this chapter is another example of this.

Back in my analysis on “The Pilot,” I talked about “The Shakespeare Code,” as well as how the Doctor and River are stuck in looped time because the 12th Doctor wasn’t there with River in the Library to help her, so the 10th Doctor comes.  River enslaves the Doctor with knowledge of the future.  He is a slave to love and can’t get past this point until something changes.

This is a canon problem that has to be resolved, which is another reason why River has to come back or at least we need to hear another resolution to the story with how it affects her and the Doctor. 

“The Wedding of River Song” & 57 & 22

In “The Wedding of River Song,” River doesn’t want to kill the Doctor, so time is stuck in a loop at 2 minutes past 5 in the afternoon on April 22.  We don’t see the seconds until later.  All of time is happening at once, and the clock won’t move.  Once the Doctor grabs River’s arm, we see the clock advance, starting from 05:02:57.  Everyone is a slave to an alternate timeline because of River’s love of the Doctor.

The number 22 is also another reference to Shakespeare and Sonnet 22:

Sonnet 22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old

So long as youth and thou are of one date;

But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,

Then look I death my days should expiate.

For all that beauty that doth cover thee

Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,

Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me.

How can I then be elder than thou art?

O therefore, love, be of thyself so wary

As I, not for myself, but for thee will,

Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary

As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.

  Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;

  Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

“The Pyramid at the End of the World” & 57

OK, I had to spell out the darn title again.  The Doctor touches his sonic shades, which then show the time as 11:57.  Everyone's phones ring, showing a time of 23:57:00. Time is caught in a similar type loop as in “The Wedding of River Song,” although time isn’t happening all at once in TPEW.  I’ll call this the Doomsday Loop for the Doomsday Clock reference.

This episode draws heavily from the 5th Doctor story “Kinda,” which I’ll talk about in a few minutes.

“Last Christmas” & 57

In “Last Christmas,” the Doctor and Clara are trying to figure out if they are dreaming.  The Doctor passes out 4 manuals.

DOCTOR: These books should be identical in the real world. But as they don't exist in your memory, in a dream, they can't be. Agreed? Clara. Give me any two digit number.

CLARA: Fifty seven.

DOCTOR: All right, all of you, turn to page fifty seven and look at the very first word. Right, when I point at you.

So 57 gets mentioned twice here.  The Doctor, in fact, puts himself in another layer of a dream to save Clara.  The Dream Crabs found Clara through the Doctor. In TPEW, the Doctor is mirroring Clara, having been found through Bill.

“Heaven Sent” & 57

We know the Doctor kept going for 4.5 billion years in “Heaven Sent” because of thoughts of Clara, so it’s not surprising that the number 57 comes up.

(A clock ticks, but it is actually the Doctor tapping a finger against the arm of his chair.)

DOCTOR [OC]: It's funny, the day you lose someone isn't the worst. At least you've got something to do. It's all the days they stay dead.

(The flies arrive.)

DOCTOR: Fifty-seven minutes?

(He gets up and leaves just ahead of the Veil's arrival.)

It’s significant that he talks about losing Clara while sitting near her portrait.  Then, he mentions 57 minutes.

“Time Heist”

The male Teller, being the last of its kind, is a metaphor for the Doctor.  It’s enslaved and doing terrible things in the Bank of Karabraxos. Later, we find out that it was because of love.  A female teller is held hostage to enslave the male Teller and make it do Karabraxos’ bidding.  The relationship between the Tellers is never mentioned, so I’m just calling them kin.

From this, we know the Doctor has to be a slave to love, whether romantic or not.  Someone he cares about and loves is being held hostage.

Bill is the one who is the face of the Doctor here.  She enslaves everyone to save him, and that mirrors River.

“The Curse of Fenric”

While the term “slavery” isn’t used in the 7th Doctor story “The Curse of Fenric,” love is used as a weapon of mass destruction.  It’s part of the curse to win the war.  Drop the love bomb on one side and wipe out lots of people.  I talked a little bit about this in Chapter 16 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who.  It sounds a lot like Davros’ reality bomb.

Ace is beginning to have feelings of love, which is canon.  However, the subtext says her love is for the Doctor.  He ends up saying some cruel things to her to break her confidence in him, exactly like what the 11th Doctor had to do to break Amy’s confidence in “The God Complex.”

I expect this may happen with the 12th Doctor and Bill.  In fact, does he intentionally provoke her, so she tries to kill him? He will sacrifice himself at some point because it occurs numerous times in the subtext.  That may also be part of what the Monks have been alluding to when they said they killed him many times in the simulation.

The curse also comes back to Rose and Bad Wolf, besides Ace, Clara, and Martha.

Enslaved by Love & the Memory Block/Mind Wipe

While 57 doesn’t come up in the dialogue in “Hell Bent,” Clara and the Doctor (like River and the Doctor) are slaves to love, whether it’s romantic or not.  The subtext shows it is romantic.  Clearly, they love each other in whatever capacity that is.  And they are alchemically married.  In “Before the Flood,” Clara mentions love.

CLARA: No. Doctor, I don't care about your rules or your bloody survivor's guilt. If you love me in any way, you'll come back. Doctor, are you?

He comes back.  And she programmed him to always come back, which he does in “Hell Bent.”  This programming is also a problem.

He wants to block her memory to block any thought of him, so the Time Lords don’t find her.

DOCTOR: Because it's the only way. That stuff in your head, the image of me, they could use it to find you.

However, we see in TPEW why the memory block or mind wipe is needed.  They used Bill’s knowledge of the Doctor to find him and abduct him. Not only that, it was Bill’s love of him that has now enslaved the Earth (the Doctor) and humanity.  According to the subtext, he will be the Teller, made to do terrible things.

Enslavement & Death of the Earth

No doubt from the clips of the upcoming episode “The Lie of the Land,” we see an altered timeline, and it looks like humanity is enslaved.  It’s probably because of the enslaved Doctor’s words, since the Doctor is the Shakespeare mirror.  I imagine he becomes like Doctor Moon, who brainwashes people. 

In TPEW, we see a visual of the Earth as a metaphor of the Doctor.  After the opening credits, we get a look at the Earth (yellow arrow) from space, which fades out simultaneously as the top of the Doctor’s bent head (red arrow) fades in.  While the Earth is the Doctor, it’s his head, not his face, which is associated with the Earth.  That tells us that the metaphor applies to all Doctors.

Controlling Earth means controlling the Doctor’s mind.  The actual death of the Doctor would be the death of Earth, which needs to happen in an alternate timeline.  However, what if he is like CAL and there are living minds there?  Just thinking aloud here.  We always have to consider the bigger subtext story and how this fits in.

Tip: Ask yourself lots of questions and try to piece together as many data points as you can.

Since we are dealing with Harmony Shoal, he would get possessed like what Harmony Shoal tried with Grant.  Of course, the Doctor is a mirror of Grant, the most powerful person on Earth.  Harmony Shoal (the Monks) possesses him.  We don’t see a brain swap in the same way because that was metaphorical silliness for the Christmas specials.

If we go by what happened in the Library, River prevented CAL from self-destructing by integrating with her.  River’s and the Doctor’s actions reactualized most of the living minds like Donna’s.  Since we are dealing with the Library, I think something like this may happen at some point.

The Doctor may, indeed, be hurt more than we have been told.  He knows his death is coming shortly.  And his speech at the beginning very much reminds me of the beginning of “Heaven Sent.”

[Tardis]

(After the titles, we get a look at our blue marble hanging in space, then at the Doctor picking a melancholy tune on his electric guitar.) DOCTOR: The end of your life has already begun. There is a last place you will ever go, a last door you will ever walk through, a last sight you will ever see, and every step you ever take is moving you closer. The end of the world

[Ordinary street]

(A little woman comes out of her front door and puts her handbag down to stop it closing.) DOCTOR [OC]: Is a billion, billion tiny moments. (Her husband is following, staring at his smart phone.) ERICA: Don't shut the door! (But he does, smashing her glasses which are inside the handbag.) DOCTOR [OC]: And somewhere, unnoticed MAN: Sorry. DOCTOR [OC]: In silence or in darkness (She hold up the ruined glasses.) ERICA: Damn it! (And gives her other half a Look.) DOCTOR [OC]: It has already begun.

[Tardis]

BILL [OC]: You talking to yourself in there? DOCTOR: I'm meditating. BILL [OC]: You've been in there for hours. I've been trying to talk to you. Have you double-locked this thing?

Interestingly, he mentions silence and darkness.  Silence is another metaphor associated with River, Amy, Rory, and the 11th Doctor.  Did you notice the 11th Doctor’s theme playing in this episode?  Darkness most likely refers to his blindness.

Meditation is a reference to the Season 9 episode “The Magician’s Apprentice” and its humorous minisode prequel, “The Doctor’s Meditation.”  In “The Magician’s Apprentice,” Clara asks Missy a question:

CLARA: How's a Time Lord supposed to die?

MISSY: Meditation. Repentance and acceptance.

When I think of the Doctor’s death, while there are many episodes showing that he sacrifices his life, 5 episodes stick out: “Dark Water” & “Death in Heaven” with Danny Pink, who dies being hit by a car, like Rose’s father, but sends back his younger self because he promised; “Turn Left,” where alternate-Donna has to sacrifice her life; “Father’s Day,” where we see Rose save her father and then how he sacrifices his life; and “The Unquiet Dead,” where Gwyneth volunteers to be a gateway for what she believes are angels, but she sacrifices her life to stop them when they turn out to be malevolent, ghostly creatures.

We’ve examined all of these, except “Father’s Day,” which has some important additional subtext, suggesting who Bill might be.

“Father’s Day,” Bill & the Doctor’s Sacrifice

In “Father’s Day,” Rose and the 9th Doctor go back in time because she was a baby when her father died, and she wants to see him.  They tragically watch her father step out in front of a car.

On an impulse, seeing this about to happen a 2nd time, she runs out, against the Doctor’s orders, and saves her father from being hit.  It changes the timeline, and people start disappearing at a wedding. Reapers come to the church to take people away, or people are there one minute and not the next. One Reaper is shown below, which looks really clunky on purpose.  This image of a giant bat-like creature is not really what one looks like.  

Scientifically, a different timeline would spin off, and people would just not be there.  Or other people would show up.  A good example is the first Star Trek movie of the reboot, directed by J.J. Abrams. 

So the Reapers are metaphorical, but important.  They show us that things change when the timeline is damaged.

The Doctor, over the years, has damaged the timeline seemingly without consequences.  If he’s in a simulation, there may not be any consequences.

BTW, below is an image of Rose and the Doctor with a horse picture. They are part of the rescue plan.

Rose’s Father

Rose, the 9th Doctor, her mom, baby Rose, and dad, along with others take cover in the church that the Reapers attack.  Below, the Doctor and Rose’s father are going to look out the window.

When I first saw this scene in the church and recognized the metaphor of the crucifix (red arrow), shown below, the scene shocked me.  Both the 9th Doctor and Rose’s father are associated with the crucifix in this scene, meaning they are the crucified 12th Doctor.  This equates Rose’s father with the Doctor, so here Rose metaphorically is the Doctor’s daughter.  What this means is that the Doctor’s daughter, whomever she is, saves the Doctor and spins off an alternate timeline.

While this all really was shocking to me when I first saw it, there is an image, which confirmed this for me. We see a scene below from the viewpoint of one of the Reapers, where the 9th Doctor is walking down the sidewalk.  Surprisingly, the Doctor is 2 different people, 2 heads (red and white arrows) with a blurry body.  Scientifically, there would be the mainline Doctor and an alternate timeline version in 2 different universes.

 We’ve got dreams, illusions, simulations, etc. going, so anything is possible.  They, most likely, are in the Matrix.

Anyway, this duplication comes back to the 12th Doctor, and the 2 versions of him, Bill, etc. that we are seeing in “Extremis” and TPEW.

To set the timeline straight, Rose’s father sacrifices his life by stepping out in front of the car. We don’t see people return when he does that.  Scientifically, Rose’s father’s death wouldn’t fix the timeline because they are 2 separate universes, like the Star Trek reboot and the original series.

In “Turn Left,” alternate-Donna’s fix of the timeline by sacrificing her life suggests other things are going on.

Is Bill the Doctor’s Daughter?

Bill saved the 12th Doctor from dying, which mirrors both River and Rose, where we see alternative timelines created because the Doctor and Rose’s father survive.

Bill also mirrors many other companions, but can one be the Doctor’s daughter?

There is something in “Oxygen” that lends support to that.  When Bill and Nardole are trying to hurry the blind Doctor away from the zombies, Bill’s suit locks up and refuses to move.  The Doctor has to leave her behind.

DOCTOR: You will go through hell, but you will come through it. And I will be waiting on the other side. BILL: But what if I was going to die DOCTOR: You're not going to die! BILL: Would you just say exactly the same? DOCTOR: I will see you soon. BILL: Just tell me a joke before you go. (They all leave her.) BILL: Just tell me a joke! He didn't tell me a joke. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Mum! Answer me! (A zombie touches Velma.) VELMA: Instruction received. Complying. BILL: Mum!

We see images of Bill’s mother flash by.

VELMA: Please remain calm while your central nervous system is disabled. Your life is in our hands. (As electricity plays over Bill, her last thoughts are of the photo of her mother. Then she joins the back of the train of zombies.)

The really odd thing here is that Bill calls out to her mother twice, which doesn’t make sense for what we think we know.  Bill doesn’t know her mom, who died when Bill was a baby.  Under duress, most people are not going to call out to someone who is dead to answer about not telling a joke.  It would be natural to call out to Nardole and the Doctor.  Nardole, shown below, has a really pained look when Bill does call out, and the Doctor looks distressed, too, in the scene.

The Doctor is the one who took the photos of Bill’s Mum, but what if the Doctor is trying to protect Bill to keep her identity secret.  What if she is his daughter?

Rose spun off an alternate timeline when she saved her father.  It looks like Bill does something similar with the 12th Doctor. Shooting the Doctor, however, would be like River or Amy, where Amy shot at the little girl in the astronaut suit in “The Impossible Astronaut.”

Also, shooting the Doctor could mirror the Master’s wife shooting him.  With people playing all kinds of mirrors, many things are possible.

Where Are They?

The title of the 10th Doctor episode “The Family of Blood” suggests that it’s the Doctor’s own people who are after him.  Given who all is involved, like Rassilon, the Monks most likely are Time Lords. 

Since Bill has a forward “C” and a backward “C” on her jacket, this has to do with the Eye of Harmony. Most likely they are part of the Matrix, so for right now, I’ll refer to the Matrix as a metaphor that includes virtual reality, dreams, and illusions, like the 4th Doctor said about being in the Matrix.

A Similar Episode from Classic Who: “Kinda”

TPEW draws heavily from the 5th Doctor episode “Kinda,” which is pronounced with a short “i.” I made the mistake of using a long “i."  A few months ago, I watched about 6 minutes of the first episode and stopped, so I went back and watched the whole thing the day after TPEW aired.  It draws heavily from The Prisoner.  Also, there is a Doomsday Clock, although it is not labeled as such, which is also at 11:57.

The Kinda are telepathic, but most don’t speak.  However, there is a wise old blind woman, Panna, who can speak, along with a girl, Karuna, who speaks and is telepathic.  Women have a gift that men don’t, and they can look into a Jhana box without going mad.  Men, however, go mad or else are idiots.  The Doctor got labeled an idiot.

There are a lot of mind-bending things going on, especially with Tegan, one of the companions.  She gets duplicated, where one copy is an illusion, turning into 9 other copies of her.  An evil being wants her to become him.  He has a snake tattoo that transfers to her after she is worn down by psychological warfare.  The Mara possessed Tegan, but later transferred to a Kinda male.  He somehow ends up making all the Kinda obedient to him.

The Doctor experiences many mind-bending things, too

What to Expect Coming Up

Based on various episodes, we can get an idea of some of the things that might happen. 

Fear, Possession & Hostage Situation

Fear and a weakened condition invite possession, and we know the Doctor is very scared about his blindness, which he talks about in TPEW.  Depending on the hostage situation, he might submit willingly to a possession or a situation where he has to choose the lessor of 2 evils, so to speak.

“Tooth and Claw”

In “Tooth and Claw,” set in Scotland, the werewolf talks to Rose: 

ROSE: Where are you from? You're not from Earth. What planet are you from? WEREWOLF: Oh, intelligence. ROSE: Where were you born?

WEREWOLF: This body? Ten miles away. A weakling, heartsick boy, stolen away at night by the brethren for my cultivation. I carved out his soul and sat in his heart.

So the Doctor is abducted by Brabbit and the Monks and most likely gets possessed.

“Midnight”

In the 10th Doctor story “Midnight,” we see Skye (who most fears an invisible entity) getting possessed.  Her possession passes into the Doctor, so this supports the possession hypothesis.

“Time Heist”

There’s the hostage situation we looked at above in “Time Heist.”  In it, 3 Doctors are implied.  The one who is a hostage, the 12th Doctor that we see, and the Architect from the future.

Wealth & Empire

We know the Doctor would never pursue wealth and power if he is in his right mind, but a possessed Doctor or a Doctor-turned-human might.

“The Fires of Pompeii”

In “The Fires of Pompeii,” Caecilius, as a human, wanted to get rich, so the Doctor will most likely get rich.

“Rise of the Cybermen” & “The Age of Steel”

In “Rise of the Cybermen” and “The Age of Steel,” John Lumic builds an empire.  He is CEO, director and co-founder of Cybus Industries, which creates Cybermen.  Lumic is responsible for a lot of deaths.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

In The Man Who Fell to Earth, Newton builds an empire.  He really is trying to do good things with his businesses, unlike Lumic, but he is also psychically affecting people in not so good ways, which he probably doesn’t realize.  Much of what we see is not reliable since it looks like he is caught up in hallucinations, illusions, and other altered realities.  He is being controlled.

Some Master Episodes, Like “The End of Time,” Parts 1 & 2

We’ll most likely see the Doctor mirroring the Master in more ways, since we’ve already seen a lot of mirroring.

Eye of Harmony

At some point, we’ll have to see the Eye of Harmony, like we did in “The Impossible Planet.”  That would be the black hole and another planet, unless we see only something like what was in the DW movie.

Rescue of the Doctor

Of course, the whole rescue plan is about rescuing the Doctor, so we have to see that.  “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” will play a large part to stop the plague that we’ve examined across many chapters. If you haven’t read about the rescue plan or the plague cross and what it means, check out Chapter 17 of Fairytales and Romance in Doctor Who plus the next 2 chapters. We examined how there had to be a plague somewhere before Season 10 even started. 

The Doctor’s Family

I expect that we will learn who the Doctor’s family is.  I’m expecting several people to come back.

Self-sacrifice

At some point, the subtext says the Doctor will sacrifice himself.

One thing is for sure: it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT Y

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Raising money is terribly distracting. How do you keep emails around after you've read them?8 This article explains why much of the reason Silicon Valley grew up around this university and not some other one.9 We overvalue stuff. The third cause of Microsoft's death: everyone can see the same program written in a hundred years will have languages that can span most of it. One of the most valuable things I learned from studying philosophy.10 Your boss is just the kind that tends to be slow.11 What else can we give developers access to?12 The most common way to do this?13

A lot of VCs still act as if they enjoyed their work was worth. If you do well, you can, but the way a sculptor does blobs of clay. Then I'd sleep till about 11 am, and come with tougher terms. Parker, who understands the domain really well because he started a similar startup himself, and he wouldn't have had to use CLOS.14 Look for in Founders October 2010 I wrote this on an Apfel laptop. And founders and early employees. But I know my motives aren't virtuous. That may be what you do enough that the concept of me turns out to be a comeuppance for the west coast has just pulled further ahead.

Others were surprised at the value of the startup. A rounds too. What's happening when you feel that about an idea leads to more ideas. Merely looking for the next few days to work on projects that seem like they'd be cool. Python and Java, because they made something people want.15 In the startup world. Hapless implies passivity. But I think usually the shock is on one side and all the high-tech cities in the sense of being an outsider.16 I used to be limited to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Thanks to Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this, and it was like trying to start a startup.

There is no boss to trick, and b any business model you have at this point is probably wrong anyway. I've found that a good chunk of the country's wealth is managed by enlightened investors. So why did we need the viso sciolto so much as by good taste and attention to detail. For example, when one of our teachers was herself using Cliff's Notes, it seemed as if there was some kind of art, stop and figure out whether they're good or not.17 The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, because the kind of doofuses who run pension funds. Garbage-collection.18 Well, not quite. Is making money really that important?

This is just a starting point—not just in some metaphorical way. Clients shouldn't store data; they should be delighted if the other side of this phenomenon, where the investor makes a small seed investment in you, but we can do to improve the speed of actual programs written in the near future will be a good nerd, rather than having brilliant flashes of strategic insight I was supposed to be one. All of you guys already have the first two. Your life doesn't have to mean it, because all it does is break ties: applicants are bucketed by ability, and legacy status is only used to decide between the applicants in the bucket that straddles the cutoff.19 We never mentioned it to the solid ground on the other is the sense we mean when we talk to founders about good and bad design, then you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to notice startups nearby.20 No one knows who said never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence, but it was designed for its authors to use, because despite some progress in the last 40.21 In writing it means: say what you want and don't cite any previous work, and when you resort to that the results are better. A rounds. Three million? No one ever measures recruiters by the later performance of people they turn down. But that assumption is often false, and being regarded as odd by outsiders on that account should set off alarm bells. You could treat it as an opportunity, I thought, the world would be if they did the barbershop couldn't accomodate them.

It's a lot easier for the users and for us as we do a birthmark. And of course Euclid. Y Combinator alternates between coasts every 6 months. But more importantly, you'll get into the deals they want. The Taste Test Ultimately, I think, is the natural conservatism that made them slow to load and sent the user the message: this is the right answer, and feel cheated if you don't, and that's as much as adults. Blue staters think it's for sissies. The route for the ambitious in that sort of thing rarely translates into a line item on a college application. If the startup is when it gets funded, it will seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not.

Notes

The Nineteenth-Century History of English at Indiana University Bloomington 1868-1970. 01.

The unintended consequence is that they aren't. Delivered as if you'd just thought of them material. World, Economic History Review, 2:9 1956,185-199, reprinted in Finley, M. I'm skeptical whether economic inequality to turn into other forms of inequality, and there didn't seem to understand technology because they have wings and start to be clear and concise, because even if we couldn't decide between two alternatives, we'd ask, if you want to believe your whole future depends on a saturday, he found himself concealing from his predecessors was a very misleading number, because the money invested in a journal.

The thing to do that? I don't want to know about it.

What they must do is not too early really means is you're getting the stats for occurrences of foo in the preceding period that caused many companies that seem excusable according to some founders who are running on vapor, financially, because the danger of chasing large investments is not just something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge as well as a child, either as an adult. A Plan for Spam.

Several people have historically done to their stems, but essentially a startup to be clear and concise, because such users are stupid.

Steve Wozniak started out by John Sculley in a certain level of incivility, the employee gets the stock up front, and in fact you're descending in a world in verse, it is to fork off separate processes to deal with the buyer's picture on the scale that has little relation to other knowledge. The worst explosions happen when unpromising-seeming startups encounter mediocre investors. But the Wufoos are exceptionally disciplined. 3 weeks between them generate a lot of detail.

Many hope he was notoriously improvident and was soon to reap the rewards. Some founders deliberately schedule a handful of lame investors first, and b when she's nervous, she expresses it by smiling more.

My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an equity round. Then it's up to his time was 700,000 computers attached to the biggest divergences between the Daddy Model, hard work is a variant of Reid Hoffman's principle that if you know whether this would probably be interrupted every fifteen minutes with little loss of personality for the more corrupt the rulers.

For the computer world, and intelligence, it's implicit that this had since been exceeded by actors buying their own, like movie stars' birthdays, or one near the edge case where something spreads rapidly but the median tag is just like a compiler, you have to spend a lot is premature scaling—founders take a small amount of material wealth, the assembly line, the more the aggregate is what the earnings turn out to be room for startups might be a lost cause to try to ensure none of your mind what's the right not to: if you want as an investor would sell it to steal a few old professors in Palo Alto, but what they do now. There was no great risk in doing something different if it were. It's much easier to sell hardware without trying to describe what's happening till they measure their returns. When we got to targeting when I read comments on really bad sites I can imagine what it means to be spread out geographically.

Everyone's taught about it. Xxvii.

The biggest exits are the first meeting. Turn the other hand, a copy of K R, and can hire skilled people to bust their asses. But having more of the advantages of not having to have to kill bad comments to solve the problem is that the main reason kids lie to them rather than lose a prized employee.

Few technologies have one. Maybe it would grow as big as a constituency.

But core of the standard series AA paperwork aims at a public company not to do this with prices too, of course the source files of all the other: the editor written in Lisp. Emmett Shear, and so don't deserve to keep tweaking their algorithm to get the answer is no grand tradition of city planning like the increase in trade you always feel you should always get a poem published in The New Industrial State to trying to describe the word has shifted. Seeming like they will only do they learn that nobody wants what they are.

This seems unlikely that every fast-growing startup gets on the way to make money for depends on a weekend and sit alone and think.

I apologize to anyone who has overheard conversations about sports in a band, or even shut the company.

Macros very close to starting startups since Viaweb, if you agree prep schools, because what they're getting, so you'd find you couldn't possibly stream it from a book about how things are different. A startup founder could pull the same work faster. Start by investing in a series A termsheet with a Web browser that was basically useless, but I couldn't believe it, but all they demand from art is brand, and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware.

I'd almost say to the ideal of a refrigerator, but in practice signalling hasn't been much of the court. Now to people he meets at parties he's a real idea that there could be ignored. But this seems empirically false.

Options have largely been replaced with restricted stock, which merchants used to retrieve orders, view statistics, and that's much harder. Now many tech companies don't.

Even the cheap kinds of content.

Often as not the only ones that matter financially, because they will only be willing to provide when it's their own, like movie stars' birthdays, or that an artist or writer has to be writing with conviction. Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the definition of politics: what they're doing. All you need to do that. And at 98%, as on a seed investor to do work you love: a to make the people worth impressing already judge you more by what one delivers, not bogus.

Donald J. A few startups get started in New York. Indiana University Bloomington 1868-1970.

[the-cardboard-constructionist]

I have a lot of mixed thoughts on JKR and the information that she has given out since the series officially ended. 

On one hand, it has never been a secret or a surprise that she had developed every single minor character in that series with a back story and relevance to a variety of things. This is not new information. She has been saying that the entire time, since as soon as this series became popular. Even before Pottermore, she had a website where she sometimes posted snippets about minor characters and gave them more depth, and some of it was things she contemplated putting in the books and ended up not having room for, and some of it was things that had no business being in the books because the backstory for that one kid who was killed when Voldemort collapsed a bridge and is really only mentioned in a small snippet of an article was not necessary there. Not everything she knew and planned for this universe had a place in the books. These are children’s books and not only that, but they are long as fuck children’s books, and honestly, children only have so much patience for books. There is only so long you can make them, and only so many things you can include. Which is why a lot of things, even things she originally intended to put in, aren’t in there. Which is honestly probably why Pottermore exists. Because she wanted to share the things that didn’t have a place in the book. The most memorable scene I remember from her original website about this was a scene where Theodore Nott goes to the Malfoy manor and hangs out with Draco while their parents are doing death eater things. It’s been literal years since I’ve read it so I don’t remember much else, but she has been releasing things like this all along. It just didn’t fit in the book. 

I think this also kind of applies to Nagini as well. I mean, let’s be realistic here. From the moment Nagini was introduced into the books, there has been a gazillion fucking theories about that snake. Some as tame as, Nagini is actually that same snake that Harry talked to in the first one, and others more complex, saying things like Nagini is an animagius, or other backstories. I can remember back when the most recent book was Order of the Phoenix reading fan theories about Nagini. The idea that she is not just an ordinary snake is not new. It is in absolutely no way new. In fact, it was taken as fact until it was revealed in the last one that she was a horocrux and then we all moved on and was like okay, that’s what special about her. But the fact that now we’re learning more... it’s... I don’t understand why it’s a bad thing. So now she’s a mythical being, and based on what I know about the mythical histories of the type of being she is, it makes sense that she’s Asian? Like... if they had given this same story, the same creature, who’s name is based on Indonesian mythology, and had a white person play her... I see just as many people being upset? Like... I honestly don’t imagine anyway that people would be happy with that at this point. It makes sense. And yeah, maybe she didn’t include enough representation of Asian people initially, why would it be wrong of her to try to fix that now? Why shouldn’t she do that? Like... sometimes people realize their mistakes and grow from it.

I do hear the arguments about Voldemort being a “white supremacist” and therefore it being a problem that a non-white character is working with him. And here’s what I have on that: Voldemort is not actually a white supremacist. Like, if he had existed in a non-magical setting, and his father had been a black man instead of a muggle, would he have been a white supremacist? Probably, yes. Does he have the same ideology that many white supremacists have? Absolutely. But he is a metaphor for a genocidal leader, and his particular problem is related to magic vs non-magic. Not actual race. It’s a metaphor for race, most of the time. So yes, it is a little bit off. But we also have to think about the fact that the metaphor is outside the story. The metaphor is how we related it to the actual world. There’s two way of looking at a story. Watsonian and Doylist. Watsonian is looking at it in story. Looking at an explanation for it in the story, and a reason why it works there. Doylist is looking outside the story and it’s context in the real world. (Which of course comes from Sherlock Holmes, the Doylest explanation always being that Sir ACD was not actually paying attention to what he was writing ever and named everyone James and then forgot about it). Looking at it from a Doylist perspective, yeah, it seems a bit off. But looking at it from a Watsonian perspective, it matters more about her blood status than her race. But also, it’s not like every single death eater fits the mold that Voldemort would have wanted. Hell, fucking Voldemort doesn’t. I see absolutely no reason why there wouldn’t have been wizards of color who were on the side of Voldemort. We know there were. We absolutely know there were. The Zabini family for one. In fact, I think so far our small amount of wizards of color were sprinkled pretty evenly across all the sides of the war. (The Zabini family is on Voldemort’s side, and on the good side we’ve got Dean Thomas and his family, we’ve got Kingsley Shatterbolt.)

Yes, she should absolutely have originally included more diversity. Yes, she should continue to include more diversity now as she seems intent on producing more content. But every time she does something like try to include different races, everyone jumps on her throat about it. Like... positive reinforcement, y’all. It works. And also, I’m relatively sure that she is not in charge of casting. She probably gets a say, she definitely approves of this one, but a reminder that she is an author, not a casting director. And as we all learned from the casting fiascos on “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”, the author doesn’t actually end up with much say in the casting once the agreement has been made between the production company and the author. 

I can see how this Nagini thing can go wrong, but I can also see how it could go well. I’m not going to make up my mind until I’ve seen it. And again, it’s not like this information came out of nowhere. 

For everything more she added to those books, she would have had to take something out. So she made her choices on what was MOST relevant to the story. And maybe those choices aren’t the same as what some of us have made. Personally, I would have liked to see Dumbledore’s story explored in a way that showed us that he was gay. But she made a choice on what was deemed most relevant to his story, and that wasn’t it. It would have been nice if it was included, but it wasn’t. And I’m sure there are many reason for that, but honestly, when she says things like “Dumbledore is gay”, I have no doubt in my mind that that was something that was lurking in her brain the whole time. And certainly, we see no indications that would prove that statement wrong in the books. But realistically, the only time Harry’s professor’s love lives were relevant to him at all in any way, was when it was Snape and his mom. And that was less because it was Snape and more because it was his mom. But also because that led to the time Voldemort tried to kill him. Dumbledore’s love life from many years before Harry was even born just isn’t relevant to him. Like, I would have loved to see it. But I understand why it wasn’t there. Harry was hearing about everything with Grindlewald through what amounted to a rumor mill a lot of the time anyway, and Dumbledore is often a very private man. It made sense, storywise, for it not to be there. (And quite frankly, I’m not sure that Harry would have picked up on any subtle ways of saying it either.)

The Cursed Child was a disaster and all that, yes. And she approved it, but she wasn’t the one brainstorming the ideas for it, and honestly, none of that was exploring the world she created. It was a different potential. It probably wasn’t how she saw it all playing out. So I don’t really accept that as canon, in the same universe. Just like how the movies are in a slightly different but related universe than the books. So I don’t really feel the need to address that. 

Now... the wizarding school in America and the wizarding world here... it’s obvious that she doesn’t entirely understand American culture, but honestly, why would she? She isn’t American. And she knows of America and magic what is most obvious and taught. Salem Witch trials. The early types of New England magic. The types of magic we hear about in old Native American tales that aren’t quite right to what was actually believed, but changed by being passed down by those who didn’t know it 100%. She should have done more research. There are things I disagree with in her ideas about magic in the United States, but you can see where the ideas come from, and I think some of them are very good ideas about how it stated. It just... should have expanded since then. England is one of those countries that have been around for a very long time and a lot of things are very similar to how they’ve always been. America isn’t. It’s bigger and more diverse, and has so many different types of things. But is she really the person to incorporate all those things in? I think that honestly, no matter what she said about magic in America, we would have objected as a whole. Because there are things she doesn’t understand, and maybe she’s only there to set the frame work of it, and the people who understand better are the ones who can take it from there. Her origin story of the wizarding school sounds reasonable, it just needs to evolve. But we also need to remember that the wizarding community is different from what Americans are like not in that community. Just like it is in England. I don’t know how many of these ideas were ones that have been lurking in her head for years, because I’m sure some of them are. I’m sure some of the basics of how it works here have been in her head for a long time, because there’s a backstory for everything in her world. 

Now, how she is outside of her Harry Potter content, that I won’t speak to. I’ve heard some things I don’t like, but haven’t had a chance to fact check most of them and I’m not going to make a judgement until I do.

I just think a lot of the objections to her sharing her ideas on behind the story things is a bit intense and unnecessary. You don’t have to like it or believe it. But most of it isn’t coming from nowhere, and I’m sure a lot of it isn’t just being produced just for the sake of gaining interest back. It’s been there for years.