eve11 | 7xIt'sTheFinaleUntilNovember (Reply)

I was completely unspoiled for this, and I've watched it twice now and I still really like it a lot. Less for the plot but more for the characterization & setting. The tomb, the Dead TARDIS expanding on a grand scale... oh, jeez, so sad, and the cloister bell going in the console room. But sadder even was the simple scene between him and Clara after she wakes up, her pouring tea and him having to own up to endings and still, still trying to run away. I really liked Clara a lot in this one.

I liked how, like in Caves of Androzani, the choice the Doctor had to make was to save his friends who had been good to him. How Clara remembered the reset TARDIS timeline. How truly evil and menacing Simeon and the Whisper Men were. I liked River but was somewhat confused by her... how long has she been dead? Was she already dead & a ghost in the Angels two-parter? Or is it just the version of her who was summoned to the conference call who was dead. I'm guessing the latter.

I liked the subtle call-back to "I don't know where I am" back from the Bells of St. John. I liked the idea that it's not the souffle, it's the recipe. Oh and harkening back to the Asylum of the Daleks, how at the beginning there was a giant Dalek monument and in this episode, a giant TARDIS.

I am intrigued by John Hurt's character at the end. He's the Doctor's secret? People seem to think that it has to do with the Time War... maybe the Doctor's secret is that he's the Eleventh "Doctor" but the Twelfth incarnation of this person, the one who broke the promise. How can he be even more terrible than what we know he did in the Time War? He had a secret, his true name... I just wonder if John Hurt's character is someone who showed up BEFORE the first Doctor. But what secret about the Time War could be so devastating that the entire universe couldn't bear knowing it?

Do you suppose we will find out in the 50th anniversary special? Or will it still end a mystery?\

ETA: I do like all of the subtleties in this story. The repetition of earlier themes like "I don't know where I am" from the Bells of st. John, the talk of graves and ghosts from Hide. The poor TARDIS, keeping the crack in her window from landing at Trenzalore, even as she decays like a red giant.

It is making me want to write more TARDIS stories. I just... The TARDIS and the Doctor: it breaks my heart to see the end of them.