Doctor Who - am I alone in not understanding anything ?

[justgoandgetalife]

Watching for first time in ages. Wth is going on? Makes no sense to me whatever. Am I alone in not understanding?

I thought it was a brilliant episode. I didn't understand it for ages and then the penny drops and it's genius.

I think it was a fans episode though iyswim.

I'm pleased because I've been disappointed in the Peter capaldi episodes (and I love him).

It was a back story / explanation for the Doctor's confession disc, and also sets things up ready for the series finale.

I liked the way that the meaning behind the 'bird' clue was revealed gradually, as he got further on in the 'how long is eternity' story each time.

DS3 is 11 and you should have seen the look on his face when he realised that every single one of those skulls belonged to the Doctor.

I thought it was one of the better episodes from this series, if a little dark.

I must confess I was sitting there mildly bored until I realised that DrW was getting a little further on with the bird-shepherd-emperor story each time, and then it was like the best episode ever.

Didn't realise what all the skulls were about until I read this thread, though.

There's a story/myth/fable where someone asks "how long is eternity" and is told the story of a bird who flies to a diamond mountain once every hundred years and wipes its beak on the peak and when the bird has ground the mountain down to the earth that's the end of the first second of eternity. And the moral is meant to be "goodness eternity really is a long time" but the Doctor takes the moral "that's some bird"

I think if you already know the story of the bird and the mountain then the episode clicks together much more easily.

The story goes something like this:

A king is asking a shepherd boy some questions. One of the questions is, "How many seconds does eternity have?"

The little shepherd boy said, "The Diamond Mountain takes an hour to climb, an hour to go around, and an hour to go down into. Every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity has passed."

When the Doctor left the word 'bird' as a clue, he was reminding himself of this story, so he would know to punch the wall in room 12.

Cross-posted

I knew they had to be the doctor's skulls but I didn't see how it could work until the bit about the teleporter was explained. Likewise I didn't realise what "bird" meant even though I'd clocked the fable earlier on. Absolutely classic Moffat plotting - it's all there foreshadowed and it all makes sense but he will not let you get to the revelation before the Doctor does because he's the Doctor and you shouldn't be able to get there first.

Oh, I didn't get what the bird alluded to at all and just thought his repeatedly punching the glass/ diamond wall had weakened it. I didn't see any birds, was probably sorting out pudding at that point.

Also I thought if the doctor died he regenerated. Think my brain is stuck in 1970s Dr Who plots where if the doctor died he turned in to someone else. Don't remember Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee dying until they left.

DH has figured out the hybrid, I reckon.

(Possible spoiler!) He says the hybrid is me. Me.

Glad I'm not the only one! My brain hurts!

DD and I had a similar moment the first time he said 12,000 years. I liked this one. I'm not fond of the girl who was the highwayman and recurring in this series.

Excellent episode

What was the confession dial all about though - was it programmed to do that the whole time, and if so what is the point?

(Possible spoiler!) He says the hybrid is me. Me.

Ahhhh. That makes sense now. Thanks.

ahhhhhhhhhhh (wise nod, knowing wink)

He says that the damage was too severe to regenerate - which seems like a terrible hand-wave to make the plot work, but I guess since it's a creature of his own fears then it would naturally be something that could damage you in a way you couldn't regenerate from.

He says the hybrid is me. Me.

Oooooooohhhhhhhh!

And using the telportation device as a proxy to avoid needing to regenerate (in that many million years even a timelord would run out of regenerations!), was a hearkening back to the irritating Xmas epiosde with the Titanic in space.

The problem I have is that the argument appeared to be that the the castle was within a fixed loop, with energy within it neither being created nor destroyed....but every cycle loses one skull. Over the timescale that would unbalance the whole thing...

Op, last night's episode was a bad one to start with if you've been away for a bit!

Nocool, it's unclear if the sea was part of the loop; it didn't reset as the skulls built up.

Who knows what happened to her after 12 billion yrs or however long it took for him to punch thru harder-than-diamond stuff.