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?

Did anyone else who's read The Dark Tower books get a sniff of the end of them in the Saturday's epidode? I think Moffat must've read them... The Doctor is definitely a gunslinger IMO

I haven't read ot. I got an azkaban vibe (to go with diagon alley last week)

I enjoyed it, best episode for Capaldi since Pompeii!

The thing that I didn't get was...if everything inside the castle re-sets itself each time, how come he was able to make a tiny difference to the diamond wall each time?

the wall was part of a door/barrier to Gallifrey...it was not part of the castle but a bridge point to "reality" which didn't reset.....in the same way as the sea which did not reset but carried on accumulating skulls (yuk)

Oh I see. That's convenient then!

It's also convenient that the sea was inside the dial but not reset though the castle was....

It was the Trap Room. If it had reset he would not have been trapped... a bit of a flaw in a trap

The sea is outside the tower...

But whose clothes were the first set? They were the doctor's own, he checked for the odd button (Robin Hood removed the original). So which version of the doctor went naked?

Why did Clara's picture age? Was it painted old? Did it exist for eons before being hung in the room?

And how many more backstory snippets are left for Moffat to 'resolve'?

He'd've been trapped by the uneroded wall if it had reset?

I assume first doctor maybe left just his jacket to dry by the fire and second doctor left in dry jacket, no shirt and third in dry jacket dry shirt no trousers etc.

But the room resets, so anything added after it was made would disappear... no naked doctor... or semi dressed doctor...

Same with the word bird in the Doctor Dust!

The internal logic fails a few times, Asimov would frown

It all resets to the state it was the first time that particular teleported incarnation arrived though. BIRD is in the dust the first moment he arrives, he just doesn't see it. The clothes are in the cellar room because the previous incarnation has shed them and the new incarnation sees them.

Maybe it's to do with ordering disorder (window, petals) rather than disordering order (writing more ordered than dust)?

If Gallifrey is in a pocket universe, surely no stars are visible from there? And if the stars he sees aren't gallifreyan, where are they?

I thought all that through yesterday, OneMore. I thought I had it all sorted-ish.

So, the doctor incarnation who pulls the handle and writes bird, would have to have been nude. But as he meets that room prior to finding the trap room, why would he have done that? He could have just sat by the fire and dried out, knowing The Veil was about an hour behind him!

The stars are Earth normal, he says he is less than a light year away from where he started. I assume/hope the Gallifrey bit will come clear this week.

So, my memory seems to have reset itself to Sunday night

The first time he sees the stars he says "that's not right" - I thought it meant he'd moved further than he thought (ie because Ashildr had trapped him in the dial then the dial been moved) but that could just be the time thing as he said later. He deduces position not from the stars but from the type of transporter.

Maybe first time he left his boots as they weren't dry?

And he's got 7,000 years (which may be 700,000 incarnations) to do something slightly different, which by random chance (typewriters and monkeys) he might do. Then the next incarnation finds it and there can be thousands more before another item is left etc.

The first time he sees the stars he says "that's not right" - I thought it meant he'd moved further than he thought (ie because Ashildr had trapped him in the dial then the dial been moved) but that could just be the time thing as he said later. He deduces position not from the stars but from the type of transporter.

Maybe first time he left his boots as they weren't dry?

And he's got 7,000 years (which may be 700,000 incarnations) to do something slightly different, which by random chance (typewriters and monkeys) he might do. Then the next incarnation finds it and there can be thousands more before another item is left etc.

And when he enters the fire room, he hasn't yet mentioned the Veil's speed. He might have left an item one time (eg boots) intending to return when it was dry. He might have taken clothes off to dry quicker then been driven away by the veil (as 7000 year doctor leaves fire room quickly with dry clothes, we don't know how close the veil was)

We have thought it through more than MOFFAT, no doubt!

You know what will happen?

Some of those questions will be answered this week and others will become the oddities Moffat aims to resolve in the next but 4 series

But he does skate close to the one unbreakable sci fi rule: you can't get your character into such a fix he has to whip out a hitherto unknown and unmentioned 'thing' in order to escape.

Moffat does just stay on the right side of Asimov, narrowly avoiding the Agathas

The bird/mountain/eternity concept is so fundamentally beautiful that I can excuse him a lot of timey wimery for using it,

Funny as I just two minutes ago read a letter in the Times TV guide saying that it is too complex and that the storylines are nonsense. I never have a clue what is happening.

I absolutely loved it. It's the first episode I've even liked in a very long time. Such a moving concept, cleverly written, perfectly shot and finally Peter Capaldi clicked as The Doctor.

I actually gasped as the penny dropped. It was perfect story telling and I found it quite moving. I've been raving away to DH about it and he said he's going to watch it even though he's not watched any DW since it came back but reading this thread, maybe he won't get it. I honestly thought it was one of the less complicated episodes. God knows Moffett likes a complicated storyline but I was really surprised he'd come up with something so succinct.

I bloody loved it anyway.

Meant Moffat.

Waggle, it probably makes more sense for your DH to watch Face The Raven as well, otherwise the Clara pieces will make no sense