Doctor Who S34E1: "Deep Breath"

[Gandalf]

Thankfully the show improved after the first twenty minutes. Even though the story was so-so, Capaldi was great.

Weirdest episode of 'The Thick Of It' I've seen.

Yeah, a non-swearing Capaldi just seems weird. Not one monster was told to fuck the fuck off.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It's for exactly that reason that I'm glad I saw Capaldi in The Musketeers earlier this year. Good preparation for seeing him in non-Tucker mode.

[NecronLord]

Derp. Forgot about that. Still, he managed to easily pilot the Tardis without so much as a hiccup when it was meant to be piloted by six TLs.

That particular console maybe. The TARDIS also has a 'secondary control room' that had a simple push button console which could be operated from a small keypad hidden behind a flap.



Close up shot, showing another keypad opened (the Doctor however had a couple of adventures where he just opened one of the flaps) and a space full of stationary there, but it's pretty clear one person can fly it using that console, as it seems to be a matter of just typing in the destination coordinates and pushing go. Which is what you'd expect, most likely the setup the Doctor uses later is because he wants every single option possible, given that we can see here a much less complicated console.

[Enigma]

Except that the main console is not dumbed down either. It is still has all the options available and still flew the Tardis without any hassle therefore she should have been able to do that before unless he managed to upgrade the main control room.

[NecronLord]

Huh, I don't understand what you're saying there. Are you saying the one I just showed is not simpler than the standard ones? Evidently it is, it has few dials or screens compared to all the others, and radically less controls. Presumably the other controls do less essential things, and one is designed for six people while the one I showed above is designed for less (it doesn't even have six panels, at most five).

It's obvious that versions with more or less controls exist; the current one has not only the mushroom console but two side consoles; obviously it can be customized to have more or less controls, and the version used by Tom Baker as the 'second control room' could be used by one person with apparent ease.

Could you rephrase what you're saying?

[Enigma]

I mean that Nine Ten and Eleven all used their main consoles the same way despite GUI (or desktop) changes. When flying they get bounced around. But with Twelve once he got his mind more or less sorted out, changed the control room to his liking and now can fly smoothly without Clara even noticing. Why wasn't it the standard setting? Or did he previously enjoyed getting bounced about? Still, having a control room that lets you fly with only one TL goes against what previously stated that one needed 6 to pilot. Makes no sense. Unless it he meant that the Tardis needs 6 TLs to fully utilize it not just fly the Tardis.

Hope that its a bit clearer.

[Tribble]

River Song was able to pilot the Tardis without difficulty as well, so clearly it can be done. I've always assumed that the Doctor deliberately tries to pilot the Tardis a bit randomly, just to spice things up a bit. After all, if you know where you're going and you know what's going to happen when you get there, it would be rather boring wouldn't it?

Also, keep in mind that the Tardis itself will sometimes take over and bring the Doctor to wherever it feels he is needed.

[InsaneTD]

Maybe it's more about the fact that nine, ten and eleven liked people to know they were doing something, anything. And eleven on occasion did have smooth flights, rare as those were. And almost everyone except the doctor flew the TARDIS smoothly.

On the subject of six pilots, I can't see six time lords being needed just to pilot the TARDIS. Maybe pilot, copilot, flight engineer, etc, that I could see and understand.

[Tribble]

Well, its also possible that the Doctor is simply far more experienced than most Time Lords, as most of them usually remain on Gallifrey their entire lives.

[Flameblade]

It's also possible that a lot of the Doctor's time spent to himself (like when he was sitting in the clouds over Victorian London for a long time?) was spent doing repairs and maintenance that he'd let slide over the centuries, so the smoothness of the ride is now much more a matter of personal choice?

...nah, because that'd require consistent writing, and Doctor Who can't have that.

[DaveJB]

The TARDIS stopped being shaky in-flight early on in Eleven's tenure, which they actually called attention to in the Weeping Angels two-parter in S5. Apparently Moffat decided to throw out RTD's "TARDISes have to be operated by six people in order to fly stably" thing in favour of explaining that the TARDIS had some stabilizers which Nine and Ten apparently just didn't feel like using (or I guess got damaged in the Time War and weren't repaired until the Ten>Eleven generation blew up the console room, forcing more extensive repairs).

[NecronLord]

I mean that Nine Ten and Eleven all used their main consoles the same way despite GUI (or desktop) changes. When flying they get bounced around. But with Twelve once he got his mind more or less sorted out, changed the control room to his liking and now can fly smoothly without Clara even noticing. Why wasn't it the standard setting? Or did he previously enjoyed getting bounced about? Still, having a control room that lets you fly with only one TL goes against what previously stated that one needed 6 to pilot. Makes no sense. Unless it he meant that the Tardis needs 6 TLs to fully utilize it not just fly the Tardis.

Hope that its a bit clearer.

Oh, fully agree with you there. What I was arguing was that the quote can easily be interpreted to mean that the coral theme control room used by nine and ten required six persons to operate it, given that what seems to be a cut-down control room apparently intended for one person also exists.

[jwl]

It's a little different but you can say that Tennant's doctor had a doppelgänger. In the episode where the Doctor and Martha meet 'ol Billy Shakespeare, the Doctor seems to have read or watched the Harry Potter novels. Martha seems to have been a fan and it could have been throwaway lines (they talk about it throughout the episode) but Tennant's did have a major role in the film series

It doesn't say anything good about Ten's psyche if he modelled himself after Barty Crouch Jr.

Maybe the tenth doctor was modeling himself on Barty Crouch's actor. Stranger things have happened. Tennant is married to a woman who played his Doctor's "daughter" who happens to be a previous Doctor actor's real life daughter… wibbley wobbly timey whimmey stuff

Well, considering the moment in Robots of Sherwood, guess who the Tardis modeled Two on?

[Havok]

I don't remember 9 having issues with the TARDIS. If you look at the ages, Eccleston and Capaldi are clearly older more mature versions, Hurt as well, while Tennant and Smith were younger. It seems like the age they "chose" not only is a reflection of how they are feeling at the moment but indicates how they act with the "mundane" things.

I like how cool 12 is when flying the TARDIS.

[Iroscato]

I don't remember 9 having issues with the TARDIS. If you look at the ages, Eccleston and Capaldi are clearly older more mature versions, Hurt as well, while Tennant and Smith were younger. It seems like the age they "chose" not only is a reflection of how they are feeling at the moment but indicates how they act with the "mundane" things.

I like how cool 12 is when flying the TARDIS.

9 had a lot of problems, though he was never quite as madcap as 10/11. The most severe was of course dropping Rose off home 12 months late, but there was some standard turbulence as well.

[Enigma]

Not only was flying the TARDIS a lot smoother but a lot less complicated. No banging the console, no countless manipulating of knobs, buttons, switches and levers. Just two or three and the TARDIS was ready to go.

[Havok]

I don't remember 9 having issues with the TARDIS. If you look at the ages, Eccleston and Capaldi are clearly older more mature versions, Hurt as well, while Tennant and Smith were younger. It seems like the age they "chose" not only is a reflection of how they are feeling at the moment but indicates how they act with the "mundane" things.

I like how cool 12 is when flying the TARDIS.

9 had a lot of problems, though he was never quite as madcap as 10/11. The most severe was of course dropping Rose off home 12 months late, but there was some standard turbulence as well.

Well Capaldi went to Glasgow instead of... where ever. Missing a decimal here and there seemed to be the extent for 9. 10 and 11 made an art out of fucking up the TARDIS, like you said.

Looking back, with what we know now, it's almost as if 9 was trying to get back to normal, but felt guilty about it. In fact, that is exactly what he gave off without having anything we know now.

[madd0ct0r]

I think 9 was always described as suffering PTSD with the 'time war' and complete loss of Gallifrey used to fill the gap between old and new who

[Broomstick]

The phone call from M. Smith's Doctor to Clara worked for me, and that along with the interaction with Capaldi's Doctor also fit in well. Yes, it was partly directed at the audience, but the Doctor has had experience with regeneration and Human reaction to it. He may have been concerned because it was not just a new regeneration but a whole new cycle of regenerations and thus more uncertain than usual. Yes, Clara has some memory of all his prior regenerations but is was Smith's Doctor she actually "lived" with and had the most interaction with. It's a different way of bridging the change.

Likewise, Madame Vastra's bit with being veiled and unveiled was a commentary on how it was the inner person that mattered, not the external form, and Jenny's rather pointed comment that if Vastra changed would it really be that much more important than the fact Jenny was in love with a lizard-woman? It was also a point about accepting one's alien friends and relatives as the aliens they are - if Clara wants to be friends with the Doctor she needs to truly accept that he really is not Human.

The question was whether Clara was friends with the external form of the Doctor or a friend of the actual essential Doctor. Somewhat like the point last season about the recipe for the souffle being somehow or other more essential than an individual souffle.

Granted, some won't like that sort of meta-commentary. It doesn't bother me as long as it's not overwhelming.

I got the repair robots and relation to "The Girl in the Fireplace" pretty early on.

The Doctor acting disoriented and/or goofy post-regeneration actually goes all the way back to Pertwee (at least) so I don't have much of an issue with that. The commentary about his face was interesting, and I wouldn't mind some reference to his uncanny resemblance to prior characters down the line as long as they don't beat it to death. The notion that the Doctor has some sort of unconscious input to his regenerated appearance has been floating about fandom for quite some time now, and this episode can make you think there's also some sort of influence over his accent as well (can't help but think that's an Amy Pond influence). The business about being Scottish ("I can complain about things now!") and his eyebrows voting to seceded from the rest of his face was both amusing and a soon-to-dated reference to the current Scottish referendum.

As for the Lady in Heaven - I don't think she's River Song. I think she's that woman who uploaded to the Library with errors, making her both very intelligent and very ugly. If you recall, her pattern was corrected at the end of the two-parter.

Or maybe something else. Just don't bring back those stupid Guardians with the dead bird hairdos.