Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-04-18 07:18 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2011-04-18 07:18 pm
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Cracky speculation! I haven't done this since Harry Potter fandom.
Right, done feeling guilty about fandom infidelity. I'm probably the only person crazy enough to have kept Les Mis as a primary (sole?) fandom for five years straight--it is lovely and there is lots of surrounding material to mine, but five years in a medium-small fandom with a closed canon is enough to drive anyone stir-crazy. And since I suck at multitasking when I'm in luuuurve with something new and sparkly, what I'll probably do is take a breather from LM fandom and shamelessly indulge the Doctor Who love until the novelty's worn off. Will still be keeping up with LM fandom and modding Abaissé, just participating more sporadically. (Which is what's happened anyway.)
And now I present... my very favorite crack theories and bits of fan speculation re: Doctor Who. Only one is for season 6; the rest are for past seasons and most have been quite thoroughly Jossed, but they make me grin like a loon anyway.
- Season 3 finale speculation yields the best crack of all, especially when it comes so tantalizingly close to coming true later on. Like the person I saw claiming that Lucy Saxon had the Master's ring and was going to bring him back by absconding with Ten's hand and putting the ring on it, causing it to grow into a full body and bring us... Tennant!Master. WHY DID THIS NOT HAPPEN it would have been SO much more fun than Consolation Ten.
- My pet theory on what happened to the humans at the end of the universe (well, pet theory that lasted all of thirty minutes for me, since I watched s3 finale all in one go) was that Utopia was actually a massive spacetime rift that one could ride back to the early days of the universe. Except unprotected travel through the Untempered Schism caused some pretty funky genetic mutations in the humans who survived it, as well as giving them a particular sensitivity to the fabric of spacetime that only got heightened by living/evolving on a planet with a raw opening into the Vortex. Not that any of them minded, as they were just grateful to have been dumped on a humanoid-friendly planet with lovely red grass and orange skies...
I don't need to mention how thoroughly this has been Jossed, but it's still my personal headcanon that some of the last humans refused to become Toclafane and got sucked back to found prehistoric Gallifrey. (And, in all likelihood, name their bogeyman after the fate they'd narrowly escaped.)
- So the image of a weeping angel becomes an angel, right? Think back to "Blink": Sally Sparrow gives the Doctor her whole file on the Angel/Phonebox Incident, including several photos. That thought alone has made some people lose sleep at night, but my reaction was to stick my fingers in my ears and go "la la la, the additional information from Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone should be optional canon and I'm going to pretend it doesn't apply." Until the thought hit me: what if those angel photographs did come to life... and try to steal the TARDIS, stranding the Doctor in 1969? Which would mean Sally Sparrow caused the situation she was later called in to fix by giving the Doctor information on how to fix it.
That made me lose sleep a bit. Until I realized I might have just out-ontological-paradoxed Steven "Timey-Wimey" Moffat and the ensuing smugness was enough to ward off nightmares.
- Speaking of, you know what would be brilliant? If Moffat not only brought back the Master but integrated him into a whole Time War arc. Whether or not he used RTD's time-lock canon from End of Time, it would be everything he loves in the world: an opportunity for intensely psychological/character-focused stories, the Doctor and the Master (and I rather suspect Moff ships it), old-school shoutouts, tying time in knots via the Time War, the hordes of monstrosities and timey-wimey nightmares unleashed by the war...
- Elaborating a bit on my predictions from last post: So it's been revealed that the gimmick behind the opening episode's monsters, the Silence, is that as soon as you look away from them, you forget they were ever there. (If you hadn't come across this charming tidbit before, please do take a moment to writhe in horror and curse Steven Moffat unto eternity--I think it's what he feeds on.) There's now a whole THREAD over at Gallifrey Base forums about possible sightings of the Silence... in season five. Some of them are utterly spurious, but I rewatched a lot of these episodes and it's all looking terribly suspicious. Here's a roundup of the more plausible ones:
- In "The Eleventh Hour," when little Amelia is out in the garden waiting for the Doctor to come back, there's an inside shot of a shadow passing by the window. A shadow that does not look Doctor-shaped and is certainly not Prisoner Zero's natural form. Future!Doctor from Big Bang? Maybe. Maybe not. Can't tell.
- More significantly, when Amy first gets into the TARDIS at the end of Eleventh Hour and is walking around making surprised faces, there is a moment where she sees something above her and goes from surprised to completely terrified and gasping for breath. Then she looks away and--nothing. No follow-up on a really weird moment.
- That could maybe be dismissed as a fluke, except in "The Lodger" there's an even weirder one. When Amy is on the phone with the Doctor trying to get control of the TARDIS, there are a couple of moments where she looks at something behind the camera, flips out, tries to get the Doctor's attention, and just... blinks and then lets it drop. The biggest one is around 21:45.
- Which is already enough to make one suspect that the Silence have been in the TARDIS all along, but then at the very end of Vampires of Venice... well, remember how the Doctor notices everything has just gone quiet? And there's a voiceover about seeing silence (how do you see silence!) through the cracks, over a shot of the camera peeking through the TARDIS keyhole into the Vortex... well. Watch really closely when the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are going back to the TARDIS. The door bangs open and shut without any of them touching it. Could be the wind, right? But then Amy takes her key and unlocks the door. This is either a colossal continuity error in a sequence that already draws attention to the keyhole, or there's something else opening that door from the inside.
- Take a good, close look at the "fixed" painting at the end of Vincent and the Doctor. No monster, right? But--is that a face in the window?
- And finally, in The Big Bang, we see them. Or... something. When little Amelia lets Amy out of the Pandorica, take a good look at the sarcophagi in the background. Specifically, watch their shadows. Oh wait, those aren't shadows, they're cloaked figures lurking behind the sarcophagi. At 13:30 you can see one moving at the very bottom right of the shot to escape the camera.
I could just be grasping at straws but well... we never did find out what blew up the TARDIS. It's as good a theory as any.
And now I present... my very favorite crack theories and bits of fan speculation re: Doctor Who. Only one is for season 6; the rest are for past seasons and most have been quite thoroughly Jossed, but they make me grin like a loon anyway.
- Season 3 finale speculation yields the best crack of all, especially when it comes so tantalizingly close to coming true later on. Like the person I saw claiming that Lucy Saxon had the Master's ring and was going to bring him back by absconding with Ten's hand and putting the ring on it, causing it to grow into a full body and bring us... Tennant!Master. WHY DID THIS NOT HAPPEN it would have been SO much more fun than Consolation Ten.
- My pet theory on what happened to the humans at the end of the universe (well, pet theory that lasted all of thirty minutes for me, since I watched s3 finale all in one go) was that Utopia was actually a massive spacetime rift that one could ride back to the early days of the universe. Except unprotected travel through the Untempered Schism caused some pretty funky genetic mutations in the humans who survived it, as well as giving them a particular sensitivity to the fabric of spacetime that only got heightened by living/evolving on a planet with a raw opening into the Vortex. Not that any of them minded, as they were just grateful to have been dumped on a humanoid-friendly planet with lovely red grass and orange skies...
I don't need to mention how thoroughly this has been Jossed, but it's still my personal headcanon that some of the last humans refused to become Toclafane and got sucked back to found prehistoric Gallifrey. (And, in all likelihood, name their bogeyman after the fate they'd narrowly escaped.)
- So the image of a weeping angel becomes an angel, right? Think back to "Blink": Sally Sparrow gives the Doctor her whole file on the Angel/Phonebox Incident, including several photos. That thought alone has made some people lose sleep at night, but my reaction was to stick my fingers in my ears and go "la la la, the additional information from Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone should be optional canon and I'm going to pretend it doesn't apply." Until the thought hit me: what if those angel photographs did come to life... and try to steal the TARDIS, stranding the Doctor in 1969? Which would mean Sally Sparrow caused the situation she was later called in to fix by giving the Doctor information on how to fix it.
That made me lose sleep a bit. Until I realized I might have just out-ontological-paradoxed Steven "Timey-Wimey" Moffat and the ensuing smugness was enough to ward off nightmares.
- Speaking of, you know what would be brilliant? If Moffat not only brought back the Master but integrated him into a whole Time War arc. Whether or not he used RTD's time-lock canon from End of Time, it would be everything he loves in the world: an opportunity for intensely psychological/character-focused stories, the Doctor and the Master (and I rather suspect Moff ships it), old-school shoutouts, tying time in knots via the Time War, the hordes of monstrosities and timey-wimey nightmares unleashed by the war...
- Elaborating a bit on my predictions from last post: So it's been revealed that the gimmick behind the opening episode's monsters, the Silence, is that as soon as you look away from them, you forget they were ever there. (If you hadn't come across this charming tidbit before, please do take a moment to writhe in horror and curse Steven Moffat unto eternity--I think it's what he feeds on.) There's now a whole THREAD over at Gallifrey Base forums about possible sightings of the Silence... in season five. Some of them are utterly spurious, but I rewatched a lot of these episodes and it's all looking terribly suspicious. Here's a roundup of the more plausible ones:
- In "The Eleventh Hour," when little Amelia is out in the garden waiting for the Doctor to come back, there's an inside shot of a shadow passing by the window. A shadow that does not look Doctor-shaped and is certainly not Prisoner Zero's natural form. Future!Doctor from Big Bang? Maybe. Maybe not. Can't tell.
- More significantly, when Amy first gets into the TARDIS at the end of Eleventh Hour and is walking around making surprised faces, there is a moment where she sees something above her and goes from surprised to completely terrified and gasping for breath. Then she looks away and--nothing. No follow-up on a really weird moment.
- That could maybe be dismissed as a fluke, except in "The Lodger" there's an even weirder one. When Amy is on the phone with the Doctor trying to get control of the TARDIS, there are a couple of moments where she looks at something behind the camera, flips out, tries to get the Doctor's attention, and just... blinks and then lets it drop. The biggest one is around 21:45.
- Which is already enough to make one suspect that the Silence have been in the TARDIS all along, but then at the very end of Vampires of Venice... well, remember how the Doctor notices everything has just gone quiet? And there's a voiceover about seeing silence (how do you see silence!) through the cracks, over a shot of the camera peeking through the TARDIS keyhole into the Vortex... well. Watch really closely when the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are going back to the TARDIS. The door bangs open and shut without any of them touching it. Could be the wind, right? But then Amy takes her key and unlocks the door. This is either a colossal continuity error in a sequence that already draws attention to the keyhole, or there's something else opening that door from the inside.
- Take a good, close look at the "fixed" painting at the end of Vincent and the Doctor. No monster, right? But--is that a face in the window?
- And finally, in The Big Bang, we see them. Or... something. When little Amelia lets Amy out of the Pandorica, take a good look at the sarcophagi in the background. Specifically, watch their shadows. Oh wait, those aren't shadows, they're cloaked figures lurking behind the sarcophagi. At 13:30 you can see one moving at the very bottom right of the shot to escape the camera.
I could just be grasping at straws but well... we never did find out what blew up the TARDIS. It's as good a theory as any.
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And dude, I think EVERYONE ships the Doctor and the Master. We already know RTD ships it based on the thoroughly slashy nature of their interactions in S3 and EoT, although he foolishly attempts to deny it. This is from the EoT podcast commentary:
Julie Gardner: "There used to be a stage direction—which we did argue about—that was used to turn back the Master to look at the Doctor. And it would've been hammy, but I did want a goodbye. I wanted a goodbye between the Master and the Doctor."
RTD: "You are like ham on cheese. This is what I have to put up with. (in falsetto) 'Can't the Master turn around and give one last look to the Doctor?' No, he can't!"
Julie: "I am still hankering for the look!"
So now we know Julie Gardner ships it too! As does Paul Cornell, who wrote the infamously slashy Scream of the Shalka (definitely recommended if you haven't seen):
"Oh, they were at it, definitely!" - Paul Cornell, at Redemption '09, on the Doctor and the Master in Scream of the Shalka.
Finally, we have the opinions of our actors (also from the EoT podcast commentary):
John Simm: And this is where we team up — two Time Lords. So we could do the spin-off now, the Doctor and the Master spin-off, like Joanie and Chachi.
David Tennant: The Odd Couple.
John Simm: The Very Odd Couple.
As David Thorne would say, "Whoa there, Charles Dickens," but it just strikes me as utterly hilarious that so many bigwigs in DW ship this.
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Didn't RTD say at some point that he really, honestly thinks the Master loves the Doctor? In his own twisted way of course. Just in case everything he's written for them weren't enough of a tipoff.
Knew about Paul Cornell (and oh god I DIED when I first heard about that), did not know about Julie Gardner or the wink-wink nudge-nudge from Simm and Tennant. Though they can't possibly have been oblivious to the UST vibe. Even on the slim, slim off-chance they weren't engaging in some is-it-or-isn't-it facetious flirting in that phone conversation, by End of Time it was pretty in-your-face.
And of course Moffat wrote the Master and femme!Doctor running off together for kinky shenanigans in Curse of Fatal Death. Which means that even if he doesn't ship it he's aware of how they come off. ;)
Oh Who fandom and the things its fanboy bigwigs get away with--the inmates are most definitely running the asylum here.
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I held out for about three years with Les Mis as my only real fandom, but after that the number rapidly increased, as if to make up for lost time:)
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I mean, it could always be a Vashta Nerada cameo.
Sleep tight. ;)
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Also, in light of the Silence, is it just me or is Abigail's Song from the most recent Christmas special terrifying? "When you're alone, silence is all you see..." NO THANKS.
At the dwlinecon, I had heard all those rumors about Silence sightings in the previous series, but I never knew where exactly they were before; now I know what I'll be doing for the rest of the night (...besides not sleeping D: )
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I'm just super-glad Paul Cornell (who wrote Father's Day and Human Nature/Family of Blood) hasn't written any Eleven episodes yet, because Moffat is very effective at scaring me in ways I like to be scared, but Cornell is batting two for two when it comes to prying deep into the existential terrors that made little-kid me more horribly disturbed by The Picture of Dorian Gray than by all the Goosebumps and Fear Street books combined. I don't want to think about what a Moffat-edited Cornell script would do to me.
Haven't seen the Christmas special yet (I know, for shame!) but I'm sure they're slipping unsubtle references to the new season in all over the place.
And hey, as mentioned above, just tell yourself the sarcophagus shadows in Big Bang aren't the Silence. I mean, it could always be the Vashta Nerada coming back to say hi.
Sweet dreams. ;)
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You are completely right about Moffat's tics, and I love him for them (and hate him a little too, but it’s mostly love). As it so happens, I sometimes get really irrational fears of darkness or turning my back to things after I watch things like the premiere and 'I am Legend' (not that the zombies were frightening, but the fact that they were always waiting in the dark, oh god), so I was really glad my roommate was out last Tuesday night and she didn't have to see me being a baby and staring neurotically at the closet.
Oh, River... Though I liked her in SitL/FotD, I wasn't a fan of her in the angels episodes in season 5. But I do think she totally redeemed herself in the finale and, this time round, Moffat really was determined to break everyone’s heart, especially since we’ve all seen Silence in the Library.
To be honest, I didn't find Father's Day that scary, mostly because I was busy being angry at Rose (I really don't like her, meh.) But Human Nature/Family of the Blood ...the scarecrows and creepy sniffing aliens (especially the little girl who ends up in the mirror) were pretty unsettling. And my heart just breaks for Martha in that episode. :(
Ohhh, you should see the special as soon as possible! It doesn't really tie into the premiere or anything, but it is by far the best of the Christmas Specials. You might be interested in checking out the song before Saturday though, the lyrics are really bizarre and might possible have to do with the silence; it's not really clear at all.(And the song itself is so beautiful and Katherine Jenkin's voice is perfect) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mq5jmoXIzw
Wahhh the sarcophagus shadows were the worst them all so far, because to me, they really don’t look like The Silence and I have no idea what they could possibly be besides REALLY UNWANTED. I mean, because the Silence don’t need to stay out of sight or wear cloaks because you don’t remember seeing them as soon as you look away. They don’t need to hide. Vashta Nerada it is then. *whimpers*
Ah, this is sort of spoilery, so you may want to ignore it for a few days, but have you seen the promo pictures of the Silence? They released them a few days ago. If you have, then you can see that the silhouette of the shadow figures in Big Bang 2 is a little off; the Silence have big, yucky heads like Ood with the spaghetti bits removed. Pretty much though, I'm really trying to keep an open mind about them because there is a lot that I don't understand/need to see again.
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Hello, I am here to propose that I make SWEET SWEET LOVE to your brain.
Also, I am pretty sure you have singlehandedly (well, not singlehandedly, I think it was a whole Tyler Posse team effort, but you did a lot ANYWAY) revived my deep and ridiculous passion for Doctor Who. I have Eleven and Amy's voices in my head now! I cannot fucking WAIT for this Saturday! It is like a DISEASE OF JOY.