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promethia_tenkWarnings: Includes spoilers for Pyramid at the End of the World and the next time trailer for Lie of the Land. So long. So very long. Not properly edited. Seven years of accumulated symbolism is such an unwieldily thing, guys, I'm sorry.
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Bill started out on this show, I thought, remarkably devoid of symbolism. Clara and River and even Amy, to an extent, all entered the show dripping in symbolism. With names that begged to be analyzed and new veins of metaphoric imagery flowing from them.
Amy was about fairy tales and growing up. Apples and stories. She and the Doctor were lost children, running away together, learning how to grow up.
River was about life and the power of grace and the flow of time. She was associated with water and forests and music, life and death and renewal. Her appearance told us the Doctor was going to grow and heal and and again be a force for life and wellbeing.
Clara was about clarity and power and rules, and about mirroring the Doctor. She brought with her flowers and eggs and birds: symbols of fruitfulness, rebirth, and freedom. On her first appearance she symbolically healed the Time War by severing the Doctor’s connection to the Daleks.
Missy came in and co-opted all the symbolic threads the others had established and made them evil: a twisted mother figure. Queen of no natural forces, but of the undead. And her influence twisted up Twelve and Clara and spread over their whole era, as they gripped tighter and tighter to each other, unwilling to let time and nature run their course.
To see even an episode or two of any of these women was to understand, quite quickly, major things about what they would mean.
This did not happen with Bill. Bill was remarkably, intriguingly, and somewhat reassuringly . . . flat.
As I exclaimed toelisi quite early in the season: ‘Don’t catch the symbolism, Bill! You’ll just get stolen or made a member of the living dead!’ To be too closely entwined with the symbolism on this show is to wield immense power. And to be subject to immense pain.
Let’s start with her name: Bill Potts. Remarkable only in being a boy’s name, and thus probably not her given one. William (or Wilhelmina, potentially?) comes from the German words for will/desire and protection—which is suddenly far more interesting in light of the most recent episode, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. My point here is that her name is almost forcibly banal. Not something one would ever think to look up were she not a character on a show where the meaning of names is regularly a plot point and most people’s names come loaded heavy with meaning.
And the only thing I have to say about Potts is that they’re found in kitchens. Like I said: forcibly banal. Much like Bill’s life.
The other notable thing about names on this show is everyone, absolutely everyone, has at least two. Sometimes three. And usually several epithets as well. And the distinctions between these names are major points of character development. Amelia Pond, Amy Pond, Amy Williams. Rory Williams, Rory Pond. Melody Pond, Mels Zucker, River Song. Clara Oswald, Clara Oswin Oswald, Oswin Oswald. The Doctor and . . . whatever his other name is (Basil, he tells one of the Osgoods). Rupert Pink and Danny (the Soldier Man) Pink. Kate Stewart (she leaves the ‘Lethbridge’ out, to avoid appearances of favoritism). Missy, the Mistress, the Master. I could go on, but you probably take my point. Bill hasn’t gotten herself an epithet yet either, something like The Impossible Girl or The Last Centurion. She hasn't even got a nickname, not nothing. She’s just ‘Bill.’
The obvious question is, what is Bill’s other name?
And then there’s the symbolism. For the first several episodes of this season, it’s been there. Ambient in the environment, but not seeming to do much. There’s all the normal suspects: eyes and water and fish and flowers and trees and birds and music. Bill’s got a bit of a greatest hits collection of necklaces (jewelry is always important): a guitar, some birds, and my favorite: a blue crystal.
For awhile I was feeling like Bill did not have any particular symbolism associated with her. Hadn’t brought anything along as Clara did flowers and birds. But thinking about what the crystal meant made me realize a major symbolic thread that we had way, way back in season five, which disappeared and which, only very recently, has slipped back in, stealthy: earth.
Season five had a major trope of the earth and the heavens. These showed up in the use of red (earth) and blue (heavens). Circles (heavens) in squares (earth). Rory’s name meant red, meant earth, meant grounding. He was contrasted with that ephemeral sky-creature, the Doctor. We had caves in the Angels episodes and a whole underground civilization in The Hungry Earth. The finale centered around the alchemy of uniting the earth and heavens to recreate the universe—which is the central symbol of renewal on the show, returned to again and again in pure and twisted forms.
Since season five, however, earth has . . . rather slipped out of the equation, it feels to me anyway. Brought up mostly in association with death, and the show has spun off-center the farther we’ve gotten from that essential balance, culminating in Twelve and Clara’s mirrored spiral: unmoored, unearthed, undead.
The Doctor basically crash-landed, however, and has come back down to . . . earth. To watch Heaven Sent, to really watch it, the Doctor’s chief antagonist would seem to be rock: the entrapping walls of the castle, the grave he digs up, the charred remains of his former self he scoops up at the beginning of each cycle (remember you are dust, to dust you shall return), the ever-growing pile of skulls, the Doctor’s body slowly becoming the very fabric of the world, and then that wall of harder-than-diamond he punches his way through in grief and contrition. The Doctor does not, when he can possibly avoid it, tangle with earth in this way. It is not naturally his element. It represents, generally, everything he runs from.
His reward is he returns to Gallifrey, he walks again in the dirt of his home world. And what a very red, desolate, dusty wasteland it is. But, crucially, it is his, and it is safe, and the Doctor once again has a home.
Then comes The Husbands of River Song. Hands up who thought that the Singing Towers of Darillium would be rock formations? I didn’t. I half did a double-take at the end of that episode because when has rock ever figured in the Doctor/River symbolism? Which is odd, when you think of it, as River’s job is literally digging in the dirt. And yet there the towers were: hard and solid and with the Doctor saying ~meaningful things about them and promising twenty four years in one place, on one planet. Durability, steadfastness, grounding.
Both THoRS and The Return of Doctor Mysterio center around rocks as well: the diamond in THoRS and the gemstone from the most recent Christmas special whose name I can’t be bothered to look up right now: the Halassi something or other, the Ghost of Love and Wishes. The common point between earth and a star is a crystal.
Which brings us back to this season and Bill’s necklace with the blue crystal. Earth has yet to . . . assert itself the way it did at the end of season nine and the Christmas specials, but it is referenced everywhere. The Doctor’s study is crammed full with spheres and globes. There’s a crystal ball on his desk in between River and Susan’s portraits. In Thin Ice he plays with a solar system model in the industrialist’s parlor. All the spheres suggest celestial bodies, planets. Bill meets a girl with a star in her eye. The Doctor isn’t ‘from space’: he’s from a planet like everybody else. He’s grounded.
And the Doctor has been on earth for seventy years, we learn, guarding a vault that is underground. It’s another cube, like the Pandorica, which was also underground and was crucial in the uniting of earth and heavens back in season five. Season five had such a nice, round completeness to it, in the storyline and in the symbolism. It’s something I’ve been missing and something, I very much hope, is back.
Now, is all this earth, all this grounding, really to do with Bill? Or is it the Doctor’s symbolism and she just stumbled along at the right time? I’d like to think she’s tied to it. She gives him a rug, as a present. It’s a lovely, red, earth-y color and lies on the ground, juxtaposed with the blue of the TARDIS, and it’s covered with crosses, which are a central symbol in American Indian cosmology, referencing the four elements and the four seasons, the cycles of life, the four directions, the unity of the sun and the earth, balance, and all the kind of good things you’d want out of a final season of Moffat Who.
She also has some sort of mandala tapestry hanging in her flat, with elephants circling the center. Centering, grounding, completeness.
The other little thing about Bill, which I nearly brushed off for feeling trite, is that she has little peace sign earrings she wears in The Pilot. An over-used symbol, perhaps, but a very good one.
Now, in the past few episodes, things have started to get a little interesting.
Knock, Knock: I’ve already written about how this episode folds Bill into the network of symbolism of the women in this show, and gives her a warning, in a classic gothic manner, of the dangers of over-protectiveness, which leads to stasis (a true evil, unlike death, which is a part of life).
Oxygen: The previous week’s warning is well-timed as the Doctor sacrifices his eyesight to save Bill and, more worryingly, also tries to protect her from the knowledge of what he’s sacrificed. This is also Bill’s first time dying and, like Amy’s journey through the underworld in Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone and Clara’s trials in Cold War, serves as her true initiation into the Doctor’s world. She is now far more inextricably bound to him than she was before this episode.
Extremis: What a beautiful episode. Head over to elisi’s meta for better composed thoughts than these, but two things I want to point out:
1) The execution scene by the lake is extensively mirrored to the Doctor’s execution in The Wedding of River Song, with both Twelve and Missy mirroring Eleven and River in different ways. There's the lake. A prison rising out of a lake. Someone being executed (note the misdirect at the beginning of the scene that makes it seem the Doctor is the one to die, again). Someone refusing to execute the other person. Someone who has to go in a box to protect the get out of death free clause. An assertion of relationship (marriage/friendship). Missy's saying that she needs to tell the Doctor that she is his friend, even if it doesn't save her echoes River's 'I can't let you die without knowing you are loved.'
And then both Missy and Twelve repeat the words we've just heard from River's diary. And later when computer!Twelve is remembering those words to give him strength to fight the Monks, he first remembers Missy saying them. All the women on this show mirror all the other women at different times. Missy first came on as a Clara mirror, but twisting her around to now mirror River is entirely appropriate. As The Moment in The Day of the Doctor notes, through the voice of Rose, ‘Caught between a girl and a box. Story of your life, Doctor.’ Missy, the madwoman in a box, is the repressed Id of all of Moffat’s women.
2) When Missy came on to the show, she co-opted the existing symbolism and made it evil. Water was now evil water. Flowers were evil flowers. Birds were evil [Cyber] birds. She took over the earth as a malevolent mother figure, with an army of undead babies hatching out of evil eggs. And Clara who, up to that point, has been a near infallible symbol of hope and renewal, who seemed to float over the show, sprinkling fairy dust and fixing the most fundamental of catastrophes, had now gone Victorious, ready to tear the universe apart to bring Danny back from the dead, her wishes fulfilled by Missy, her dark mirror, in the most horrific manner possible.
It was an entirely arresting moment. Like a switch had been thrown and this whole magic show with its sprawling network of fertility symbolism and its alchemy and its salvation through stories had been inverted in the course of one episode. The question, I immediately felt, was how do you fix this?
I’m still waiting for an answer. I feel like we’ve more drifted, stumbling, back into a grey in-between area and are hovering there, unresolved. The end of season nine, with an undead Clara racing off through the stars and an amnesiac Twelve carrying on without her managed to feel both celebratory and deeply, profoundly wrong. The solution, I’m starting to feel, will not be to throw the switch back but to find a way, again, to unite the opposites. The good symbolism of change and growth and renewal and the evil symbolism of stasis and stagnation and forgetfulness somehow resolved. So I’m going to work on the assumption that this season will be finding a way to do that. Extremis, though, does provide an interesting signpost for us:
I think it is safe to say that it is the most flora-encrusted episode we've ever had. A probably incomplete list of things with flowers and/or vines on them:
Missy's bow
Pretty much every fabric surface in Bill's flat, and all the art on the walls
Penny's earrings, necklace, and jacket
The lace on Bill's dress
The wall behind Nardole when he comes to the execution
The fabric on the inside of the lid of the box that the Doctor takes his eyesight restoring doohickey out of
The glass globes around the lights in the Hereticum
The fretwork around the lock of the Veritas cage
The cover of the Veritas
The table runner underneath it
The reading chair behind it, both in the woodwork and the upholstery
The translator's gun
The drapes in the Oval Office
And, perhaps most interestingly, the primary Monk's robes.
All of this in an episode about forbidden knowledge that contains death. Here we are, then, in the Garden of Eden.
The thing that really grabs me about all these flowers and plants--symbols of fruitfulness and rebirth--is that they show up in both the ‘good’ symbolism context and the ‘bad’ context. The good notably in Bill’s flat on her date with Penny. The bad with Missy, the Veritas, and the Monks. One symbol, both polarities, same episode.
*deep breath* Hang on, folks, almost done:
So. The Pyramid at the End of the World. Fantastically boring episode, fantastically interesting conclusion.
The only thing I want to talk about is Bill’s decision at the end, because whoo, boy.
Here’s the thing that I had to watch twice to fully sink in: the Doctor’s plan of blowing up the lab to sterilize the contagion . . . was working. Yes, he was going to die, but so do so many people in so many episodes and we move on. The lab could have blown up with the Doctor in it and everything would have been fine. Bill here is not making a foolhardy decision in the eleventh hour in the hopes that keeping the Doctor alive will allow him to save them all. The day was saved already.
Bill just couldn’t let the Doctor die, and because of that, she doomed the whole world. While standing in a pyramid.
Let us be clear: Bill has gone from zero to full River Song in seven episodes.
So much for avoiding the symbolism.
Next week in an alternative universe (Wedding of River Song) Bill will apparently shoot the Doctor in order to fix the world (Wedding of River Song). And she will meet Missy who, again, was elaborately mirrored with River in Extremis, is the repressed Id of all the women on this show, and from whom the whole network of evil symbolism flows. (If you’re new here and you've never read elisi’s masterpiece meta on TWoRS, now would probably be a good time to do that.)
TL;DR: Bill has a weird relationship to the symbolism on this show. Tune in next week: it’s gonna be a whopper.
----------------------------------------
Bill started out on this show, I thought, remarkably devoid of symbolism. Clara and River and even Amy, to an extent, all entered the show dripping in symbolism. With names that begged to be analyzed and new veins of metaphoric imagery flowing from them.
Amy was about fairy tales and growing up. Apples and stories. She and the Doctor were lost children, running away together, learning how to grow up.
River was about life and the power of grace and the flow of time. She was associated with water and forests and music, life and death and renewal. Her appearance told us the Doctor was going to grow and heal and and again be a force for life and wellbeing.
Clara was about clarity and power and rules, and about mirroring the Doctor. She brought with her flowers and eggs and birds: symbols of fruitfulness, rebirth, and freedom. On her first appearance she symbolically healed the Time War by severing the Doctor’s connection to the Daleks.
Missy came in and co-opted all the symbolic threads the others had established and made them evil: a twisted mother figure. Queen of no natural forces, but of the undead. And her influence twisted up Twelve and Clara and spread over their whole era, as they gripped tighter and tighter to each other, unwilling to let time and nature run their course.
To see even an episode or two of any of these women was to understand, quite quickly, major things about what they would mean.
This did not happen with Bill. Bill was remarkably, intriguingly, and somewhat reassuringly . . . flat.
As I exclaimed to
elisi quite early in the season: ‘Don’t catch the symbolism, Bill! You’ll just get stolen or made a member of the living dead!’ To be too closely entwined with the symbolism on this show is to wield immense power. And to be subject to immense pain.Let’s start with her name: Bill Potts. Remarkable only in being a boy’s name, and thus probably not her given one. William (or Wilhelmina, potentially?) comes from the German words for will/desire and protection—which is suddenly far more interesting in light of the most recent episode, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. My point here is that her name is almost forcibly banal. Not something one would ever think to look up were she not a character on a show where the meaning of names is regularly a plot point and most people’s names come loaded heavy with meaning.
And the only thing I have to say about Potts is that they’re found in kitchens. Like I said: forcibly banal. Much like Bill’s life.
The other notable thing about names on this show is everyone, absolutely everyone, has at least two. Sometimes three. And usually several epithets as well. And the distinctions between these names are major points of character development. Amelia Pond, Amy Pond, Amy Williams. Rory Williams, Rory Pond. Melody Pond, Mels Zucker, River Song. Clara Oswald, Clara Oswin Oswald, Oswin Oswald. The Doctor and . . . whatever his other name is (Basil, he tells one of the Osgoods). Rupert Pink and Danny (the Soldier Man) Pink. Kate Stewart (she leaves the ‘Lethbridge’ out, to avoid appearances of favoritism). Missy, the Mistress, the Master. I could go on, but you probably take my point. Bill hasn’t gotten herself an epithet yet either, something like The Impossible Girl or The Last Centurion. She hasn't even got a nickname, not nothing. She’s just ‘Bill.’
The obvious question is, what is Bill’s other name?
And then there’s the symbolism. For the first several episodes of this season, it’s been there. Ambient in the environment, but not seeming to do much. There’s all the normal suspects: eyes and water and fish and flowers and trees and birds and music. Bill’s got a bit of a greatest hits collection of necklaces (jewelry is always important): a guitar, some birds, and my favorite: a blue crystal.
For awhile I was feeling like Bill did not have any particular symbolism associated with her. Hadn’t brought anything along as Clara did flowers and birds. But thinking about what the crystal meant made me realize a major symbolic thread that we had way, way back in season five, which disappeared and which, only very recently, has slipped back in, stealthy: earth.
Season five had a major trope of the earth and the heavens. These showed up in the use of red (earth) and blue (heavens). Circles (heavens) in squares (earth). Rory’s name meant red, meant earth, meant grounding. He was contrasted with that ephemeral sky-creature, the Doctor. We had caves in the Angels episodes and a whole underground civilization in The Hungry Earth. The finale centered around the alchemy of uniting the earth and heavens to recreate the universe—which is the central symbol of renewal on the show, returned to again and again in pure and twisted forms.
Since season five, however, earth has . . . rather slipped out of the equation, it feels to me anyway. Brought up mostly in association with death, and the show has spun off-center the farther we’ve gotten from that essential balance, culminating in Twelve and Clara’s mirrored spiral: unmoored, unearthed, undead.
The Doctor basically crash-landed, however, and has come back down to . . . earth. To watch Heaven Sent, to really watch it, the Doctor’s chief antagonist would seem to be rock: the entrapping walls of the castle, the grave he digs up, the charred remains of his former self he scoops up at the beginning of each cycle (remember you are dust, to dust you shall return), the ever-growing pile of skulls, the Doctor’s body slowly becoming the very fabric of the world, and then that wall of harder-than-diamond he punches his way through in grief and contrition. The Doctor does not, when he can possibly avoid it, tangle with earth in this way. It is not naturally his element. It represents, generally, everything he runs from.
His reward is he returns to Gallifrey, he walks again in the dirt of his home world. And what a very red, desolate, dusty wasteland it is. But, crucially, it is his, and it is safe, and the Doctor once again has a home.
Then comes The Husbands of River Song. Hands up who thought that the Singing Towers of Darillium would be rock formations? I didn’t. I half did a double-take at the end of that episode because when has rock ever figured in the Doctor/River symbolism? Which is odd, when you think of it, as River’s job is literally digging in the dirt. And yet there the towers were: hard and solid and with the Doctor saying ~meaningful things about them and promising twenty four years in one place, on one planet. Durability, steadfastness, grounding.
Both THoRS and The Return of Doctor Mysterio center around rocks as well: the diamond in THoRS and the gemstone from the most recent Christmas special whose name I can’t be bothered to look up right now: the Halassi something or other, the Ghost of Love and Wishes. The common point between earth and a star is a crystal.
Which brings us back to this season and Bill’s necklace with the blue crystal. Earth has yet to . . . assert itself the way it did at the end of season nine and the Christmas specials, but it is referenced everywhere. The Doctor’s study is crammed full with spheres and globes. There’s a crystal ball on his desk in between River and Susan’s portraits. In Thin Ice he plays with a solar system model in the industrialist’s parlor. All the spheres suggest celestial bodies, planets. Bill meets a girl with a star in her eye. The Doctor isn’t ‘from space’: he’s from a planet like everybody else. He’s grounded.
And the Doctor has been on earth for seventy years, we learn, guarding a vault that is underground. It’s another cube, like the Pandorica, which was also underground and was crucial in the uniting of earth and heavens back in season five. Season five had such a nice, round completeness to it, in the storyline and in the symbolism. It’s something I’ve been missing and something, I very much hope, is back.
Now, is all this earth, all this grounding, really to do with Bill? Or is it the Doctor’s symbolism and she just stumbled along at the right time? I’d like to think she’s tied to it. She gives him a rug, as a present. It’s a lovely, red, earth-y color and lies on the ground, juxtaposed with the blue of the TARDIS, and it’s covered with crosses, which are a central symbol in American Indian cosmology, referencing the four elements and the four seasons, the cycles of life, the four directions, the unity of the sun and the earth, balance, and all the kind of good things you’d want out of a final season of Moffat Who.
She also has some sort of mandala tapestry hanging in her flat, with elephants circling the center. Centering, grounding, completeness.
The other little thing about Bill, which I nearly brushed off for feeling trite, is that she has little peace sign earrings she wears in The Pilot. An over-used symbol, perhaps, but a very good one.
Now, in the past few episodes, things have started to get a little interesting.
Knock, Knock: I’ve already written about how this episode folds Bill into the network of symbolism of the women in this show, and gives her a warning, in a classic gothic manner, of the dangers of over-protectiveness, which leads to stasis (a true evil, unlike death, which is a part of life).
Oxygen: The previous week’s warning is well-timed as the Doctor sacrifices his eyesight to save Bill and, more worryingly, also tries to protect her from the knowledge of what he’s sacrificed. This is also Bill’s first time dying and, like Amy’s journey through the underworld in Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone and Clara’s trials in Cold War, serves as her true initiation into the Doctor’s world. She is now far more inextricably bound to him than she was before this episode.
Extremis: What a beautiful episode. Head over to elisi’s meta for better composed thoughts than these, but two things I want to point out:
1) The execution scene by the lake is extensively mirrored to the Doctor’s execution in The Wedding of River Song, with both Twelve and Missy mirroring Eleven and River in different ways. There's the lake. A prison rising out of a lake. Someone being executed (note the misdirect at the beginning of the scene that makes it seem the Doctor is the one to die, again). Someone refusing to execute the other person. Someone who has to go in a box to protect the get out of death free clause. An assertion of relationship (marriage/friendship). Missy's saying that she needs to tell the Doctor that she is his friend, even if it doesn't save her echoes River's 'I can't let you die without knowing you are loved.'
And then both Missy and Twelve repeat the words we've just heard from River's diary. And later when computer!Twelve is remembering those words to give him strength to fight the Monks, he first remembers Missy saying them. All the women on this show mirror all the other women at different times. Missy first came on as a Clara mirror, but twisting her around to now mirror River is entirely appropriate. As The Moment in The Day of the Doctor notes, through the voice of Rose, ‘Caught between a girl and a box. Story of your life, Doctor.’ Missy, the madwoman in a box, is the repressed Id of all of Moffat’s women.
2) When Missy came on to the show, she co-opted the existing symbolism and made it evil. Water was now evil water. Flowers were evil flowers. Birds were evil [Cyber] birds. She took over the earth as a malevolent mother figure, with an army of undead babies hatching out of evil eggs. And Clara who, up to that point, has been a near infallible symbol of hope and renewal, who seemed to float over the show, sprinkling fairy dust and fixing the most fundamental of catastrophes, had now gone Victorious, ready to tear the universe apart to bring Danny back from the dead, her wishes fulfilled by Missy, her dark mirror, in the most horrific manner possible.
It was an entirely arresting moment. Like a switch had been thrown and this whole magic show with its sprawling network of fertility symbolism and its alchemy and its salvation through stories had been inverted in the course of one episode. The question, I immediately felt, was how do you fix this?
I’m still waiting for an answer. I feel like we’ve more drifted, stumbling, back into a grey in-between area and are hovering there, unresolved. The end of season nine, with an undead Clara racing off through the stars and an amnesiac Twelve carrying on without her managed to feel both celebratory and deeply, profoundly wrong. The solution, I’m starting to feel, will not be to throw the switch back but to find a way, again, to unite the opposites. The good symbolism of change and growth and renewal and the evil symbolism of stasis and stagnation and forgetfulness somehow resolved. So I’m going to work on the assumption that this season will be finding a way to do that. Extremis, though, does provide an interesting signpost for us:
I think it is safe to say that it is the most flora-encrusted episode we've ever had. A probably incomplete list of things with flowers and/or vines on them:
Missy's bow
Pretty much every fabric surface in Bill's flat, and all the art on the walls
Penny's earrings, necklace, and jacket
The lace on Bill's dress
The wall behind Nardole when he comes to the execution
The fabric on the inside of the lid of the box that the Doctor takes his eyesight restoring doohickey out of
The glass globes around the lights in the Hereticum
The fretwork around the lock of the Veritas cage
The cover of the Veritas
The table runner underneath it
The reading chair behind it, both in the woodwork and the upholstery
The translator's gun
The drapes in the Oval Office
And, perhaps most interestingly, the primary Monk's robes.
All of this in an episode about forbidden knowledge that contains death. Here we are, then, in the Garden of Eden.
The thing that really grabs me about all these flowers and plants--symbols of fruitfulness and rebirth--is that they show up in both the ‘good’ symbolism context and the ‘bad’ context. The good notably in Bill’s flat on her date with Penny. The bad with Missy, the Veritas, and the Monks. One symbol, both polarities, same episode.
*deep breath* Hang on, folks, almost done:
So. The Pyramid at the End of the World. Fantastically boring episode, fantastically interesting conclusion.
The only thing I want to talk about is Bill’s decision at the end, because whoo, boy.
Here’s the thing that I had to watch twice to fully sink in: the Doctor’s plan of blowing up the lab to sterilize the contagion . . . was working. Yes, he was going to die, but so do so many people in so many episodes and we move on. The lab could have blown up with the Doctor in it and everything would have been fine. Bill here is not making a foolhardy decision in the eleventh hour in the hopes that keeping the Doctor alive will allow him to save them all. The day was saved already.
Bill just couldn’t let the Doctor die, and because of that, she doomed the whole world. While standing in a pyramid.
Let us be clear: Bill has gone from zero to full River Song in seven episodes.
So much for avoiding the symbolism.
Next week in an alternative universe (Wedding of River Song) Bill will apparently shoot the Doctor in order to fix the world (Wedding of River Song). And she will meet Missy who, again, was elaborately mirrored with River in Extremis, is the repressed Id of all the women on this show, and from whom the whole network of evil symbolism flows. (If you’re new here and you've never read elisi’s masterpiece meta on TWoRS, now would probably be a good time to do that.)
TL;DR: Bill has a weird relationship to the symbolism on this show. Tune in next week: it’s gonna be a whopper.
Tags:
(no subject)
Date: 30 May 2017 09:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 May 2017 09:42 pm (UTC)SHOW! <3
(no subject)
Date: 30 May 2017 11:25 pm (UTC)http://doctorwhogeneration.tumblr.com/post/161236322847
(no subject)
Date: 1 Jun 2017 12:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30 May 2017 10:33 pm (UTC)Bill just couldn’t let the Doctor die, and because of that, she doomed the whole world. While standing in a pyramid.
Goes back to the question that the Caretaker asked. "If you could save the one who brought you into this world, wouldn't you?" It's not a literal question this time about mothers, it's about the person who opened her eyes, the person who brought her into this world of aliens and made her his representative
Similar to Clara, Bill is not going to lose another person she loves, not if she can help it.
(no subject)
Date: 30 May 2017 10:52 pm (UTC)MMm. Good point. I was also thinking, vaguely, as I wrote this, that pots are vessels. So what's this one holding? Water? Flowers? Soup? Tea?
"If you could save the one who brought you into this world, wouldn't you?" It's not a literal question this time about mothers, it's about the person who opened her eyes, the person who brought her into this world of aliens and made her his representative
Nice, yes.
Similar to Clara, Bill is not going to lose another person she loves, not if she can help it.
Worse, she's never really had anybody to begin with. The Doctor is, quite probably, the only person who's really cared in her life.
(no subject)
Date: 30 May 2017 10:55 pm (UTC)Stars?
Worse, she's never really had anybody to begin with. The Doctor is, quite probably, the only person who's really cared in her life.
Yes, another reason I can't fault her for doing what she did.
(no subject)
Date: 30 May 2017 11:06 pm (UTC)That's rather poetic.
Yes, another reason I can't fault her for doing what she did.
I'll fault it, but I'm such a sucker for this trope every time Moff does it (and it puts her in such good company) I don't care.
(no subject)
Date: 31 May 2017 07:37 pm (UTC)Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 01:25 am (UTC)But, I didn't see this mentioned above... but the main theme of the entire season appears to be agency or loss of agency, or loss of Will or giving up your "will" or choices. (Maybe it was and I missed it?)
Bill is a nickname for Williamena or Will. Which simply put means -- "agency".
It's the only theme that is expressed in every episode this season. I mean every single episode makes a huge point about consent/agency or will.
Also, Bill, herself, is a student, living at home, floating, with almost no agency. She's afraid of asserting her "will". She flirts with the doctor's classes, but not committing to it, the Doctor tells her that he'll mentor her. When she moves into the house -- it's not her choice of a house, it's theirs. And the Doctor tells her to call Penny, she doesn't do it on her own.
Each episode is about Bill making a "decision" or significant choice.
1. Pilot -- she chooses not to go with her friend, breaks the contact. The alien entity requires her consent.
2. Smile - she chooses to help the Doctor and not leave him to his own devices while she stays with the Tardis, as a result she discovers the little boy.
3. Thin Ice -- she chooses to save the Big Fish and insists the Doctor do it.
4. Knock Knock -- she chooses to trust the Doctor finally, not keep pushing him away. Also she chose to enter and move into the house, although she didn't choose that house. Also that episode is all about the loss of agency, every character in that episode gets trapped and has no will at some point.
5. Oxygen -- she is taken over by the Suit, it controls her movements, but she chooses to overcome it, breaks its will with the Doctor's help.
6. Extremis -- she is pushed along by the doctor and Nardol, but in the beginning she took Penny home with her, and she insists that Nardol not put her behind him. This too is about characters with no agency.
7. Pyramid at the End of the World -- she makes a major choice. Consents to give the Aliens dominion or let them take her "will" in return for saving the Doctor. In effect, she also takes the Doctor's agency, or choice.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 08:06 am (UTC)Given that Bill combines the themes of agency and family, her name being Will and Protection fits both parts very well.
Potts should perhaps be interpreted in the obvious British way - Potty. A bit mad.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 05:04 pm (UTC)I have to admit when I heard "Potts", I thought of the lead character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Who was a bit batty.
I think Bill is probably just a reference to "Will" in much the same way that Liam and William the Bloody were in Buffy and Angel. It's also a reference to "Protector", which is the latin or greek meaning, which is referenced in the original post.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 05:18 pm (UTC)Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 06:05 pm (UTC)I remember when I was analyzing and writing meta on Buffy...then go off to read interviews with the writers/etc, and discover, dang it, it was picked at random, they hadn't planned it at all. Doesn't really matter though...sometimes things are subconsciously done, so it has meaning whether the writer was conscious or not. ;-)
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 11:05 pm (UTC)I don't recall: have you ever watched Jekyll?
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 1 Jun 2017 02:18 am (UTC)I apparently like Moffat's writing quite a bit. (Not so much Mark Gatiss).
I know as a writer myself that I make references to thinks without often realizing what I'm doing. I think metaphorically, not literally, and write intuitively...so my references often aren't planned, but they are there all the same.
And I think this is true of many writers. Some like James Joyce, Elmore Leonard, TS Eliot, Jane Austen, Shelly plan what they are writing. Others like Dickens, Whedon, GRR Martin, Shakespeare, don't. always.
It also depends on the show...I guess.
Like I said, I tend to think metaphorically - so for me, certain things are obvious, which aren't to someone who is more literal minded,
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 1 Jun 2017 10:34 am (UTC)Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 1 Jun 2017 10:50 am (UTC)Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 1 Jun 2017 07:42 am (UTC)I actually suspect most Doctor Who themes will be unplanned and unconscious because they would probably be much clunkier and more even, but also more obvious, if they were planned and done deliberately. Overall I think it is fun to spot themes and patterns, but I personally wouldn't want to take it too seriously.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 2 Jun 2017 01:40 am (UTC)In a creative writing course in undergrad, our stories would be read aloud to the group, then they'd analyze it in front of us. About 80% of the time they'd read things into the story we never intended, misinterpret bits and pieces of it, etc. My brother, a conceptual artist, once told me that all art is interactive. That the viewer interacts with it, and adds their own perspective or baggage to it, which makes it interesting.
It's more interesting after people have interacted with it.
I know this is true of my stories...people often find things in them that I never intended.
Often I think viewers interaction with a work of art makes it more interesting. I know that was true with Buffy, and I think it is true here as well. But, it is important to keep it fun and not...get too invested. (I say that, knowing full well that I was ahem, an obsessed fan of Buffy, haven't been that way really with anything since. Doctor Who isn't serialized enough or consistent enough to grab me the same way Buffy did...or it just doesn't hit the same...chords. I think it's hard to explain why I fall in love with the art I do or why I get obsessed with it.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 2 Jun 2017 05:35 am (UTC)I think we both are in agreement here as to what we mean but haven't yet expressed it clearly. It is not that there is anything wrong with a deep analysis, that is fun and the deeper you go the more fun it becomes. It is just that one can stray into the error of thinking things are intentional when they were not and then the analysis can become almost a conspiracy theory, straying over into tin-hatted craziness. I saw that in Buffy fandom with people who seemed to seriously believe that things which occurred in season 7 had been planned for and foreshadowed in season 1. Something in S7 might carry on a theme that had been in existence and evolving since S1, but only a writer of absolute genius (and supreme confidence in their ability to get renewed) would have planned that far ahead.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 2 Jun 2017 12:47 pm (UTC)It is just that one can stray into the error of thinking things are intentional when they were not and then the analysis can become almost a conspiracy theory, straying over into tin-hatted craziness. I saw that in Buffy fandom with people who seemed to seriously believe that things which occurred in season 7 had been planned for and foreshadowed in season 1. Something in S7 might carry on a theme that had been in existence and evolving since S1, but only a writer of absolute genius (and supreme confidence in their ability to get renewed) would have planned that far ahead.
Exactly. While there is evidence in interviews and commentary that Whedon knew the ending of S5 from around S2 or 3. He didn't from S1. And he isn't that type of writer, he writes intuitively, he's not a planner/plotter like the guy who did Babylon 5. He makes it up as he goes, you can sort of tell. And most television writers do it that way, they have to. The medium doesn't lend itself well for planners, you can get cancelled halfway through your plot arc -- which is what happened to Farscape, Babylon 5 and now Sense8.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 3 Jun 2017 05:58 am (UTC)Absolutely. Even those who write the whole season in advance can't really plan beyond that season. I guess adapting from a series of books would be different, but even then you get the uncertainty of if the writer will bring out another book that contradicts you :D
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 3 Jun 2017 01:50 pm (UTC)Just look at Game of Thrones...which had to go way off book, because Martin had written himself into a corner and had stopped. The series was clearly getting ahead of his story.
A lot of fans don't appear to understand the television medium very well. They seem to think its similar to novels or comic books...which it's not. For one thing, you have less time. Most television scripts are written within three days, tops. Maybe less. The actors often don't get the scripts until two or three days before filming, sometimes, if they are lucky three weeks. Filming is fast -- one - two weeks maybe.
Rarely do they have a character bible or world bible. Although it works better if you do.
It's like watching a rough draft of a work in progress.
Also, not all television series are created equal. Doctor Who has a low budget, a short shooting schedule, and not many episodes. While say, something like Downton Abbey or The Crown has a higher budget, a longer shooting schedule, and a lot more episodes. Same with Broadchurch. The writers have a bit more time to plot it out, maybe, and more budget to work with.
Or, in some cases, a show say like Fargo, Game of Thrones, Outlander or Breaking Bad, has a big budget, less episodes, and lots more time to film than a show like Buffy or Angel, which has less budget, and less time and a lot more episodes.
It's why I think it is unfair to compare them. They aren't on a level playing field.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 3 Jun 2017 04:45 pm (UTC)Ha ha, yes!
Most British shows will have a long lead-in time so the writers have plenty of time, possibly years, to write the first season completely in advance of shooting. Subsequent seasons may be more rushed, although things like Sherlock get more spaced out. And yet overall I would say the quality of our writers is far lower than yours. Partly because shows tend to have only one writer, not the brain-storming writers' room style (Doctor Who is a rare exception since it has multiple writers).
You make a good point. And we really only get the best stuff transferring over here so I don't get to see the full range anyway.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 4 Jun 2017 01:16 am (UTC)Same here. We only get the better shows or high rated ones from elsewhere. "Death in Paradis" didn't come across to the US.
So many don't.
The internet has changed it a little but not much. I only saw Misfits because an online friend in Austria downloaded it to DVD and sent it to me. Which was extremely kind.
Most British shows will have a long lead-in time so the writers have plenty of time, possibly years, to write the first season completely in advance of shooting.
We have a bit of one...usually the summer is the lead-in time for fall shows. So they do have some time. But not a lot.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 4 Jun 2017 04:38 pm (UTC)Misfits, Being Human and In the Flesh were all aimed at the same niche audience, but only Being Human ever really took off. I actually rate In the Flesh as the best, so if you ever get a chance you might consider trying it.
Ah, is this why the third season always tends to be the worst? Because by S3 they have exhausted all the ideas that they had when time pressure wasn't an issue.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 4 Jun 2017 09:37 pm (UTC)Eh, not really. Depends on the series. In Buffy and Angel, I thought the first season was the worst. With Breaking Bad ? The second season. The Wire? The second season, of course it was HBO. In the case of Buffy, Breaking Bad and the Wire, the third was the best.
So may depend on the series? (shrugs) Or the viewer's perspective.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 5 Jun 2017 04:57 am (UTC)Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 11:06 pm (UTC)Well, so often what merely sounds right ends up being right on far more levels than we initially anticipated.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 1 Jun 2017 05:39 pm (UTC)Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 10:54 pm (UTC)Oh, that's amusing. Would never have occurred to me.
Re: Bill = Will = Agency
Date: 31 May 2017 10:52 pm (UTC)Oh very nice, yes, I like it.
But, I didn't see this mentioned above... but the main theme of the entire season appears to be agency or loss of agency, or loss of Will or giving up your "will" or choices. (Maybe it was and I missed it?)
No, it's not something I've talked about--there's just far too much going on to cover everything, though I agree with you that it's a major through-line this season. I do disagree with your reading of a number of those episodes, however, in that I don't think we've really seen Bill display much in the way of agency so far. I've noted elsewhere that Bill had not had that big 'companion saves the day or the Doctor' moment that most NuWho companions do in one of their early episodes and wondered if it was being saved up for something special (little did I realize). She has mostly been quite passive, along for the ride--which someone, I'm forgetting who right now, pointed out that framing her a student explicitly sets her in a more passive role, someone who is there to observe and learn rather than intervene as the hero. She's often ready to leave or accept a brush-off (and, indeed, her life has taught her to expect little from others). In Thin Ice it's the Doctor who tells he her wants her to make the decision about the Big Fish and he has to do some prodding to make her. In Oxygen she never really overcomes her malfunctioning suit--it encumbers and traps her the whole time, and all she does is survive it. It's not that this episode is the first time we've ever seen her assert herself, but it is the first time it's really mattered. While in the meantime, you're right, the weekly plots are showing over and over the dangers of having one's agency removed.
The parallel of Bill with River here does fit the agency theme, though, as much of the point of TWoRS was River refusing to be used anymore as a pawn. Not that River and Bill have similar backgrounds particularly, but both have been neglected and have suffered from a lack of agency and both have finally claimed it in similar ways.
(no subject)
Date: 31 May 2017 05:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 31 May 2017 09:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 31 May 2017 05:25 pm (UTC)This thought makes me want to somehow draw River into the story of Knock Knock, where so many of these elements feature. But I can't see how she would fit. Indeed the parent/child/grandchild narrative and the friendship sub-theme almost explicitly excludes marital partners.
(no subject)
Date: 31 May 2017 11:12 pm (UTC)It's also basically the only place in her timeline that the Doctor can be faulted in this with respect to River, given how instinctually she refuses his help or protection much of the time.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Jun 2017 02:00 pm (UTC)-I love your eloquent, succinct analysis of the symbolism Amy, Clara, River and Missy brought with them! It's v pleasing to see it all laid out like that.
-the show has spun off-center the farther we’ve gotten from that essential balance, culminating in Twelve and Clara’s mirrored spiral: unmoored, unearthed, undead.
This is a beautiful piece of analysis. I'd forgotten about all of the earth/alchemy/world tree symbolism of S5 and 6...well, not forgotten, but as you say it's faded. This is a lovely way of putting it.
-The Doctor does not, when he can possibly avoid it, tangle with earth in this way. It is not naturally his element. It represents, generally, everything he runs from.
Again, this is something I've thought about before but never put so coherently into words. Thank you!
-This is also Bill’s first time dying
I love our show, that we can just say something like that so casually :-P
(no subject)
Date: 6 Jun 2017 12:55 pm (UTC)I've noticed the circles-in-squares reappearing on Missy's Vault. Fascinating.
I wonder if Bill's ordinariness fits with the earth thing in the sense of... down-to-earth, grounded, earthy, all those positive idioms of ordinariness = earth. And how she's connecting the Doctor to Earth which would in theory help make him stay to mentor her, but she wants to travel. Earth and heavens.
(Haven't seen the new one yet, will watch it now!)