Point of Order

[promethia_tenk]

Just to remind myself, because it bears reminding, and because I do manage to forget it: Moffat doesn't write good and evil.  Sure, he plays with the vocabulary sometimes (generally to deconstruct and undermine it), but that's never what it's about.  The real struggle, the real dynamic, the real juxtaposition on which everything hinges is CHAOS and ORDER.  Those are the forces we're dealing with.

Comments

[elisi]

Oooooh.

And actually, this of course fits with the whole Trickster thing - I'm thinking of the fact that he always turns up 'where there's trouble' (oh hai there Gandalf parallels!), or he brings chaos himself (like in Night Terrors) and what he does is ride the chaos (because he's chaos himself) and then reorganises it into a new order. Does that make sense?

[promethia_tenk]

Yes, exactly that! And that's how Comedy works and how the green world works (and the whole "go with the flow" idea): there's a problem (disorder) but trying to *force* a solution to it (pushing towards what seems to be greater order) doesn't work because really the problems are deeper than they look. So the solution is actually to cause *more* chaos so as to get down to the root of things and see how they really work and find the more fundamental and stable order.

But when the Doctor gets too ARRRGH I AM THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY ALL MUST BEND TO MY WILL he really can't do that properly and ends up causing all sorts of trouble even though he consistently *means* well. So the Doctor doesn't need a dark mirror, he needs a chaotic mirror to show him how domineering he's become, and the rest of the story will be about returning River (and the Pond family) to greater order and the Doctor to greater chaos/more natural control (Time Lord Victorious ----> rambling space wanderer).