promethia_tenk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
promethia_tenk) wrote2012-09-17 08:06 pm
promethia_tenk) wrote2012-09-17 08:06 pm
Entry tags:
Arks, eggs, and fire (it's an ARK ARC!)
My descent into fandom bum-hood continues with, perhaps, the worst-explained post of all time. If you follow this, you get all the gold stars, but frankly, I won't blame you if you don't want to wade through my brain-dump. Input welcomed and desired, though.
My basic point, I suppose, is that there's this recurring imagery of a life-vessel (an egg, an ark, a ship) coupled with explosions that suggests creation (or preservation) and destruction all in one. Also, through the magical transitive powers of symbolism, all of these things that I'm about to point out can be read as one and the same. Through this conflation we see multiple generations emerging from the same source in a symbolic re-looping.
You should also know that I am totally operating on the assumption that Oswin (or whoever she is) is a descendant of the Doctor's. I'm hoping his granddaughter for maximum 50th anniversary full-circle, back-to-basics appropriateness (granddaughter idea copyright elisi).
Commence free-association.
Ok, so there's this thing about eggs and fire:
In which things which are eggs (or arks) get blown up or almost blown up and are sources for creation (or preservation) and destruction all in one.
Like here's an egg (from the last Christmas special):
It's also an ark for the souls of the forrest, which was being burned. It also happens to be a ship that can travel through the time vortex (remember that). And look at that interior:
Remind you of something?:
That's where Oswin was being kept.
Another egg:
Which is kind of an ark too, isn't it? The comparison to Moses set adrift on the Nile as certainly been made before, and Melody was the one prophecied to bring down the "pharaoh" if you will. And then by the principle of "all the cradles are one cradle" we have:
Where the idea of multiple generations coming out of the same source becomes explicit with the question of "whose cot is that?" And because it is blue and has gallifreyan on it, the cot is also:
Hey, what do you know? It's an ark/egg/ship that can travel through the time vortex (the recipe for a Time Lord, saved in a ship). Lest we forget, though, the TARDIS went boom for reasons we still don't understand:
Which means this entire complex of symbolism is still very much in play. Perhaps the central metaphorical focal point of the whole Moff run. It's a ship, it's an egg, it's an explosion. It's the universe being unmade and made all in one. It's River being made and unmade all in one (the big bang, on the date of her conception) and also preserved (the TARDIS, keeping her safe--ark). All sexual connotations fully implied.
What am I to make of this, then?:
The Dalek asylum being blown up--it's like the dark mirror of that event.
Again we have an ark of sorts (for the preservation of the Daleks who were too "beautiful" to live), and the snow-covered planet with its force field membrane fully looks like an egg. And there's destruction, certainly. But where's the creation? Answers to come, I suspect, but Oswin certainly bears the markings of being a source of renewal (see lonewytch's post here). And then there's this scene:
Help me.
"Help me" are magic words in Moff Who. Like "everybody lives." Really, really love that scene. The Doctor backed into a corner by all the demons he's created, desperate to get through a door he can't open himself, and he's going to rescue Oswin who has, herself, been trapped by the same manace. But before she can let him through the door she has to break that link between the Daleks and the Doctor, their memories of him and their mutually-defining relationship. And as soon as she does that she immediately finds the code for the door . . . it's almost like the whole storyline with River and the Silence last season and how that allowed the Doctor to break out of so many self-destructive patterns, but played out again with more specificity re: the Daleks (and therefore the Time War?), or like nested iterations of the same mechanism down through another layer . . .
And hasn't the Doctor, for all of New Who, basically been defined by his hatred for the Daleks? Because he's been defined by the Time War and what he had to do and the repercussions of that. And the first thing that JLC's character does is to symbolically break him from that. Which makes the question, then, who is she that she gets to do that?
Arks, eggs, explosions:
Which brings us to this week and this intriguing tableau:
The Doctor and Jex are explicitly mirrored in this episode, so we are free to conflate Jex's ship with the Doctor's. He's been taken there by "Susan" (the name of the Doctor's granddaughter--the first companion), whose other name is "Joshua" which we are told explicitly in the show means "deliverer."
The egg ship has some good suggestion of iterative generations too. Jex came out of it, since it is his ship. Symbolically it can be seen as a source for the Gunslinger too, since that is where the Doctor discovers the knowledge of how he was created. The Doctor climbs into the egg himself, thus reinforcing the mirroring of himself and Jex. I wonder if there aren't some nice echoes of the scene at the end of A Good Man Goes to War in there. The gunslinger can also be seen as a metaphor for River (the living weapon created, albeit indirectly, by the Doctor). The Doctor learns of Jex's crimes here, as he learned of his own crimes in the earlier episode, in/beside this symbol of fertility and regeneration.
But, oh . . .
I guess my question for all of you playing along at home is, if the exploding TARDIS is a perfectly balanced symbol of creation and destruction, what am I to make of the apparent tilt towards destruction this season? The Asylum being blown up? The loss of Oswin? The exploding egg ship? The souffles?!?!!?
And that's all I got. Apologies for the mess.
My basic point, I suppose, is that there's this recurring imagery of a life-vessel (an egg, an ark, a ship) coupled with explosions that suggests creation (or preservation) and destruction all in one. Also, through the magical transitive powers of symbolism, all of these things that I'm about to point out can be read as one and the same. Through this conflation we see multiple generations emerging from the same source in a symbolic re-looping.
You should also know that I am totally operating on the assumption that Oswin (or whoever she is) is a descendant of the Doctor's. I'm hoping his granddaughter for maximum 50th anniversary full-circle, back-to-basics appropriateness (granddaughter idea copyright elisi).
Commence free-association.
Ok, so there's this thing about eggs and fire:
In which things which are eggs (or arks) get blown up or almost blown up and are sources for creation (or preservation) and destruction all in one.
Like here's an egg (from the last Christmas special):
It's also an ark for the souls of the forrest, which was being burned. It also happens to be a ship that can travel through the time vortex (remember that). And look at that interior:
Remind you of something?:
That's where Oswin was being kept.
Another egg:
Which is kind of an ark too, isn't it? The comparison to Moses set adrift on the Nile as certainly been made before, and Melody was the one prophecied to bring down the "pharaoh" if you will. And then by the principle of "all the cradles are one cradle" we have:
Where the idea of multiple generations coming out of the same source becomes explicit with the question of "whose cot is that?" And because it is blue and has gallifreyan on it, the cot is also:
Hey, what do you know? It's an ark/egg/ship that can travel through the time vortex (the recipe for a Time Lord, saved in a ship). Lest we forget, though, the TARDIS went boom for reasons we still don't understand:
Which means this entire complex of symbolism is still very much in play. Perhaps the central metaphorical focal point of the whole Moff run. It's a ship, it's an egg, it's an explosion. It's the universe being unmade and made all in one. It's River being made and unmade all in one (the big bang, on the date of her conception) and also preserved (the TARDIS, keeping her safe--ark). All sexual connotations fully implied.
What am I to make of this, then?:
The Dalek asylum being blown up--it's like the dark mirror of that event.
Again we have an ark of sorts (for the preservation of the Daleks who were too "beautiful" to live), and the snow-covered planet with its force field membrane fully looks like an egg. And there's destruction, certainly. But where's the creation? Answers to come, I suspect, but Oswin certainly bears the markings of being a source of renewal (see lonewytch's post here). And then there's this scene:
Help me.
"Help me" are magic words in Moff Who. Like "everybody lives." Really, really love that scene. The Doctor backed into a corner by all the demons he's created, desperate to get through a door he can't open himself, and he's going to rescue Oswin who has, herself, been trapped by the same manace. But before she can let him through the door she has to break that link between the Daleks and the Doctor, their memories of him and their mutually-defining relationship. And as soon as she does that she immediately finds the code for the door . . . it's almost like the whole storyline with River and the Silence last season and how that allowed the Doctor to break out of so many self-destructive patterns, but played out again with more specificity re: the Daleks (and therefore the Time War?), or like nested iterations of the same mechanism down through another layer . . .
And hasn't the Doctor, for all of New Who, basically been defined by his hatred for the Daleks? Because he's been defined by the Time War and what he had to do and the repercussions of that. And the first thing that JLC's character does is to symbolically break him from that. Which makes the question, then, who is she that she gets to do that?
Arks, eggs, explosions:
Which brings us to this week and this intriguing tableau:
The Doctor and Jex are explicitly mirrored in this episode, so we are free to conflate Jex's ship with the Doctor's. He's been taken there by "Susan" (the name of the Doctor's granddaughter--the first companion), whose other name is "Joshua" which we are told explicitly in the show means "deliverer."
The egg ship has some good suggestion of iterative generations too. Jex came out of it, since it is his ship. Symbolically it can be seen as a source for the Gunslinger too, since that is where the Doctor discovers the knowledge of how he was created. The Doctor climbs into the egg himself, thus reinforcing the mirroring of himself and Jex. I wonder if there aren't some nice echoes of the scene at the end of A Good Man Goes to War in there. The gunslinger can also be seen as a metaphor for River (the living weapon created, albeit indirectly, by the Doctor). The Doctor learns of Jex's crimes here, as he learned of his own crimes in the earlier episode, in/beside this symbol of fertility and regeneration.
But, oh . . .
I guess my question for all of you playing along at home is, if the exploding TARDIS is a perfectly balanced symbol of creation and destruction, what am I to make of the apparent tilt towards destruction this season? The Asylum being blown up? The loss of Oswin? The exploding egg ship? The souffles?!?!!?
And that's all I got. Apologies for the mess.
no subject
"Everything has its time and everything dies." Or to put it another way: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up..."
We've had the time of creation: the Eleventh Doctor's identity was created by Amelia in Series 5, the Ponds' marriage was created, the new universe was created and the Doctor was REcreated from Amelia's memories; River Song as we know her was created in Series 6 and Team TARDIS started the revolution to overthrow the Silence; the Doctor's old reputation was killed off and he created a new one - i.e. the madman with a box, not the Oncoming Storm, which was cemented in the first episode of Series 7 with the Daleks' memory being wiped.
Now we are over the crest of the hill and going down the other side, down into the dark, into death and destruction (no, I don't think it's a coincidence that Moffat wanted this series to start in autumn as the days grow shorter, the nights grow colder and the dark grows stronger). We know that we are seeing the last of the Ponds: their story is ending (it's even possible that the Doctor is moving backwards through their timeline in order to avoid saying goodbye). The end of the Ponds brings all of the things that the Doctor hates: saying goodbye, leaving people behind, being alone again. Let's not forget that the Ponds can't have any more biological children and Amy can't settle down because she's always listening out for the TARDIS sound. As long as she's listening, as long as she's still WAITING, there will be no more creating.
no subject
I love the idea that the story reflects the cycle of life/nature, and that this is reflected in the last couple of series I'm also reminded of the concept of the triple goddess that embodies this trio of birth/life/death or growth/fruiting/decay. The situation with the Pond's now is one of - effectively - stasis "I can't not wait for you, even now." Stasis is not normal or healthy, in the cycle of life everything has to change, like you say no one can move on to the germination/growth stage again until they stop holding on. My worry is that this will be forced on both the Ponds and 11, and not be of their free will. That they cannot choose to leave, and he cannot let them go, so it's down to the Universe to set the cycle going again by somehow tearing them apart. I don't like that idea. I hope they leave of their own volition.
no subject
no subject