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trickykittyToday's ShirtWoot! reminds me of The Doctor diving into the waters and seeing thousands of skulls. There's the brick work in the background reminding me of the castle. And of course there's the blue....so much blue.
Did I mention having Doctor Who withdrawals?
Damn, now I want the artist to make this into a Doctor Who floating with skulls shirt. It would be perfect for this time of year. Only, I would request the shirt itself not being blue. It would be great as a charcoal gray with black ink.
After watching that episode so many times (I lost count after about 20), and after reading comments about the episode, I had a couple thoughts that I'm sure others out there have had and expressed as well, but I felt the need to get these out of my head since they've been playing on repeat in my brain meats ever since.
There's comments that since there's a set of clothes by the fire, then the original Doctor arriving in this place must have taken his clothes off and run around naked after diving into the deep. While this thought absolutely amuses me to no end, especially considering that Doctor has run around naked before, much to the pleasure of Clara's Gran, it's highly unlikely.
Another comment mentioned that as skull after skull fell into the waters, the waters would rise. Also unlikely.
Every room resets, except one - Room 12. There's no reason to think that the waters are not somehow their own type of room. The painting of Clara doesn't age. It was designed to be old in the first place and to remain that same level of old, the point being to make the Doctor think about time and age, to plant that seed.
The Doctor was right, obviously, that the castle was his own bespoke torture chamber, but it wasn't the mummified corpse that was meant to be his torturer. The mummified corpse was just another prop, like all the other props. The goal of the torture chamber was specifically to create this time loop. After all, it was created by the Time Lords, and who better understand the workings and traps of time loops than them. Time was the Doctor's torturer. That moment when he remembers, when he knows, exactly how long he'd been in that torture chamber. Rassilon was betting on the Doctor eventually giving up and telling his secret. Maybe he figured it would be after a couple years of that monotonous skip in the record. As such, an original skull in the teleport room, an original set of clothes by the fire, and an original slew of skulls in the water were placed there from the beginning. There's no reason to suspect that the very first instance of the Doctor wasn't given all of the exact same amenities as each successor would be given. About the only thing that would have been different is that for the first few years, or perhaps even first few hundred years, the Doctor wouldn't have been quite so surprised when looking up at the stars.
What strikes me as the most interesting part about Heaven Sent isn't that such a loop was created, but that some Time Lord out there, or even a group of some Time Lords, was smart enough to concoct this world in the first place. In order to do that, they had to make determinable calculations on how the Doctor would act and behave and what he might possibly do next in order to lay out this time maze, which, as luck would have it, is exactly what the writers of this episode had to do. There's a big level of meta-knowledge that gives me goose pimples thinking about it.
Even as someone who has watched this episode so, so many times, knowing what is to come, it's the building up to that moment when the 2nd (to us viewers) Doctor appears and gives his speech about never, ever stopping that really sends shivers down my back. For some reason, no matter how many times I watch it, that shiver doesn't come when the 1st (again, to us) Doctor says it in the very beginning of the episode. I think it's because when the 2nd Doctor says it, the video cuts back to the skull of the 1st Doctor and the word BIRD, and I, at least, still have my sympathies with that 1st Doctor rather than the 2nd. My emotions in that moment are tied in with the sacrifice of the previous incarnation. In the beginning of the episode, my emotions are tied in with the incoming incarnation who is "new" to this maze, and lost, and highly saddened over the loss of Clara. His declarative missive in the beginning of the episode doesn't quite have the oomph that it has when his successor says it. The music of those two moments adds so much to those two different plays in emotion as well.
Speaking of music, many times I will watch the tail end of Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent back-to-back. I love that during Clara's speech in Face the Raven when she mentions "where ever it is she [Me] is sending you" the music that plays briefly is the music of Heaven Sent. Likewise, when Me and the Doctor are discussing how he and Clara met in Hell Bent, when Missy's name is mentioned the soundtrack plays a melodic "Ha-Ha", denoting, "Ha, ha - Missy pulled yet another one on you."
That Heaven Sent soundtrack is so freaking amazing.
Did I mention having Doctor Who withdrawals?
Damn, now I want the artist to make this into a Doctor Who floating with skulls shirt. It would be perfect for this time of year. Only, I would request the shirt itself not being blue. It would be great as a charcoal gray with black ink.
After watching that episode so many times (I lost count after about 20), and after reading comments about the episode, I had a couple thoughts that I'm sure others out there have had and expressed as well, but I felt the need to get these out of my head since they've been playing on repeat in my brain meats ever since.
There's comments that since there's a set of clothes by the fire, then the original Doctor arriving in this place must have taken his clothes off and run around naked after diving into the deep. While this thought absolutely amuses me to no end, especially considering that Doctor has run around naked before, much to the pleasure of Clara's Gran, it's highly unlikely.
Another comment mentioned that as skull after skull fell into the waters, the waters would rise. Also unlikely.
Every room resets, except one - Room 12. There's no reason to think that the waters are not somehow their own type of room. The painting of Clara doesn't age. It was designed to be old in the first place and to remain that same level of old, the point being to make the Doctor think about time and age, to plant that seed.
The Doctor was right, obviously, that the castle was his own bespoke torture chamber, but it wasn't the mummified corpse that was meant to be his torturer. The mummified corpse was just another prop, like all the other props. The goal of the torture chamber was specifically to create this time loop. After all, it was created by the Time Lords, and who better understand the workings and traps of time loops than them. Time was the Doctor's torturer. That moment when he remembers, when he knows, exactly how long he'd been in that torture chamber. Rassilon was betting on the Doctor eventually giving up and telling his secret. Maybe he figured it would be after a couple years of that monotonous skip in the record. As such, an original skull in the teleport room, an original set of clothes by the fire, and an original slew of skulls in the water were placed there from the beginning. There's no reason to suspect that the very first instance of the Doctor wasn't given all of the exact same amenities as each successor would be given. About the only thing that would have been different is that for the first few years, or perhaps even first few hundred years, the Doctor wouldn't have been quite so surprised when looking up at the stars.
What strikes me as the most interesting part about Heaven Sent isn't that such a loop was created, but that some Time Lord out there, or even a group of some Time Lords, was smart enough to concoct this world in the first place. In order to do that, they had to make determinable calculations on how the Doctor would act and behave and what he might possibly do next in order to lay out this time maze, which, as luck would have it, is exactly what the writers of this episode had to do. There's a big level of meta-knowledge that gives me goose pimples thinking about it.
Even as someone who has watched this episode so, so many times, knowing what is to come, it's the building up to that moment when the 2nd (to us viewers) Doctor appears and gives his speech about never, ever stopping that really sends shivers down my back. For some reason, no matter how many times I watch it, that shiver doesn't come when the 1st (again, to us) Doctor says it in the very beginning of the episode. I think it's because when the 2nd Doctor says it, the video cuts back to the skull of the 1st Doctor and the word BIRD, and I, at least, still have my sympathies with that 1st Doctor rather than the 2nd. My emotions in that moment are tied in with the sacrifice of the previous incarnation. In the beginning of the episode, my emotions are tied in with the incoming incarnation who is "new" to this maze, and lost, and highly saddened over the loss of Clara. His declarative missive in the beginning of the episode doesn't quite have the oomph that it has when his successor says it. The music of those two moments adds so much to those two different plays in emotion as well.
Speaking of music, many times I will watch the tail end of Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent back-to-back. I love that during Clara's speech in Face the Raven when she mentions "where ever it is she [Me] is sending you" the music that plays briefly is the music of Heaven Sent. Likewise, when Me and the Doctor are discussing how he and Clara met in Hell Bent, when Missy's name is mentioned the soundtrack plays a melodic "Ha-Ha", denoting, "Ha, ha - Missy pulled yet another one on you."
That Heaven Sent soundtrack is so freaking amazing.
