Face the Raven

[daibhidc]

Was not expecting that.

It was great to see Riggsy again, and get a bit more background on him. The Doctor's outrage that Clara is handing out his phone number was fun. And I liked the countdown tattoo - a very creepy idea - and Clara's explanation of trap streets.

When the Doctor and Riggsy discussed Clara's adreneline junkie tendencies, I thought "Oh, that again. Is it actually going anywhere?" I think it's fair to say it turned out it was.

The street was nicely done, although it's old-fashioned appearance was maybe a bit too Diagon Alley. The psychic normalisation field was a good way of explaining how the street works without giving everyone a perception filter, and at the same time let them have Cybermen, Judoon, Sontarans, Ood and creatures we've never seen before, without actually spending the costume budget for the entire series. And I liked the quick continuity nod of Mayor Me comparing it to the Zygon situation.

Ah yes, Mayor Me. As I said in my post on "The Woman Who Lived", part of the point of the Me saga seems to be that she's actually a different person each time, much more so than the incarnations of the Doctor. The face is the same, but she doesn't remember who she was because it was so long ago. Which, as I also said, is interesting, but a bit of a shame given that I really liked Ashildr. By now, she seems to have given up on spacetime travel (despite a feint to the idea that she might be trying to steal the TARDIS), and settled for a ruthlessly pragmatic defence of her turf.

Me's actual plan, once we get it, is interesting, especially the reveal that it's all a the behest of someone else, who we still don't know (althought it's someone who knows about the Confession Dial, so probably Missy). And then it turns out that, while she could have removed the countdown from Riggsy, she can't remove it from Clara. I was really expecting this to be solved by the Doctor doing something clever (it's an arbitary-rules geas, there must be a loophole in the wording somewhere) right up until the point it wasn't. Indeed, from the moment it turned out the supposed murder victim was alive, I was already compiling the Everybody Lives! entry for TVTropes.

So, yeah. RIP Clara. Not, I'm afraid, ever one of my favourite companions, but never one of my least favourite either. She was more sort of "I can see why she works, and mostly she does, but basically she's just kind of there." I never found her as annoying as my sister (who will be delighted to learn she can watch Doctor Who again), but I could see her reasoning as well. In the end, all I can say is it was a very good death, and played to the character's strengths, and I'm a bit sadder about it than I expected, really. (Although I can't shake the feeling that, somehow, she's going to be in the Christmas special.)

And the final scene of Riggsy turning the TARDIS into a memorial was beautiful.

Comments

[pedanther]

Me as the inverse of the Doctor: the face stays the same, but it's never the same person behind it? I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I think there's something in that.

I was pretty sure Clara was doomed by the time she'd finished explaining to Riggsy why it was a totally reasonable risk to take. Knowing she's on her way out this season helped, but it was the explanation that clinched it; that's the kind of confidence that exists to be proved wrong. (It wouldn't have been an Everyone Lives! episode anyway, by the way, because there was still the other bloke who died to show the audience how the raven works.)

When it came to it, I was rather distracted during the emotional farewell by the fact that it was taking place right beside the stasis capsule. I don't actually expect that sticking her in stasis to halt the countdown would have changed the end result, and really I'd have accepted it if Clara had shot down the suggestion because she wanted to get it over with, but it bothered me that nobody seemed to have even considered it.

The other obvious candidate who knows about the confession dial is Davros/the Daleks, but that doesn't seem right, somehow. The idea my mind keeps circling back to is that it's Gallifrey.

[vatine]

Up until the end, I was expecting the "not running away" to make a difference. I guess we'll see if it did, next week.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting. The only difficulty is that it's hard to believe it never came up before, especially when the street was getting started and people were testing Mayor Me's authority: she says it has to be a threat that worked on Cybermen, and it's hard to imagine one of them running away. And once people know that's how it works, well, people know that's how it works, and nobody runs.