Is everybody a barking madman around here?
Is everybody a barking madman around here?
This episode was *bloody brilliant.* Danny Pink and his subplot got shoved firmly to the back (his whole plot got what, maybe 90 seconds of screen time, and he himself got maybe 20?), Clara was forced into the position of being The Doctor, and she did so in such spectacular fashion that you'd think she actually put on Matt Smith's Bowtie. She DID use his sonic and psychic paper, for crying out loud, and we all know that entire companionships go by without the Doctor giving up his sonic for so much as five minutes, let alone a whole bloody episode.
And she was good at it. As for the Doctor, well....
I'm starting to think that he has more in common with Danny than he'd allow you to speculate without clobbering you. He's clearly burnt out, millennia of fighting with great evils and seeing people he couldn't save get killed have taken their toll on him. His lines were telling: "You were a spectacular Doctor, Clara. Goodness has nothing to do with it." Remember earlier? "Clara... Am I a good man?"
A fellow who believes he's not a good man, who's lost the faith in the righteousness and the rightness of what he does is a goner. That's a wound that you can't regenerate from, that's one that'll stick with you no matter how many times your body regenerates. And the Doctor is clearly an old boy, showing his age, his weariness with it all...
Wild and Irresponsible Speculation: I think that they may be planning to kill off The Doctor for real, only to have Clara Oswald, the Impossible Girl, take up the mantle entirely. Possibly even Regenerate her and reveal she's been a Time Lord all along, or else Capaldi-Doctor gives her any remaining regeneration juice he has to kickstart the process. Then he expires, or worse, physically survives, but is completely mentally exhausted. Upset and traumatized, but realizing that something has to be done, Clara Oswald rises from the metaphorical ashes (or knowing the sometimes hamhanded imagery this lot uses, literal,) and says "I am the Doctor." Hopefully to Danny Pink.
Or, better yet, something like....
"I'm the Doctor. I'm a Time Lord, the Inheritor of the Oncoming Storm, adopted daughter of Gallifrey, I'm 25 years old from the planet Earth, and I need to figure out how to fly a TARDIS before we crash!"
Hell, if they can do it to Thor, son of Odin...