Doctor Who 9x06 The Woman Who Lived

[kerravonsen]

Well, I've now seen part 2. I'm... not really sure what I think.

At least the episode wasn't entirely predictable.

For someone who seems so cold and cynical and dangerous, she was rather easily taken in by the lion-dude. Then again, people tend to believe what they wish to hear.

I did like the way she repented, though; visibly upset, "they need you - they need us".

"Are we enemies, then?"
I didn't catch what she said in reply. What did she say? Something like "enemies are too simple, it's friends you have to watch"?

So... I'm not sure what to make of Ashildir at the end. Sort of sinister, sort of not.

Interesting, the Doctor's reasons for not taking her. I mean, at first, I felt he was refusing simply because she was too insistent, and that made him suspicious. But this Doctor is aware of... the kind of mistakes he made as Ten - to be judge, jury and executioner - and the kind of mistakes he made as Eleven - to withdraw from everybody. He knows that he has these weaknesses... and he wants to remain "the idiot with the box".
It's interesting that he mentions Jack Harkness, and not Romana. Then again, Ashildir is doubtless going to run into Jack Harkness at some point, while she isn't going to run into Romana (plus, is Old Who continuity, better avoided).

Comments

[kalypso]

According to the transcript at chakoteya.net:

ASHILDR: Someone has to look out for the people you abandon. Who better than me? I'll be the patron saint of the Doctor's leftovers. While you're busy protecting this world, I'll get busy protecting it from you.
DOCTOR: So are we enemies now?
ASHILDR: Of course not. Enemies are never a problem. It's your friends you have to watch out for. And, my friend, I'll be watching out for you.

I think things could still go either way... delusions about saving the world can lead into Tennish errors. But she may have found a satisfactory compromise whereby she can save a village without growing too attached to any particular villager she will have to leave behind.

[kerravonsen]

Thanks for the quote!

But she may have found a satisfactory compromise whereby she can save a village without growing too attached to any particular villager she will have to leave behind.

But her problem seems to be the tendency to become too detatched.

[kalypso]

My interpretation was that she needed a balance between attachment and detachment. She had given up on attachment to individuals, because it was too painful losing them*; what she needed was a substitute for her old village, a community that could renew itself and thus survive many lifetimes. I imagine that seeing the people who had gathered at Tyburn under attack from the Leonians jolted her back into her old instincts, because despite all she said about forgetting her past she would still remember her own village under attack from the Mire. The other clue is that the Doctor had seen her founding a leper colony, and obviously thought she was doing well then, so I think she was happiest when dealing with a community, rather than an individual who was bound to die; she lost her way when she retreated into Me, living almost alone in a huge house. In the end, I think she took on responsibility for a global village, or more specifically the global community of people-left-behind-by-the-Doctor.

* Of course the mystery is why she didn't use the second immortality widget to save one of her children; my guess was that, if she had three very young children (perhaps even triplets), as the cradles suggested, she couldn't decide which one to choose, because it would feel as if she was betraying the other two.

[kerravonsen]

what she needed was a substitute for her old village, a community that could renew itself and thus survive many lifetimes.

Ah.
And the commonality of "the Doctor" in "people left behind by the Doctor" makes them a community of sorts. That makes sense.

Of course the mystery is why she didn't use the second immortality widget to save one of her children

It never occurred to me to wonder about that. I think it's because I assumed that it would freeze someone at the age that they were given it -- and condemning a baby to be a baby forever, that would be awful.
But your explanation makes sense too.

What I'm curious about, and I'm sure that we will never know, is what was it that was worse than losing her children, that she ripped out of her diary?

And I am rather puzzled at the "I can't remember my past" thing, because Jack never seemed to have a problem with that. So I suspect that it's more "I don't want to remember my past".

[kalypso]

Oh, that's interesting - I hadn't thought of the immortal baby remaining a baby for ever. My guess is no, simply because Ashildr is able to have children. There's a passage in Salman Rushdie's first novel, Grimus, which has always haunted me [spoilers]:





Various characters in the novel have drunk an elixir of life; one of them, a Russian countess, eventually explains to the protagonist that "Soon after drinking the elixir of life I found I was three months pregnant. The elixir, as you know, arrests all growth and physical development. So that, all these centuries later, I am still with child. Still. Can you understand, Flapping Eagle, how that feels? What it is to have a second life stagnant within one's womb, perhaps a genius, perhaps a second idiot, perhaps a monster, as frozen within me as the lovers on the grecian urn? What it does to a woman to be with child, heavy-breasted with the juices of maternity for so many eternities?"

So my guess was that this technology worked differently. But I'm sure it can work in whatever way best serves the requirements of the plot!