#moffat loop

[emeryhiro]

Part 3: Doctor Who - 04x09: Forest of the Dead

[Part 1]-[Part 3]

The realisations that both of them have at that moment are so brilliantly written and acted. River realising that the doctor had always known how she's going to die, and the Doctor finally understanding who River is/will be to him and that there's nothing he can do to save her.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

Just saw a post, at the end of 2024, laughing at Steven Moffat saying he was driven away from Doctor Who due to the immense online harassment he got at the time, and it only confirms my view that every dipshit on this website never matured past 2012. I know the terminally online don't get this, but people irl don't hold grudges against showrunners from over a decade ago and cheer on online harassment, because their brains weren't melted by internet discourse on a fringe website

[fiendfifofum]

This is a man who thinks that people who say 'thoughts and prayers' genuinely think they're trying their best.

Moffat getting more and more angry as he gets older and I'm loving it.

[dandelionjack]

russell t davies: Look At Me I Can Be Steven Moffat Too. sixty five years have passed :) no explanation :) no resolution :) self-extinguishing time loop :) more questions than answers :) unsettled yet? unravel that, motherfuckers! goodbye!

[nightmanatee]

"whatever i do, you still won't be there" is such a wild fucked up line written by mr moffat bc twelve says it while being in his own mind and like it's so TRUE bc one episode from heaven sent he will lose clara who will be erased from his mind and she will never be there again (i mean until twice upon a time but whatever). it's like mr sir don't manifest! and he still does it anyways. like i feel so unwell bc he's so correct and he doesn't even know this. every loop he keeps telling "his" clara that she's not actually there only to lose her a few hours later once he's out of the confession dial.

[railwayhistorical]

Moffat Tunnel

This image was made from the dome car while riding on the Rio Grande Zephyr. As stated in the previous post, this wonderful train ran between Denver and Salt Lake City. I was headed westward on my ride, and so this is the eastern portal of the famous tunnel.

This 6.2 mile bore, which pierces the continental divide, was built by the Denver & Salt Lake Railway between 1923 and 1927. The first train went through the tunnel in February of 1928. The Denver, Rio Grande & Western took over the line in 1931.

Prior to the building of the tunnel, the Denver, Northwestern and Pacific Railway (DN&P) crawled over the mountain using switchbacks, loops, and very steep grades (4%). David Moffat, on the board of the railway, conceived of the tunnel to eliminate all of that—but would not live to see it built.

One image by Richard Koenig; taken August 30th 1979.

[voyagerone-1]

that was so Steven Moffat

i can finally watch joy to the world yayyy

[thatbiologist]

I recently re-watched Heaven Sent, and this thought came to me.

Moffat said in interviews that each loop was roughly 3 weeks. And the Doctor was trapped in the Confession Dial for 4.5 billion years. This means it took roughly 77.85 billion Doctors to break the wall of Azbantium.

The Doctor would rather die countless times in an endless loop then going to therapy to work through his grief.

[toskarinfr]

put that girl in a 500-year time loop. I'm not even gay for her I just want to maximize suffering

the doctor (steven moffat in a bad wig): because of communism I must comply

[rosesbleachblondehair]

Going into Doctor Who fandom is just, RTD fans complaining about everyone hating them, Moffat fans complaining about everyone hating them, Chibnall fans complaining about everyone hating them, Ninth Doctor fans complaining about nobody watching their season, Tenth Doctor fans complaining about everyone hating them, Eleventh Doctor fans complaining about everyone hating them, Twelfth Doctor fans complaining about nobody watching their seasons, Thirteenth Doctor fans complaining about everyone hating them, “nobody appreciates [insert ship here],” “too many people like [insert ship here],” just a near constant loop of insecurity, does anyone here actually enjoy literally anything about this show

[emeryhiro]

Part 3: Doctor Who - 04x09: Forest of the Dead

[Part 1]-[Part 2]

"You and me, time and space. You watch us run" ♡

It never fails to break my heart how River loved the Doctor so much that she gave up all her remaining regenerations to bring them back and was willing to sacrifice her life for them without hesitation, even though the version of the Doctor in front of her didn't even know her yet.

[timeforthe12th]

The Devil's Hour

Okay. This show blew my mind. I decided to collect a few questions and unclear moments in this post. Some of them are my own observations, some I saw in the reddit community. So I give credit to the attentive guys there.

Warning: spoilers.

Social worker Lucy's loop. S1 vs S2.

Lucy's mother's suicide time is 3.33 (the devil's hour). Gideon arrives early to break the shotgun. At 3:34, Sylvia hears little Lucy calling her and quickly hides the shotgun in the closet.

In S2 after Gideon breaks the shotgun the clock already shows 3.34. The writers are very attentive to time. So this discrepancy is shown on purpose. The third loop?

2. Detective Lucy's Loop. S1 vs S2.

Flashback from S1, Gideon's coat, all the buttons are there.

S2, the top button is missing. But Gideon hasn't saved Lucy's mom in this loop yet. Again: there is a third loop. Either Lucy can see into the future. Or "the walls of reality are collapsing", the loops are tangled together, boring.

3. Isaac's watch

The most obvious discrepancy, so the explanation will definitely be in s3. Adult Isaac's watch and little Isaac's watch show different times.

Also, little Isaac wears a watch at his first appointment with Ruby.

4. Old Gideon in prison. S2 E1 vs S2 E5.

Who is "he"? Isaac? Ravi?

5. Flashbacks at the end of S1 E6

Why isn't Gideon handcuffed? Why is Lucy coughing? She shouldn't remember the fire yet. Or is it just the effects of smoking, lol?

6. Gideon's pickup

Here it is next to the blue Subaru during the stakeout.

And at the same time, it`s next to Sylvia's house.

7. Handwriting

How did Gideon know that Ravi would also make a comment about the handwriting? Why is Gideon so insistent that he "knows" Ravi? If he was caught by Lucy in previous loops, and Ravi was in the hospital at the time? Meanwhile, Gideon doesn't know Nick personally, even though Nick works with Lucy and Ravi.

8. Ravi's bracelets

In S1, Ravi wears one bracelet, in S2 a second one is added. It looks a lot like the red cord from the interrogation room. Even if it's not the same cord, it's very Ravi's style to wear something like that as a reminder of his failure. But in Detective Lucy's loop, he also wears a red bracelet.

9. Lucy's earrings

This may have been a costume designer's mistake, but it's still funny. Lucy has one pair of earrings in the scene near the burning house, and another pair in the scene with Isaac.

10. Bloody stain

Why can Evelyn see a bloody stain on the ceiling in Sylvia's house? In the parallel reality, it was cleaned if people live there.

I agree with the theory that the yellow hoodie is Jonah. Jonah is the dark side of Gideon's activities, Isaac is the light side. Steven Moffat didn't write this script, but I think the theme of motherly love conquering evil and chaos should play a role until the end.

I really hope there will be an explanation as to why Sylvia shot herself, and why at 3.33.

How will the story end for Gideon? I guess I would like him to try to talk his father out of it instead of killing him. Sentimental? Maybe. But season two was already very, very sentimental, so... And Lucy will take over from him as a killer maniac, ahaha.

[she-cannot-do-the-smurf]

Please tell me Stephen Moffat has to put £1000 in a jar every time he uses a time loop.

[mirrorball-thisismetrying]

Thoughts on the doctor who christmas special (spoilers below)

Ncuti Gatwa, Nicola Coughlan, and Joel Fry were all fantastic! All three of them had big emotional moments that they did very well, and I'm interested to see how the loneliness theme plays out in the new season.

Moffat's writing was very...him this episode (in good ways and bad). The mansplain central joke was really poorly done, but the time loop stuff was cool and kind of a return to form for how he writes doctor who which I liked.

[dandelionjack]

death’s hand in mine… the writer here is serving pure unadulterated moffat, which is a massive compliment in my books. the ‘pulled back and forward through time’ trick was obviously done in loki so it’s not as impressive the second time round (ha) but still manages to tug at the heartstrings and throw you for a time loop (somebody help i can’t stop making dad jokes about time travel)

basically the writers over at marvel adore doctor who and cannot keep their hands off it and honestly who wouldn’t want to emulate the greatest televisual story ever told? and i’m being soooo unbiased and impartial here, obviously, don’t question it. no plagiarism going on don’t you worry, only inspiration, same inspiration mike flanagan’s been at for a solid five years (straight up quoting “it’s not a ghost story it’s a love story”, etc etc) . point is, wherever our little show goes, even if disney pulls funding, even if russell continues to flush its respectability down the drain of irrelevance, it will never fade from view. all timey-wimey tales on mainstream tv now and forever xoxo

[dalesramblingsblog]

In honour of an episode that seems consciously about the construction of narratives around fundamentally meaningless aspects of the universe, a Twitter conversation with one of my last remaining mutuals to survive the Muskening, lightly repurposed to serve as a singular, narrativised Tumblr post in a way it was never designed for.

Who says art is dead?

73 Yards was strange and haunting and not entirely comprehensible in a way that Doctor Who seldom manages.

I suspect it's one where personal tolerance for that sort of thing will make or break the episode, but I certainly think that, knowing this was Gibson's first filmed episode, she did a phenomenal job.

It was also, for me at least, a more generally successful invocation of the kind of eldritch horror implied by the Toymaker or the Maestro, largely by virtue of it giving itself room to be ambiguous.

I've seen the complaints about stuff like the PM being a blank slate, but I do rather feel like that might be the point. It's an episode all about perception and projection and narrativisation of a universe that can be cold and hostile and incomprehensible.

(And frankly, I'm starting to suspect that the whole of RTD2 might be about that on some level. "We see something incomprehensible and invent the rules to make it work" and all that. It's audacious and bold in a way that Doctor Who hasn't been in half a decade.)

And as someone for whom those themes really hit home a lot of the time, yeah, I loved it. I know I probably sound like a broken record but I am genuinely just having a blast with this latest series.

The worst thing Doctor Who can ever feel like for me is an obligation that I only keep up with out of a need to stay relatively current in writing about it, and that was what the Chibnall Era often boiled down to for me.

Part of the reason, in hindsight, I poured so much of myself into my book reviews was that the show itself was simply failing to excite me with the level of regularity necessary to keep me engaged.

Knowing that I can put on Doctor Who on a Saturday night and be reasonably well-entertained and intrigued is, frankly, enough for me, but I do think there are enough aspects of genuine quality that I'm not just blindly worshipping at the altar of a false idol or w/e.

I dunno, I think at the end of the day I'm just a big sucker for TV that makes sense to me on an emotional rather than logical level. It's why I'm a big fan of Twin Peaks, or the second season of Millennium, or hell even Masks over on TNG.

The episode had the general feel of one that will be quite important to the overall themes of the season, so I can't imagine it will linger in *complete* ambiguity forever (though honestly if it did I would kind of love that).

Like I wouldn't be surprised if we're building up to a similar time loop reveal wrt Ruby's general existence. The fact that we've now got at least three instances of her timeline being haunted by mysterious old women cannot possibly be coincidence.

(Well, it can be, but that way lies goblins, as we know.)

IDK, there's a strangeness to Davies' acknowledgments of mediality here that goes even beyond Moffat's usual tricks. Casting a recurring actress by the name of Susan Twist while conspicuously mentioning Susan for the first time in forever feels so on the nose that while I initially suspected we might be building to the return of Susan, I now feel like we're instead headed for something much weirder.

There is so much going on and so much to unpack and frankly I don't have any idea how it could possibly tie together but I'm fascinated.

And again, the fact that this episode was almost explicitly about the process of fans theorising as to what the hell is going on with the season makes me further suspect a rebuttal of theory-focused cult fandom is in the offing.

When I first watched Once, Upon Time in 2021, I commented that it felt like Chris Chibnall's attempt to do a big, bold, incomprehensible piece of television, something almost in the vein of Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 8 but for Doctor Who.

But it's revealing that the only thing he could really think to do was dump a bunch of Doctor Who lore and simply edit things out. He's a mystery writer in the most tediously literal sense of the phrase, creating gaps that feel like they were made with a hacksaw rather than feeling like any sort of deliberate lacuna.

And I'm sorry Chibnall fans, there are some Thirteen episodes that I do like, but when I look at an episode like 73 Yards... whatever its faults may be, and I'm pretty confident I don't actually believe it to be perfect, it is bolder and weirder than anything Chibnall ever wrote. This is the kind of television I want to watch, and I make no apologies for that.

It's a rare piece of Doctor Who which comes close to capturing that sheer, terrible splendour I felt watching a slow zoom into an atom bomb explosion while being serenaded by the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. And sure, it's still very far out from being quite that strange, but it retains a curious power nevertheless.

What a show.