Radio Free Skaro #272 – Nimon Sci-Fi Con
< A minotaur, a question of fear and faith, and a turning point for the Doctor and his companions…not to mention a surreal hotel from Hell! The God Complex went under the RFS microscope this week, with a smattering of opinion both favourable and somewhat less so. Add a giant brick wall o’ stats, a Sarah Jane launch date, some new guests for Gallifrey 2012, and an interview with “The Girl Who Waited” scribe Tom MacRae, and you’ve got yourself an audio file of approximately an hour in length! |
| Show Notes:
– The God…Complex! Interview: |
9 Comments on “Radio Free Skaro #272 – Nimon Sci-Fi Con”
Leave a Reply
SUPPORT THE PODCAST
WHERE TO LISTEN
WHERE TO FIND US
Doctor Who: Radio Free Skaro 
For the Curse of Fenric question, I have to go with “channeling”. Or indeed “inverting” In Curse, the Doctor is manipulating Ace in order to gain an advantage on Fenric. Here he’s actually telling Amy like it is.
Any faith that Rory has could not be resolved without ruining the pacing of the episode and the impact of Amy’s resolution. The support character’s could be resolved quickly and easily because they could be killed off. To resolve Rory’s you would have to either kill him (again) or resolve it in a similar way to Amy’s – hence ruining the episode. Rory and Gibbous may have fears but their lack of faith makes them worthless as a foodstuff.
Whilst I agree with the inconsistancy of only some fears leaving the rooms, this could also be a result of the system fault that means that there are so many rooms.
I always took it from the Doctor’s description of the Nimon “descending on planets” that this cousin just, essentially, dropped out of the sky into an already fully functional prison ship. The glitches weren’t repaired as it wasn’t his ship and he didn’t know how.
Whilst the astronaut is the most likely candidate from a series perspective, would his fear not more likely be the Valeyard – something that caused him such fear and guilt that the 6th Doctor (apparantly) comitted Time Lord suicide?
I was personally surprised and touched by the Doctor’s goodbye to Amy and Rory but it does make sense – he know’s his death is approaching and that the Amy and Rory that are there are from the past of the versions he is currently with. This is obviously going to be a very dangerous time and he wouldn’t want to take them with him.
The Time Lord Victorious was an arrogant sod going wrong but he was the result of the 10th Doctor trying to go it alone out of fear for his companions (see the end of Planet of the Dead) – isn’t this the path that the 11th is taking first steps down?
Final thought – did anyone else love that the Doctor gave Amy and Rory a big blue house with a big blue front door?
It’s a very specific kind of faith the minotaur needs: faith that something else is going to save you. Rory may have faith in Amy, but he doesn’t think of her as some higher power (luck, Allah, an occupying army, a clandestine world order) that can offer protection against his darkest nightmares. She’s just a woman he loves more than life itself.
My thoughts on who the Doctor might have seen in his room (if not himself, perhaps in Dream Lord guise), some more serious than others:
* Amy dead on the floor of the TARDIS.
* Any or all previous companions dead on the floor of the TARDIS.
* River in a wedding dress (definitely calls for the cloister bell).
* The Master (please, no).
* Fenric. 😉
As an aside – the Doctor has developed a severe self-loathing streak since the Time War. Is it possible that he fears and hates what he has become and therefore the person in his room would be his incarnation that was most heavily involved (cue entrance by Time-War ravaged Paul McGann)?
Not going to happen, but would love it!
I thought this was one of the best episodes of series 6, so I’m not looking to find a fault in it, but if I was, wouldn’t the illusion of the Weeping Angels in one of the rooms become a problem because that which holds the image of an angel becomes an angel?
Yep, I think I mentioned that in the podcast but I’d say it presents an issue. Unless we disregard the series 5 Angel episodes as that wouldn’t be an issue based on what Blink presented.
I think that depends on how pedantic you get on semantics.
The image that became an angel in series 31 (sorry, 5) was a video recording of an actual angel – therefore a bona fide “image of an angel”.
In this episode we had angels that could be classed as stereotype imaginings of angels – they may be images but those images are not of actual angels (such as a photo of Angel Bob would be) but rather a generalised picture of the fear of angels.
It’s almost as if the actual recorded angel came through the screen before, whereas in this episode there was no recorded angel to do this.
It’s more a case of how much retcon you want to apply or which aspects of the mythos you want to use for dramatic purposes or plotting.
You may recall that in Time of Angels The Doctor mentions there aren’t even pictures/illustrations of Angels in that book he flipped through. ANY image of an Angel becomes an Angel is what was driven home in Series 5 then utterly ignored here.
Who is famous for ignoring anything the author wants to ignore so it’s futile to gripe too much but that doesn’t mean it sits well when they do that sort of thing.
When the Doctor enters his room of fear, do a frame by frame and watch the reflection in his right eye. I think there’s a rough CGI overlayed there.