Beginning Word Count: 43,280
This year, for the first time in my entire life, I will be hosting a dinner at my place for Thanksgiving. My husband and I will be hosting Thanksgiving for his brother. Initially, we were going to go to my brother in law's house for Thanksgiving, but plans have changed, and I'm good with that.
Actually, since we got married, we have not hosted anyone to dinner at our home. So, I'm really rather excited to have the opportunity to do this.
That being said, it is not my nature to do things the traditional way by any means.
The traditional Thanksgiving feast is usually a variation of the following dishes: Turkey (or ham or roast beef), stuffing (or dressing, depending on where you live), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (or yams), green bean casserole, gravy, rolls, salad, cranberry sauce (made fresh or with the traditional ridges), and several desserts -- pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie. This is a lot of food.
Especially for a guest list of three.
Besides, I've never cooked a turkey before. I've eaten my fair share of them, mind you, but I've never cooked one.
I have come up with my own menu, my own Thanksgiving feast.
I'm not sure what time my brother in law will arrive, but it will be in the morning. My husband has not seen him since we got married. So I am making those lovely Pillsbury orange rolls for breakfast.
For nibble food, I'll be making caprese salad kebobs and a tray with a variety of cookies, and cranberry orange curd, and fruit.
But our meal? It will be spaghetti and Italian meat loaf with broccoli and garlic crescents, and dessert will be cinnamon apple pie.
It's still a lot of food, but I can make the pie and meat loaf the night before. I can assemble the cookie tray the night before. And I can prepare the caprese salad the night before and kebob it that morning. I can make the garlic butter on Wednesday night. I can also put the spaghetti sauce in the crock pot overnight. All I will really have to do in the morning is bake the orange rolls, assemble the kebobs and put out the fruit, and then bake the meat loaf when it is within time for dinner.
It will also be the first time I've ever gotten to use my china. I have beautiful china -- my pattern is Sweet Leilani by Noritake. In fact, this evening, John and I had to go buy some glasses, because I just cannot bring myself to serve dinner on my china paired with our complete set of "Newk's" plastic cups.
So, I'm looking forward to it. Plus, because we're staying home, I don't have to leave my kitten home alone over night. I'm not quite ready to do that with him. Yet.
Today, by the way, is the Doctor Who anniversary. I'll go ahead and give you a SPOILERS shout -- so if you're reading this and you are a Doctor Who fan who has not seen the 50th Anniversary Special, please close your browser now and read no further. I'll even give you a few lines to make sure you do not trip.
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Okay, Facebook exploded today with Dr. Who. Actually, the first Whoish thing I saw this morning was Yahoo. The Yahoo exclamation mark usually does something every day. I's usually pretty silly. Today, it was the TARDIS. Google had a fun game to play where the Daleks captured the letters of GOOGLE. The Doctors had to travel through time and space, and battle Daleks and Cybermen and Weeping Angels and retrieve the letters. Fun!
And, of course, BBC America ran a Doctor Who marathon in honor of the anniversary, culminating in a Global Simulcast at 1:50 pm.
John and I were, of course, ready. With bated breat we joined in at 1 for the pre show and waited for the show to start.
Now, my synopses and review.
The episode opens with Clara teaching in a classroom. She gets a message from the Doctor and hops on a motorcycle, riding off to meet the TARDIS. She rides into the TARDIS, shuts the door behind her.... and the adventure begins!
The TARDIS takes flight, but the engine is not engaged. Our first 50th Anniversary nod to the past is on its way: U.N.I.T. The Third Doctor was stranded on earth and worked with U.N.I.T.. The Fourth Doctor did quite a bit with them as well. Eventually, they fell by the wayside, but for a while, U.N.I.T. was a frequent part of the show, and Colonel Leftbridge-Stewart was the Doctor's contact.
They've been a part of the Modern series a few times. Ten and Eleven have both encountered them, including the Colonel's daughter. But they are flying the TARDIS, dangled from a helicopter.
That seems a little weird, but it was a good bit of fun, so okay. Turns out, the Doctor is needed because something weird is happening at the museum. And the Fourth Doctor's scarf gets a cameo.
We get a Doctor Flashback to the last day of the Time War where we encounter the War Doctor -- this is the life that the Doctor does not want to remember, the regeneration he does not acknowledge, and he had broken into the weapons vault on Gallifrey, where they store all of the weapons which are forbidden to be used -- and which, of course, they have already used -- save one: The Moment. The War Doctor steals The Moment.
Here is where we get a little bit of information rewrite -- in the episode "End of Days," we heard someone on the Gallifreyan High Council ask if the Doctor still possessed "The Moment." However, at that point, we had no idea that it was a weapon. At least, I did not. I thought perhaps it was something that he held in he possession -- he's a Time Lord, so a Moment of importance is certainly something that a Time Lord could be expected to possess.
But no, The Moment is a weapon. It is not an ordinary weapon though, and the only reason the Time Lords have not used it is because of the interface -- it is a sentient weapon which will judge the person who tries to use it. And if found wanting, unable to operate. The interface will also determine a punishment. For the War Doctor, who is not wanting to use this weapon but trying to use it because there seems to be no other alternative. He does not want to live after it is done. And the Moment says to him: "That will be your punishment then." It's immediate. He IS going to have to live with his deed.
The Interface of The Moment, however, being sentient, takes a form of someone in the Doctor's Past "or Future, I can never keep those straight." Rose Tyler, the companion of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. Also known as Bad Wolf -- she once absorbed the Heart of the TARDIS, so she is a part of the TARDIS time stream (and the TARDIS also cannot keep the past and future separate). She is there for the War Doctor, to show him his future -- who he becomes because of his decision to commit an attrocity -- destruction / genocide of the Time Lords of Gallifrey and the Daleks of Skarro. The Moment asks him how many children are on Gallifrey. He says he does not know, and she says he will.
The interface of the Moment has just judged the War Doctor. But the Moment does not find him wanting.
A time vortex openes up and a fez falls through.
We come back to the present and go deeper into the museum, where we discover that the Doctor married Queen Elizabeth -- this results in another flash back, and an introduction of a Classic monster into the Modern series -- the Zygons.
This flash back features the Tenth Doctor. He is flirting with Queen Elizabeth the First in an attempt to track the Zygons, and it back fires as he proposes to her, and she accepts. But she is no Zygon.
The horse is the Zygon. The Doctor and the Queen run off, pursued by Zygon. He sends the Queen off one way and chases down what he thinks is a Zygon, but it is really a bunny. He's really having an off day. The Queen screams, and the Doctor dashes off to discover two Queens. One is a Zygon, one is the Queen. Suddenly a time vortex opens up and a fez falls through.
We come back to the present and go deeper into the museum. Here the Doctor encounters the reason he's been called. The glass in all of the artwork that is considered too dangerous has been broken. The Doctor realizes that it has been broken from the inside. Clara wonders what did it, because they are all landscapes. But they are not supposed to be. There are beings in the paintings, and those beings have escaped!
A time vortex opens up. But the Eleventh Doctor tosses his Fez in. Then he remembers seeing the Fez. And he jumps through, and lands as the Tenth Doctor is putting on the Fez.
A bicker with Clara ensues, and the fez is tossed again. It does not go back to Clara.
They ask "where did it go?" Cut to the War Doctor. And shortly after that, the War Doctor joins Ten and Eleven, who are mortified to see him. They both know him, and he is the life they want to forget.
The War Doctor here gets the best lines regarding the sonic screwdriver. Ten and Eleven are weilding it like a sword, and War Doctor pretty much pokes holes into that and says "You're holding an instrument of science." Later when they are charged by a group of soldiers, Ten and Eleven again try to fend them off with their sonics, and the War Doctor asks them if they are going to build a cabinet at them. Hilarity!
They are throw in the Tower of London, and finally they start to work together, while the Moment stays with the War Doctor. The War Doctor, at the behest of the Moment, asks if they ever found out how many children. Eleven says he does not know. Ten says "2.7 million." Then Ten is mortified that Eleven has forgotten that number.
Meanwhile, in the present, we see that the Zygons are taking over U.N.I.T. and Clara has to escape.
Basically, there is a lot of Timey Wimey brilliance going on. The long and short of it is that Clara realizes that the War Doctor has not yet destroyed his people, at the same time that Ten and Eleven are trying to talk the head of U.N.I.T. out of blowing up London. They clearly regret that decision, and if they had it to do again, they would not. They force a negotiation by activating a piece of alien tech that will not let the negotiators know if they are a Zygon or a human, so they have to negotiate fairly.
Clara says to the War Doctor: "you haven't done it yet, have you?" and he shakes his head no, and asks her how she knows. She tells him his eyes look young. The War Doctor decides it is time to grow up, and leaves with the Moment.
To destroy his people. He's ready.
One of the things you know from watching Doctor Who is that there are points which are Fixed. He mucks around in time and space, but there are moments that are Fixed and cannot be changed. The destruction of Gallifrey is one of those moments
But, the War Doctor possesses the Moment. And the Moment unlocks that moment. She talks about the sound that the TARDIS makes, and how it brings hope to all who hear it. Even the War Doctor.
And we hear the sound of the TARDIS. Ten and Eleven join the War Doctor. They apologize to him. They tell him that he was the Doctor when it was impossible to do good. They finally understand him and accept him. And what he had to do. But this time, he does not have to do it alone.
But this is why the Doctor travels with a Companion. The Companion's life is fleeting. The Companion, unlike a Time Lord, does not live forever, and has a very different perspective. Clara says that the War Doctor is the Warrior. Ten is the Hero. And "You." Eleven asks her who he is. She reminds him that he is the Doctor and makes him remember what that means.
And the three of them hatch a plan to rewrite their own history.
This is the moment to send the fans into geeky squees. First we get War, Ten and Eleven. But then they show clips from One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine..... and Twelve (who we will formally meet at Christmas). All of them, in that scene.
They change their own history. They do not know if they failed trying to do the right thing, but they agree it is better than succeeding at doing the wrong thing.
Clara, to me, earns her stripes as a Companion in this episode -- because of how she is willing to feel and express emotion for the Doctor in a way that he can no longer do.
Before the Doctors return to their own time streams, Ten and Eleven call the War Doctor by a new name, acknowledge him finally, "the Doctor." He was the one they would not acknowledge.
Then comes the moment. Four appears as The Curator, and has an enigmatic conversation with Eleven, where he shows him that Gallifrey Falls No More, but Gallifrey is missing.
Lots of questions are generated by this episode. Is Eleven still Eleven or is he Twelve? Do they renumber now that Nine is really the War Doctor?
I think this is absolutely the best of the multi-Doctor episodes. Ever. It was the best written, and most willing to embrace the different Doctors and really play with it. Prior ones have had some sort of contrivance so that they did not spend a lot of time working together. This one threw that to the wind and just let them go. I loved that. Just wish they would have let more of the Classic Doctors in.
But Moffat gave McGann(Eight) a regeneration scene, and he had not had one. And Capaldi (Twelve) who has been cast, but not technically been regenerated into yet, was also allowed to play. Moffat lies, by the way. And really...the people who work on Doctor Who should be working for the NSA. Talk about keeping secrets!
Today's Word Count: 2,448
Total Word Count: 45,768
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