Bye, Clara - Miss You

And so tonight we saw the end of Clara "Bubbly Personality Masking Control Freak And Severe Personality Dissorder" Oswald as she faced the raven with far more dignity, wit and good humor than Anna in The Beautiful Lie five minutes later on your ABC.

Having first appeared in 2012, statistics from more mathematically-inclined folk than myself state that Clara is the longest serving Doctor Who companion bar Jamie "Randy Scot Bastard" McCrimmon in terms of continued consecutive adventures. Yet, oddly, she still hasn't quite sunk into the public consciousness like the comparatively-blink-and-miss it Rose and Donna. Still, maybe next time.

In some ways I'm not sure I ever "got" Clara. Maybe it was getting three separate introductions to the character, or the fact that she was pretty badly defined in her first season (understandably overshadowed by other events in 2013). While we constantly got the impression Clara was an iceberg with hidden depths, it was hard to guess what they were with the huge misdirection that she might have been evil. Of course, this was remedied soon enough when it was decided to focus on the horrible psychological damage she endured aboard the TARDIS - unlike Amy Pond who's mental health records needed two folders, Clara's undoubtedly the companion who really needed to see a therapist. With her pathological lying, martyr complex and crippling guilt issues it'd have been interesting to see a Turn Left take on how Clara would have probably burned out without the Doctor's influence.

Of course, being the longest-running NuWho companion (she's got more screentime than half a dozen Doctors) she has suffered the usual Moffat twists of fake-departures and fake-deaths. She's been blown up, fallen down, mind-wiped, frazzled, erased, ripped apart, exterminated, duplicated just as many times as she's left the TARDIS on good terms, bad terms, popped out for a moment and vowed never to return. But ultimately she stands as the Companion Wot Died, rivalling only Adric in this regard. Yeah sure you can put up names like Oliver, Kamelion or Molly but the fact is only Clara and Adric were around long enough for it to hit home to the audience when they karked it, popularity or not. They also both fatally overestimated their abilities trying to solve the problem the exact same way as their best friend.

And yet, as fandom (currently in the "everything produced under the logo is precisely what we hate" phase that seems to alternate with Prime Ministers) seem so utterly sick of the sight of Ms Coleman and have apparently been begging for the character to go approximately five seconds before they knew it existed, I'll miss her. In her last season she's only really been in four stories, either sidelined or body-snatched or simply a ghost. Jenna's natural charisma, motor mouth and amazingly awesome Bambi eyes were at times the only comfort to be had in such miserable times as Trenzalore and 3W and various points in between.

I'll miss her, perhaps because for the first time since Charley Pollard there's been a companion around long enough for me to get attached. While I may not be a clever boy, and I'm certainly not a runner, with the aid of some band called Simple Shelter covering Enya, I've at least tried to remember the impossible girl...

A tribute to Michael "Whacko" Jackson

With apologies to Lenny Henry and Farrah "Who?" Fawcett...

When he was young
He didn’t like his face
So he moved his nose
To another place

Every day
He underwent surgery
While he sat and played
In his nursery

When he was at home
All his time was spent
In his Wendy House
...Or his oxygen tent

He lost his girl
Said "she had no use"
He never had a screw
That didn't come loose

Once bought the bones
Of the Elephant Man
Along with a llamba
He MIGHT have had a plan

He was a superstar
From another planet
He looked more like ET
Than his sister Janet

He dangled his child
Over a balcony
It made more sense
Than marrying Lisa-Marie

Faced with the media
He tried to have a lark
But he got more respect
When he was in South Park

His burning ambition
Was to be just like Peter Pan
And to live forever more
His Never Neverland!

He didn't get on with humans
His best friend was a chimpanzee
He wasn't just off his rocker
He was completely out of the tree!

HE WAS MAD! MAD! He was absolutely bonkers!
HE WAS MAD! MAD! A toad without a hole!
HE WAS MAD! MAD! There were no slates on his roof!
HE WAS MAD! MAD! A sandwich short of a picnic!

They say he was god
He just seemed right
Not male or female
Nor black nor white

He might be gone
But I will hear him again
When I suffer at Christmas
His "Frosty the Snowman"

NuWhoTunes

As you may or may not know, there are lyrics to the theme tune of Blake's 7 - a tune by the ditty little name of A Distant Star. But some rap group called Raindancer have apparently uncovered the lyrics to the theme to Doctor Who which frankly don't measure up to Bulamakanka's take on the same matter (a song so cool not even Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood can team up to despise it, though in typical backhander fashion any non-Aussie needs to get completely pissed to enjoy it).

Do you also have the feeling that something is wrong?
The world is turning backwards and today is really yesterday
And everybody is a stranger and we don't even know ourselves
Wherever we go we always end up at the same spot again

There is something familiar about this
Everything is upside down and the beginning is the end
And every answer to a question is a question in itself
We're lost in time and we're calling Dr Who

It seems like every clock in here is always ten to two
And always shows a smiling face no matter what we do
And I'm getting kind of nervous coz I guess we are in trouble
Since the author of this drama is escaping in a limousine

Now is not now
We're lost in time
Want to go home
Calling Dr Who

Will Moffat use these lyrics to accompany Matt Smith's journeys through the cosmos?

...

I hope not.

Tenth Doc/Rose Love Ballad?

Murray Gold's songs often have two meanings - the meaning the song clearly has, and the meaning it has when taken completely out of context and shown in the actual TV program. A Song For Ten is about the Doctor coping with the events of Doomsday, yet when we saw The Christmas Invasion it seemed just a bit of stuff about the new Doctor. Love Don't Roam is about the Ninth Doctor going back for Rose in the first episode, and when we heard it in The Runaway Bride, it was the Tenth Doctor being heartbroken. The Stowaway is Martha brooding about the Doctor's Rose obsession, yet in Voyage of the Damned, it's just another Christmas Carol whose only connection to the Doctor is the nautical stowaway stuff.

But no one, but NO ONE has worked out what the hell The Angel and the Devil means. It doesn't even have a big resonating vibe in the story it's in. It seems to be just a bit of music. But surely there has to be some Saxon ref locked in there... somewhere?

Thankfully, Murray Gold's put out the full version of the song, had Martha and a pig interrupted (ooh, that sounds so wrong out of context, doesn't it?)

I'm a country girl, I ain't seen a lot
But you came along and my heart went pop
You took a little street car to my heart
And an apple of love fell off my apple cart!

You looked at me, my heart began to pound
You weren't the sort of guy I thought would stick around
Hey, but it don't have to be eternally
My bad, bad Angel put the Devil in me!
You put the Devil in me...

You lured me in with your cold grey eyes
Your simple smile and your bewitching lies
One and one and one is three
My bad, bad Angel, the Devil and me!

You put the Devil in me...
You put the Devil in me!
You put the Devil in me!
My bad, bad Angel, you put the Devil in me...

So, now my dear, I aint the girl you knew
Cause the Angel's got Heaven, but I get you
And the tree of life grows tall, you see
My bad, bad Angel, you put the Devil in me!

Oh, you put the Devil in me!
You put the Devil in ME!
You put the Devil in me...
You put the Devil in me...

(actually this is the rest of the song with various emphasis)

So what the hell does it mean? Well, a straightforward translation of the lyrics: a girl encounters a sinister man with a history of lying and deciet, who awakens similar darkness in the girl. She knows he's bad, but stays with him, corrupted beyond the point of recognition. "One and one and one makes three" has been left open to countless interpretations but the song makes it clear that it is the girl, her lover and the darkness in both of them, so the thing that brings them together is also ultimately the thing that comes between them.

So, who is the girl and who is the man? Martha and the Doctor? Well, the Doctor is hardly seducing Martha - quite the opposite - and hardly awakening any darkness in her. Tallulah and Lazlo? The Captain and her husband in 42? John Smith and Joan Redfern? Sparrow and Nightingale? Jack and anyone?

Well, the "bad, bad angel" seems a bit of a clue. The angels in the latest Doctor Who series include: the Doctor ("the Lonely Angel"), the Lonely Assassins ("the Weeping Angels"), the Heavenly Host (uh... angels on top of trees), and of course Archangel, the satellite network the Master uses. And the Master, often compared to a fallen Angel, seduces Lucy Saxon...

I'm a country girl, I ain't seen a lot
Sounds like Lucy. She's not special or anything according to the late Vivian Rook

But you came along and my heart went pop
You took a little street car to my heart
And an apple of love fell off my apple cart!
Yep, sounds like falling head over heels with someone who turned up suddenly. Like the Master.

You looked at me, my heart began to pound
And we all know what the Master can do with a look.

You weren't the sort of guy I thought would stick around
Does the Master strike you as a long-term relationship kinda guy?

Hey, but it don't have to be eternally
Especially since he'll outlive her no matter what.

My bad, bad Angel put the Devil in me!
The Master corrupts Lucy. She gets some really kinky thrills about genocide in Sound of Drums. She enjoys watching the Doctor being tortured, seeing a tenth of humanity slaughtered, and the look on her face when the American President is zapped, well, I'm surprised they let children watch it.

You lured me in with your cold grey eyes
Yep, that sounds right.

Your simple smile and your bewitching lies
Simple indeed - his falsified credentials only convinced thanks to worldwide hypnosis

One and one and one is three
On the other hand, if there was ever a more disturbing love triangle, the Master, Lucy and the Doctor is one that will go up there forever...

So, now my dear, I aint the girl you knew
At the end, she's a clearly soul-shattered, beaten, broken woman who turns against the Master. Then shoots him.

Cause the Angel's got Heaven, but I get you
The Angel = the Master, heavn = supreme ruler, and Lucy gets left with the Devil = the knowledge of what she's doing and why she's doing it

And the tree of life grows tall, you see
I admit this stumped me, but the lyric is clearly a revelation. The country girl is revealing something is more impressive than expected - the tree makes up for its failings by growing tall. So, the humanity the Master dismisses can turn on him in a way he never thought, the Doctor can fight back without weapons, Martha can trick him, and Lucy isn't quite as beaten as expected.

My bad, bad Angel, you put the Devil in me!
Oh, you put the Devil in me!
You put the Devil in ME!
Now, this is entirely down to the way the singer sings the lines, getting louder and dare I say angrier? Lucy is telling the Master he unleashed her dark side, and it is by that dark side she blows a hole through the guy. Thus, the Master put the Devil in her, and he's responsible for this. He makes his own downfall.

So, there you have it. The Angel and the Devil is not about the Doctor and Rose, but the Master and Lucy.

(Exactly how their relationship was foretold by a broadway musical, I ain't entirely sure, but Love Don't Roam is meant to be a 1960s bubblegum song and The Stowaway a celtic Christmas carol, so we can assume that the whole 'song parrallel business' is one whacking great coincidence. OTOH, maybe it's one of the songs the Master plays in the Year That Never Was, which inspires Lucy to turn on him?)

So, now that mystery is solved, along with the Face of Boe and the War Chief, what's next?

Tenth Doc/Rose ballad

It's that time of year when Murray Gold feels the need to come up with a song, about ten seconds of which will appear in a Christmas special, stripped almost entirely of meaning... and the meaning invariably being that Rose is stuck in another dimension. However, rumors circulate that maybe, as the lyrics suggest, the Doctor has decided to say "fuck the universe, I want Billie Piper"...

The Stowaway by Kylie Minogue and the Titanic Blunders

Once I found
A stowaway
Upon my ship
On Christmas Day
I was fair so I gave him a chance...

"You shouldn't be here.
What's your tale?
I ought to throw you
To the whale."
He just smiled and said "Come here, let's dance."

He said, "Borrow or steal,
I'll find a way
To be with my lover
Upon Christmas Day!

And I'll run and I'll roam!
I'll cover the ground!
This Christmas I'll see you,
I'll be around!"

He told me bout
His girl back home
Waiting patient,
All alone
While we danced I shed a little tear

He closed his eyes
All out at sea
I think he danced
With her, not me
I'll just have to wait another year.

He said, "Borrow or steal,
I'll find a way
To be with my lover
Upon Christmas Day!

And I'll run and I'll roam!
I'll cover the ground!
This Christmas I'll see you,
I'll be around!"

I think of him
Now and again,
I wonder how
His journey ends
As I sail by on my lonesome sea

That stranger with
The haunting face
Here, then gone
Without a trace
Lying with his love, that's where he'll be.

"Beg, borrow or steal,
I'll find a way
To be with my lover
Next Christmas Day!

And I'll run and I'll roam!
I'll cover the ground!
Next Christmas I'll see you,
I'll be around!"

"Beg, borrow or steal,
I'll find a way
To be with my lover
Next Christmas Day!

And I'll run and I'll roam!
I'll cover the ground!
Next Christmas I'll see you,
I'll be around!"

"Beg, borrow or steal,
I'll find a way
To be with my lover
Next Christmas Day!

And I'll run and I'll roam!
I'll cover the ground!
Next Christmas I'll see you,
I'll be around!"

"Beg, borrow or steal,
I'll find a way
To be with my lover
Next Christmas Day!

And I'll run and I'll roam!
I'll cover the ground!
Next Christmas I'll see you,
I'll be around..."

from Doctor Who: The Voyage of the Damned

Tenth Doc/Rose Love Ballad

Song for Ten by the Sycoraxic War Orphan fund

In the depths of the TARDIS is a room full of clothes. Each piece a memory, a thought, an idea. And a blank canvas has so little chance to choose what will become of it. Pieces are discarded, some a kept, and then it is time for Christmas dinner, time to be domestic... while they still can.

Well, I woke up today
And the world was a restless place
It could have been that way for me
And I wandered around
And I thought of your face
That Christmas looking back at me

Whoaaa...

I wish today could be like every other day
Cause today has been the best day

Everything I ever dreamed...
And I started to walk
Pretty soon I will run
And I’ll come running back to you

Cause you are my star
And that’s what you are
I had a merry time with you

Whoaaa...

I wish today could be like every other day
Cause today has been the best day
Everything I ever dreamed

So have a good life
Do it for me
Make me so proud
Like you want me to be
Wherever you are
I’m thinking of you
Oceans apart
I want you to know...

La-la-la...
La-la-la...
La-la-la...
Yeah...

When I woke up today
And you’re on the other side
Our time will never come again
But if you can still dream
Close your eyes and you’ll see
That you can see me now and then

Whoaaa...

I wish today could be like every other day
Cause today has been the best day
Everything I ever dreamed!

I wish today could be like every other day
Cause today has been the best day
Everything I ever dreamed...

from Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion

Tenth Doc/Rose Love Ballad

It's Christmas Eve, a wedding reception under way. The bride and groom dance, the bridesmaid and best man dance, everyone is happy and jiving. Except for the man by the bar in the pin stripe suit and spectacles. He sees a woman on the dance floor. A laughing woman, with long blonde hair. And this lonely man remembers a different blonde, on another world, five billion years in the future. Gone forever. But not dead. So, so alive...

Love Don't Roam by RTD and the Bad Wolf Beat Combo

I've roamed about this Earth
With just a suitcase in my hand
And I've met some bug-eyed joes
I've met the blessed, I've met the damned.

But of all the strange, strange creatures
In the air, at sea, on land
Oh, my girl, my girl, my precious girl
I love you, you understand?

So reel me in, my precious girl
Come on, take me home
Cause my body's tired of travelling
And my heart don't wish to roam.

Well, I have wandered, I have rambled
I have crossed this crowded sphere
And I've seen a mess of problems
That I long to disappear

And all I have is this anguished heart
Cause you have vanished too
Oh, my girl, my girl, my precious girl
Just what is this man to do?

So reel me in, my precious girl
Come on, take me home
Cause my body's tired of travelling
And my heart don't wish to roam.

Yeah, reel me in, my precious girl
Come on, take me home
Cause my body's tired of travelling
And my heart don't wish to roam.

Well, you took me in, you stole my heart
I cannot roam no more.
Cause love, it stays within you
It doesn’t wash upon a shore

A fighting man forgets each knock
Each knock, each bruise, each fall
Ah, but a fighting man cannot forget
Why his love don’t roam no more!

Yeah, reel me in, my precious girl
Come on, take me home
Cause my body's tired of travelling
And my heart don't wish to roam.

Come on, reel me in, my precious girl
Come on, take me home
Cause my body's tired of travelling
And my heart don't wish to roam.

Yeah, walk with me, my love, my love
Walk tall, walk proud, walk far
Cause you know, you know, you know, you know
You are my shining star!

Come on, walk with me, my love, my love
Walk tall, walk proud, walk far
Cause you know, you know, you know, you know
You are my shining star!!

Yes, you know, you know, you know, you know
You are my shining star!!
Cause you know, you know, you know, you know
You are my shining STAR!!

from Doctor Who: The Runaway Bride...

Chopin's Children

I always thought
That we'd live in space
At least on Mars
Or moon's face
It seemed so right
For the human race
But something just gets in the way

We've gotto hold on
What can it be?
Is it more than naivete?
Can't we live past yesterday?
Something just gets in the way.

I always thought
There'd be lots to eat
At least some herds
Some fields of wheat
There seemed to be
An obtainer to feed
But something just gets in the way.

We've gotto hold on
What can it be?
Is it more than naivete?
Can't we live past yesterday?
Something just gets in the way.

Hold on
What can it be?
Is it more than naivete?
Can't we live past yesterday?
Something just gets in the way.

I always thought
That we'd all be friends
At least we'd try
To make amends
It seemed so easy
To comprehend
But something just gets in the way.

We've gotto hold on
What can it be?
Is it more than naivete?
Can't we live past yesterday?
Something just gets in the way...

Composer's Corner

Odd socks, odd socks,
I have no pair to spare
I’d like to blame the washer
But the fault just isn’t there

I pin my socks together
Tie up them with some string
While still upon my feet
I can’t rely on anything!

Staples, metal clips
Even static cling
Can’t stop all my even socks
From dis-a-p-pear-ing

Somehow one still goes missing
The odd one’s now long gone
I search and search, I go berserk
And it always takes so long

And I have no luck, I say
I look for them everywhere
Underneath the couch
And right behind the chair

Sadly, all the socks I have
Just cannot be spared
I really would like to help you
But fate just doesn’t care.

Odd socks, Odd Socks,
I have no pair to spare
I’d like to blame the washer
But the fault just isn’t there!

Odd socks, Odd Socks,
I know I'll never find
These renegade runaways
For these poor feet of mine.