Doctor Who: Thoughts on the TARDIS and some speculation

[butterfly]

So, I have a sore throat, but this does not stop my enthusiasm for tomorrow's DW!

I mean, you've got a Jack reference right in the bumper trailer ('Volcano day!') and all the plot and character stuff looks very intriguing as well.

As this episode is set in the past, I'm not banking on seeing Rose (of course, I didn't expect to see her in PiC, either!). Since the Doctor (from the trailer) believes that he's landed them in Rome...

The TARDIS is landing in the wrong place again (because, sure, Pompeii was a Roman city, but it certainly wasn't Rome).

With Rose, this happened all the time, starting with The Unquiet Dead and continuing through to The Idiot's Lantern. And I think the Doctor explains a bit of why in TIP/TSP -- when Jefferson says (in a bit of a disbelieving tone), "You're telling me you don't know where you are?" the Doctor replies, "No idea. More fun that way."

For the Doctor and Rose, going places together mattered more than where those specific places were -- this applies to episodes like TIP or TLG where the Doctor and Rose really didn't seem to know where they'd landed until after they got there.

The other (larger) factor, I think, was Bad Wolf. Once Rose made the decision to go on the TARDIS, I think that she was influencing the TARDIS from when she looked into it and guided herself to the right places and times (time being... flexible that way). This would apply to such things as The Unquiet Dead, which sets up the rift to be healed by Gwyneth in such a way that Blon will be drawn to it, thus showing Rose the power of the heart of the TARDIS and leading to Bad Wolf (also, the year gap in AiL can be explained this way -- Rose needed Blon in Cardiff and that meant stopping the Slitheen in London). However, this continued into series two, when the Doctor and Rose land in Scotland in 1879. This leads to the creation of TW and (in this universe) Torchwood's feelings towards the Doctor. And then we have The Idiot's Lantern. I wasn't sure at first how that fit into the pattern -- it doesn't seem relevant to later plot points, so why would BadWolf!Rose bring them there?

And then I remembered. Magpie Electronics, which has notably appeared in two episodes since TIL -- Martha's TV in The Sound of the Drums and the microphone in Voyage of the Damned. I suspect that we may see it again and that it may be important.

When Rose was Bad Wolf, she must have seen what would happen with Torchwood -- she created Jack's immortality and Jack has been needed (not a coincidence that 'Bad Wolf' appeared on the stairs behind Jack and Tosh in Captain Jack Harkness, nor that it appeared in a disguised form behind the Doctor in Gridlock -- both were times when what Rose had done as Bad Wolf were coming into play -- CJH led to Owen mucking with the rift which led to the son of Abbadon and Jack's life force being absolutely necessary to stopping him. Gridlock has the Face of Boe's warning to the Doctor about the Master and, again, it is Rose's creation of Jack's immortality that leads to everything that happens with the Master -- without Bad Wolf, Harold Saxon could not exist). She saw that she would be lost to the parallel world and, likewise, she would have seen that she would come back (though we don't know the extent of that return yet, just with what we saw in PiC). She saw everything -- all that is, all that was, all that ever could be. And she made choices, laid out a path.

She may be still laying out that path, even now.

Comments

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Right! The Doctor isn't always right. And Rose may not be aware that she's following a path that she, herself, laid out, just as she didn't realize about Bad Wolf until Parting of the Ways. And even the Doctor is unaware of just how far Bad Wolf reaches -- he didn't notice the sign in Gridlock and hasn't seen the graffiti in the Cardiff dance hall.

And they've just enough hints about it for it to qualify as being seeded -- it's shown/mentioned four times in S2 (the faded graffiti in New Earth, 'something of the wolf' in T&C, Bad Wolf Virus in L&M, and Bad Wolf Bay in Doomsday) plus one 'Bad Wolf' in S3 and two mentions of Rose looking into the vortex (Gridlock, him telling Jack about it in Utopia, and the Master mentioning it in Last of the Time Lords).