Dreaming of the Doctor or the TARDIS is not unusual for me. I am writing this as fast as I can this morning, so as not to forget anything. I was with the Doctor last night, even until the very moment of the alarm going off. You know who. There’s only really one Doctor. He was with me last night. Questions range in the aftermath, is he an archetype? Is he an accidental tulpa? Oh, wouldn’t that be cool to have a tulpa Doctor for the rest of your life?! In the dream I was him, sometimes me, and sometimes this mysterious other that is the part of all dreams that is unfathomable. I am hoping that the me in the dream was not the me in the dream, and more a bastardized caricature of me, because the Doctor did something not nice. He shoved me out of a Tardis into the heart of a black hole and left me there. Wait wait wait, let’s rewind.
Tennant has come and gone. He is not supposed to be back, but he is, in a last desperate move to save the franchise. Then again, they gave it to Disney? So, is Doctor Who DOA?
I hope not. Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars- they don’t have to die just because we have these tangential explorations that seem to break with continuity, and the very thing that made them loveable.
I have yet to see how they explain Tennant’s return. My dream explanation is not the explanation. It’s just my dream. You may not need to know I checked out of the Doctor Who fan club after the third episode of the female Doctor. I am not against a female Doctor. I am sincerely against bad writing. (I am not happy that my writing is bad, but I am not writing a Doctor Who franchise level script, with a team of editors and continuity directors, either.) If you have a person of color time travel to a time and place where people of color were less appreciated, the idea is that we as future, superior people realize the people of the past didn’t
share our present, hard earned wisdom. Yes, it is true, the world was more directly prejudiced and racist in the past! There is still some prejudice and racism still to overcome! Who knows, humans may be prejudiced against aliens from outer space in the near future! Time travelers will necessarily encounter some unpleasant realities!
Most sci-fi nerds get this fact.
And so, either the Doctor failed to prepare her companions for reality, or the writers have failed to capture the historic complexity of life because they are outside of present day reality. As a time-traveler you are the actor that must comply with the times, knowing there are better times to come. To know this, you need to know real history.
Changing the past by educating people before their time, per all time travel philosophies, could result in changing your future, to a degree you might not even be born! If there is a normal progression away from bad, interrupting the process could delay bad and or make things worse.
You don’t act all shocked that someone might treat you less than nice, you realize the time frame and context of where and when you are.
When in Rome, act like Romans. That rule is for time travelers only. Non-time traveling residents should seek to improve relationships with individuals and different cultures, because, well, that’s just right… But if you time travel, get with the times.
None of that is necessary for understanding the dream, but there does feel like there is subtext to that in the dialogue from the dream.
I would have picked a different actress to be the female Doctor. The Clara Osborne character played by Jenna Coleman could have been the Doctor, and was even set up to be a Doctor like character, even sharing in the Doctor’s memories! Georgia Moffett, who played the Doctor’s Daughter, and in real life married Tennant, because there is only one real Doctor! could have been the next Doctor. On the final death of the Doctor, the Tardis could have gone to her as an inheritance.
There was a limit to incarnations of Doctors.
We could have run a different angle. The Tardis could be pink, describing the side entrance to the Tardis, and they could run simultaneous lives, all the time passing and never meeting, because, yeah, the Tardis is that weird.
Which brings me to the other dream questions. Was I dreaming because I was mad that someone fired the award-winning writing team and went all nuts? If it was working, why make changes?
Or, from a more existential, philosophical angle, is the TARDIS the heart and soul of the show,
the true one archetype, and the Doctors, they are avatars, personalities of the TARDIS made manifest through the seasons of the one?
Did you know, the TARDIS is female.
You load 16 tons, what do you get…
Ton 618, the home of the largest blackhole known, weighing in at 6.6×1010 solar masses, that’s 66 billion Sols, and it’s a hyper luminous Lyman-alpha blob of this wonderful mystery…
And David Tennant is taking me there. “Why?”
“That is a great question,” he said, pushing levers, squeezing a bobble that is essentially the suction bulb on a pastry syringe, and doing other non-sequiturs action space controlling stuff. “I have never been.” Pauses to explore a tangent. “Technically, you’ve never been.” No, no, no, NO! He hits a thing repeatedly and holds it down and then sighs. He smiles at me. “We got this.
Going in is the easy part. Getting out, that’s where things get dicey.” The piece pops off again and he puts it back, leans on it nonchalantly. He checks a bottle of champagne, cork is solid in, and turns it in the ice, which is in a bucket, in the console. “We’re good. Trust me. I am the Doctor.”
“I am worried,” said I.
“Good for you!” the Doctor said. “That’s healthy.”
“We might not get out of this alive?”
He kind of scrunches up his face as an internal argument sorts semantics. “You, my friend, have absolutely nothing to worry about,” the Doctor said. “I, on the other hand, could come out all scrambled, as if the continuity of incarnations of me as I have known them is nothing but a card game, and the cards got reshuffled. Best case scenario is the older me goes to the first me slot, where he will do better than the first me going to the last slot, cause the latter will lack the context of the last, whereas I might remember the first slot…”
“I am confused. Are you saying being here could reset the entire universe?”
“Reset is the wrong language. It’s more like… Well, it’s kind of like… Okay, reset might be applicable, as the entire universe will reconfigure from scratch, or perhaps create an alternative timeline. See, black holes are kind of like seeds, and the branches of reality unravel off these cornels like vines, or neural networks, and the stars and the planets are more analogous to leaves, and then there are seasons of things falling away and returning, and you’re not paying attention…”
“The timey-wymie speech was easier to follow,” I said. “So everything is like leaves falling off the tree, except you, you’re not a leaf… Are you saying that you’re the Ace of Spades?” I asked.
“You are so lovely,” the Doctor said. “It’s why I love you. Though I might be the Ace of Spades, it’s really more apt to refer to me as the deck, as opposed to any of the individual cards. I am essentially the medium that draws the Tarot for the companion’s sense of self.”
“I am having trouble keeping up with you today,” I said. “Something’s off…”
“Perhaps if we dressed for the occasion,” the Doctor said.
The Doctor led me to an arch. He activated it, which was evident by the lights suggesting functionality. He indicated I should walk under. I walked under and came out the other side dressed in a space suit, fishbowl helmet and all. The Doctor simply walked around and greeted me.
This was not the clumsy crap that NASA pushes. This was Elon Musk suits on steroids. Very fashionable, flexible, white and black with glowing veins of blue light, and as comfortable as skin. It was a solid piece, no seams. It was like I was not wearing anything at all. I raised my arms and was turning about trying to see and the Doctor pushed me suddenly against the side of the arch and it latched on, shrinking down to become this thin backpack, making the back of the suit a little more substantial, but not by much. There was room for his arm around my neck and he led me to the door, just old chums discussing reality after a couple beers.
He paused in front of the door. “I have never opened this door in such an extreme situation.”
“What’s out there?”
“Oh, nothing,” the Doctor Said. His eyes shifted as he followed that further. “Everything.” He sighed. “The immensity of it all could crush us instantly, or, and more likely, a negative flow could result in us…”
“Getting sucked out into space?”
“Nah!” the Doctor said. “Not space. There is no spacetime here. It’s not a ‘sucked out’ at all.”
“A sucked in?”
“In, out, up, down, back forth, these are timey-wimey constructs of a more nuanced, objective reality that has no bearing on the present state of affairs beyond these doors,” the Doctor said.
“I am scared.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed.
We stared at the door a little bit longer. (Isn’t it funny there are moments in dreams that are profound and quiet and still, even with all this stuff clearly going on? I could hear the TARDIS
struggling to hold its position.)
“But we’re not going to let this stop us,” the Doctor said.
“We’re not,” I agreed.
Still, we stared at the door. Were we? (Seriously, this is a moment of intense anxiety. The moment of discovery. The moment of change.)
“To infinity and beyond?” I asked.
“Well said, my friend,” the Doctor said, and without further ado, he opened the door.
Outside was a purple haze of a distant nebula, lit up from behind, and perhaps the edges of a galaxy at an oblique angle reaching to either side suggesting there was more to see beyond the horizon.
“That was unexpected,” the Doctor said. “Seriously, I didn’t think there would be anything that stable. I was kind of hoping for the library.”
“Library?”
“Interstellar,” the Doctor said.
“When did you see that?”
He looked at me sideways. “There’s always time for a movie, John. That one time, at the theater when I brought all my companions together and we watched a movie? You don’t remember?”
“No. I was there?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, there was a bit of alcohol that night.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Yes you do.”
“No I don’t.”
“I did?”
“Yeah,” the Doctor said, chuckling.
“How much?”
“There was food, too. Lots of food,” the Doctor said.
“Seriously, how much did I drink that night?”
“You should probably ask Peri, as she was pouring,” the Doctor said.
“Peri?”
“She was there. Couldn’t keep you two separated…”
“Why don’t I remember? Seriously, I would not forget a night with Peri.”
“Ahh, yeah, the complexity of memories. John. May all your memories be pleasant ones. After this,” the Doctor said.
Before I could say “after what,” he shoved me out the door, closed the door, and, from my perspective, the Tardis went away. I am not sure if I fell so far away that I couldn’t see it further, like a skydiver falling away from the plane, but this is a fade to black kind of moment, to obscure the tumbling madness of it all…
Cut to inside the Tardis
You know in the dream when you have a scene change, you may find yourself absent from the scene, but your consciousness stays with the primary actors? This was that. In this instance, the primaries are the Tardis and David Tennant.
Am I one of these characters, or the secret observer?
There was chaos in the control room, as if the Tardis was battling Klingons and Tie Fighters and all sorts of anachronistic archetypes. The flight evened out like a plane departing turbulence and the Doctor collected himself. Nebulous storm clouds behind us, in the past, gone. All sunshine and puppies going forward.
Not.
“I feel intoxicated,” the Doctor said to no one.
The Tardis responded. Her voice was female and lovely in an enticing way that made warriors listen to their heads-up display, better than the love affair between Master Chief and Cortana.
“You did drink more than normal.”
“I did?” the Doctor asked.
“I am really surprised you went through with it,” the Tardis said.
“With what?”
“Abandoning John in the heart of a black hole,” the Tardis said.
“What? What?!”
“Do you really require repetition to acknowledge the reality of the magnitude of what you’ve done?” the Tardis asked.
“What have I done?”
“Technically it wasn’t you, but the female aspect of you, which was primary at the time of abandonment. She did the bulk of it. From another perspective, regardless of what previous incarnations did or didn’t do, you are the present personality interface which must contend with the repercussions of all previous action and non-actions with-in the context of the continuity frame that originated…”
“I was not a female,” the Doctor protested.
“We could argue all day about what you were or weren't in a previous existence,” the Tardis said.
“I was not… Okay, hypothetically, even if I was, I am a very loving, nurturing, caring individual, and so if I were a female, I think these properties would only be enhanced by being more contextually allowed to be expressed through the attribute of a feminine persona.”
“I can make arguments for that being true, and still allow a context for you throwing someone under the metaphorical bus,” the Tardis said.
“Give me one,” the Doctor argued.
“Captain Kirk and the Edith Keeler temporal conundrum,” the Tardis offered on a silver platter.
The cork popped and the wine geyser-ed out.
The Doctor crossed his arms, sulking. “I am dissenting on the grounds it’s not applicable to this universe, and so give me another.”
“As a female, a mother, a Doctor, it is sometimes necessary to give a three count and pull the band-aid off on 1,” the Tardis said.
“I find that harder to argue with,” the Doctor said. “Except, I never leave anyone behind…”
The Tardis door opened. Amy and Rory Williams followed by Peri Brown entered.
“Are you coming back to the movie?” Amy asked.
“We’re watching a movie?” the Doctor asked.
“You rented the hall and everything,” Rory said.
“Gathered up all your companions for a movie night,” Amy said.
“How much have you had to drink?” Peri asked.
“You were pouring,” Amy said.
“I am not counting drinks, just refilling,” Peri said. “Have you seen John?”
“No,” the Doctor said.
“Who were you talking to just now then?” Amy asked.
“Umm, the Tardis?”
“Really? Hello, Tardis,” Amy said.
No response.
“It talks to me in subtle ways,” the Doctor said.
“Something about leaving someone behind?” Rory said.
“I never leave people behind,” the Doctor said.
“Well, that's not true,” Peri said. “Companions are just for season.”
“That’s different,” the Doctor said. “It’s not like I shove people out the airlock and say good riddance.”
“Unless you need an anchor point in case reality resets,” the Tardis said, direct mind to mind in the Doctor’s head.
“What?” the Doctor asked. “WHAT?!”
“No one said anything,” Amy said.
“I would like to say something,” Rory said, drawing everyone’s attention. “Why are you wearing a dress?”
“I am not wearing a dress!” the Doctor protested, suddenly realizing he was wearing something like a dress. “It’s a kilt!”
“It looks more like a dress,” Rory said.
“So?” Amy asked. “That Roman thing you wore was kind of like a mini skirt.”
“Why do you always do that?” Rory asked.
“Do what? Remind you? You wore it for what, 2,000 years? You’d think you’d be okay with dresses by now,” Amy said.
“It’s a kilt!” the Doctor said.
“And it looks very nice on you,” Amy said.
“He can do no wrong! I swear, he could show up in just a bowtie and you would fawn all over him,” Rory said.
“Bowties are cool!” Amy said.
“Then why won’t you let me wear one?”
“It’s not you.”
“But a dress is?”
“It’s a kilt,” the Doctor insisted.
“So, John was right, they’re arguing about who wears the pants here?” Peri asked. She seemed oblivious to Amy’s glare. Rory bit his lip and stepped back. “I liked the miniskirts of the sixties, but I can wear trousers, too, and no one made too much of a fuss. Did something go wrong with the future?”
“I am feeling very uncomfortable here,” the Doctor said.
“In your dress?” Rory asked.
“Where is John?” Peri asked.
Can you have a more perfect dream? The alarm went off. Why do I have to go to work! OMG, I just want to dream. There is so much here to unpack.
I also remember the dream directly before this Who episode, which was sort of Star Trek, in the sense that I was at a buffet eating with the cast of TNG. Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn and I were getting along well enough that I really wanted the meal to go on longer, but it shifted. Wil Wheaton was there, but he and I didn’t talk too much.
There was something about the table where post cards were hidden underneath, and each postcard contained a memory, and we were looking through them… That means something, too.
What does it mean? I don’t know. All of this could take months to unpack.
I also had a dream with son this week. I told him about it. He was driving. He is 8 and driving, and there is a storm ahead. You could see the rain falling ahead in dark, windy bands.
We entered the rain. He hit a puddle that was a hole in the road and the car gets jarred badly. I am behind him and reach up to help steer the road and we ease off and collect ourselves and then keep driving. Sunshine and puppies from there on. I assume it means we have a hiccup in the road and things will be okay. We just keep on getting down the road.
Shoved out into a blackhole by the Doctor? Death to self, so the Doctor persona can take over?
Your guess is as good as mine.
