STETSONFREAK

David Tennant & Billie Piper 

OK guys. This moment does not have enough love. In fact, it has some unfortunate anti-love that I aim to resolve here.

Yes, this episode heavily references Girl in the Fireplace. And yes, that episode is pretty much the most anti-shippy thing to happen in canon for Doctor/Rose.

BUT THIS MOMENT IS GREAT AND WE DOCTOR/ROSE SHIPPERS SHOULD LOVE IT TO PIECES LET ME EXPLAIN!!!!

Twelve can’t remember Clara’s name at first. Nor Vastra nor Jenny nor Strax. He leaves Clara in danger and he won’t even give her the screwdriver. He does questionable things—he’s darker, I get that. But even so, and even though he’s trying to figure things out with the bad guy, and does not have all his memories intact (‘Handles’? Really, Doctor??) he CANNOT leave the bunch of roses on the floor. The bunch of yellow roses—yellow which signifies remembrance. There are centuries-old ballads (‘Round Her Neck She Wears a Yeller Ribbon’) and old movies (‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’) and folk songs (‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree’) all about yellow being the color of remembrance—specifically in all these pop-culture cases, remembrance of a lost love. And as he’s struggling to remember why droids harvesting parts rings a bell with him, does he look at the droid? No. Does he have flashbacks to women making double entendres with cleavage spilling out? No. (And the eventual reference to MdP is blah blah bland). But what does he do? He twirls the roses and holds them just a little bit closer. This is so reminiscent of the Journal of Impossible Things, where even as a human Ten can’t remember the name of the TARDIS, or the sonic screwdriver—but he keeps drawing roses in his journal and hers is the only face he can canonically put a name to.

Moffat may be many, many things, and do many, many things that I do not particularly like, but this… this is pretty awesome guys. This isn’t anti-shippy at all. This is shippy and sweet and subtle in the extreme.

And I love it and I really think you should too <3

tbh I kind of forget about it lol. It’s so far from how I personally interpreted the Time War shenanigans that I discount it from my headcanon. As far as I’m concerned:

The Moment used Bad Wolf’s/Rose’s image to try to persuade him not to kill the Time Lords, yet failed to do so because the Doctors realised they had to do it because a) they can’t rewrite their own person history like that and b) they can’t just remove Gallifrey and hope the Daleks die in their own crossfire because c) the Time War wasn’t just some simple laser battle on the soil/in the skies of Gallifrey but existed in many corners of time and space, affecting many different species and d) the Time Lords were very corrupt by this point, at least the High Council were, and needed to be stopped; the Doctor unfortunately had to sacrifice the children/innocent Gallifreyans along with the corrupt ones to end it

and e) the Moment was just using the image of Bad Wolf/Rose as a cheap manipulation ploy, not because Bad Wolf actually had anything to do with it

Also, in my mind, the three Doctors hit the big red button together after Clara says something like at least the different versions of him can shoulder the load a bit in that moment

But whilst Hurt’s Doctor remembers this, the other two have to forget because timelines

Oh! And in my head, both versions of Elizabeth I we saw? Both Zygons. The real Elizabeth only shouts ‘off with his head’ in The Shakespeare Code because, when she defeats the imposter Liz and gets back to her throne, she sees that portrait of them being ~married and hates him for almost besmirching her reputation 

Also Hurt!Doctor doesn’t regenerate at the end of the episode in my head, because it makes no sense, as he says he’s 800 but Nine says he’s 900 in Rose, and there is no way in hell you are going to get me to believe that Nine wandered around for a century without catching sight of himself in the mirror. And no one’s gonna give me the ‘the doctor lies’ bullshit either, ta

I mean if we’re getting really technical with regards to how far away the 50th was from what I wanted, then Hurt!Doctor wasn’t 8.5 at all, but actually a future him (because I liked him! He was funny [and the one I liked best of all three of them but that’s delving into 10&11’s characterisation stuff which is another kettle of fish altogether] I just didn’t like how he replaced Paul Mcgann) and so in my version 8 actually pressed the button with Ten and Eleven

Conclusion: the Time Lords  are still dead, the 2.47 billion maypole children didn’t exist anyway (because how can such a long-lived species with a relatively small population have 2.47 billion children on that planet at one time?? More like 2.47 million. Not dancing around a maypole, either. More like, staring into the vortex and going mad or running away)

So basically, if the Time Lords to come back, or if there’s an ongoing plot about the Doctor ~finding Gallifrey again, then I’m gonna reinvent the reason for that in my head to fit in line with my 50th headcanon. Something like, they got back via person/reason x y z, something akin to how they did before, in The End of Time, by using the Master, rather than ‘yay the doctor didn’t really kill them !!111’