Because how many gold gilted, velvet wearing, leather gloved, weirdly Doctor horny, queer-vibing, demi god larping, finger snapping, scheme planning, imprisoned ‘forever’ but whoops-ing, Doctor knowing, companion envying, powerful as all hell but petty as fuck being, monologuing, mind controlling, personal space lacking, four-beat-series-3-score having, game playing, manipulating, murdering, TARDIS stealing, time warping, central villain psychopathic weird ass Doctor-fuckers do we genuinely think this baby *slaps the universe’s hood* is gonna successfully sustain.

The Doctor’s going round in circles, the Master is also going round in circles. Somehow it has resulted in this guy either in the past or future or the timeline where the Time Lords didn’t successfully stave off turning to stone but somehow embraced it, I don’t freaking know. The Master’s had no nose before and been a sentient pile of charred flesh and plasma, being whatever this thing is isn’t even a leap. Once he was a ghost snake with a voring problem - and not the way round you’d expect a snake to have it.

If you’re saying do I think it’s ‘our’ Master with his memories of ‘her’, the Valiant, whatever? No. But as with Martin!Doctor the details are irrelevant, because it walks like my duck, quacks like my duck, and is camp and tasteless like my duck, so god help me it’s my duck.

I feel like we’ve got to be leading up to the Doctor bottling it, and Yaz actually having to take her place in one of these major situations. Not just the wwtdd, but also else why have her able to pilot the TARDIS.

And I know that sounds scary and ‘she’s gonna get herself killed’ but I think that’s actually us projecting the same feeling as Yaz’s doubts, that for some reason only the Doctor can do this. When no, no Yaz can probably do whatever she needs to with some backup. Not necessarily entirely safely, but neither can the Doctor. And the result can get her back into the brain state she was in before (and perhaps let her realise her personal capacity to do good as a leader might actually outstrip what she can do as second-fiddle to the Doctor).

But I don’t think we’re looking at a Clara situation, though there will be callbacks of course - we’ve had them already. I think a lot of those theories ignore that by the end Clara had basically suicidally detached herself from her reality on Earth because it was unbearably painful without Rose- Pink, Danny Pink, sorry, and she was exhibiting classic risk-taking behaviour that comes with that. The problem wasn’t just that Clara was ‘doing what the Doctor would’, it was that she was doing it without the Doctor’s ability to survive death. Which she knew and…didn’t care about. One way or the other. She needed the rush to feel good.

Yaz isn’t like that. She seems fairly psychologically well, of course she likes adventure but doesn’t seem to seek adrenaline compulsively, she has family who loves her and she loves back, a sister who’d probably move the universe for her (and then give her an earful), not to mention Ryan, Graham, and even Dan who all have some experience of this life, with the first two proving they know how to encourage psychologically healthy decisions. She refers to herself as not currently being police, because she already got narked at someone for incorrectly omitting the ‘ex’ in there, and she’s not in her role. But there’s nothing saying she can’t go back to that or doesn’t want to - or with Jack’s help somewhere similarly appropriate.

Clara wanted to be the Doctor because she’d lost everyone else she felt she could conceivably be and it made her feel important and alive. Yaz wants to emulate the Doctor because she’s strong, amazing, clever, knows how to save people. She doesn’t literally want to be her, have her exact life and replace her own. She wants to learn.

This experience in the Temple will probably be enough to remind Yaz of that mortality, and she’ll factor that into decisions in a way Clara didn’t want to, and balance it as best she can. And it’s not like she got into this position by a stupid risk in the first place, she just said sure, she’d try to fix something. So will she have to ‘Doctor Up’, yes. But she’ll still be Yaz beneath it all. And will it work out perfectly, maybe not, and will Sonya save her by miraculously turning up to kick someone in the head, maybe yeah. But I really, really don’t think we need to worry about her dying. Not like that.

Clearly the Temple et al. is Time Lordy, however maybe not our personal Time Lordy exactly ie. alt!verse, alt!timeline, going in a ‘the empire die out they start again, die out start again’ thing etc.

Could that potential be supported with the use of triangles both as recurrent decorative theme and with the Priest Triangle(s) itself, rather than the use of circles as is more commonly used for ours.

And it’s emphasising this intriguing focus on the whole number 3 thing too, no doubt no doubt no doubt. Which honestly intrigues me. The use of three, but the three is a third wheel.

-We’ve got our background bodyguard wiith the skulls. We’ve got Swarm and Azure and the Doctor in a ‘dance’. We had the Doctor, Master, and the Cyberium/Cyberman. It looked like it would be Swarm, Azure, and that other guy, but no, yet we later got a third anyway.

It’s all very Rassilon, Omega, and The Other One.

We have three permanent characters in the entirety* of the show’s run - the Doctor, the Master, and the TARDIS. And you usually wouldn’t mention her but she’s being treated as a character currently, there are either a lot of TARDISes or a lot of her floating about, and the Azure/‘Blue’ translation thing, so I don’t want to discount it to the Doctor and Master only - that’s clearly the trap Chibs wants us to fall in.

It’s all clunky threes: We don’t need Azure at all currently, but she’s here, so obviously she’s important. We don’t need that background bodyguard (admittedly scene not entirely over but still) but they’re here, so must be important. We‘d know where we are with pairs but there’s always a deliberate attempt to rip the pair open and add one more - you could even include Dan to that if you wanted.

This should obviously be a story about the Doctor and the Master.

But it’s not. Everything is plus one seemingly extraneous person, and now I know Chibnall’s writing, we are supposed to feel that.

You remember Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events?

The Quagmire Triplets. Always triplets even if one was dead.

oh I’ll let there be a tender goodbye kiss or whatever as the Doctor realises just how incredibly she fucked this up at every conceivable point, and could have stopped at any time; but as with the theme of Thirteen’s Doctor everything will loudly ring with the sounds of missed opportunities. (Chibnall’s use of narrative ‘empty space’ is truly masterful even if it makes me want to scream).