honestly……… no more clara references……… that’s enough……………
And he could have literally reminisced about the fact that he did that to donna. it hurt him a lot a you know. Just for one second he realised how wiping Bill’s memories would affect him – can you imagine him having to go through all that again? I swear to shit when Bill told him to think about how he would feel, he literally thought about this exchange
“Donna I was just going”
“Yeah. see ya.”
i mean knowing moffat, he simply refuses make references to things that he didn’t create, so
but honestly that would’ve been a great Donna flashback.
Bill keeps begging him to not wipe her memory, and all of a sudden we flash to black and white, back to that moment between Donna and Ten, with no audio other than Bill’s pleads as the scene of Donna’s own pleads plays out.
we flash back to our current moment, and the Doctor quickly pulls his hands back. “get out”, he says quietly, trying not to let it known that his voice is quavering.
to be fair, the line was “imagine how you’d feel if someone did this to you”, as in if you had your memory wiped, so honestly clara’s theme did fit better than donna’s moment
im also convinced that for him to have considered wiping bill’s memory in the first place he had to have been blocking donna or something
actually, it doesn’t fit the situation better.
if my memory serves correct, twelves memory wipe was consensual, while donna’s was not. twelve wanted to wipe bill’s memory, and she begged him not to, much like how donna begged the doctor not to do the same.
and even when she says, “imagine how you’d feel if someone did this to you”, he CAN’T remember his own memory wipe, he DOESN’T remember it. so that moment was just to tug at the heartstrings of the viewers, and he doesn’t have the memory of clara and his own memory wipe in order to use that experience in order to decide not to wipe her memory. it JUST BARELY makes sense, if that moment truly makes sense at all.
it would have made much more sense if bill had continued to beg him to not wipe her memory, and the doctor had remembered how donna had begged the same, and how badly wiping her memory hurt him, which would make him decide against wiping bill’s memory.
so it’s an example of the situation not truly fitting, moffat refusing to callback to anything that isn’t 100% of his creation and/or design, and moffat not really making any sense.
12 does remember that his memory was wiped.
When something goes missing, you can always recreate it by the hole it left. I know her name was Clara. I know we travelled together. I know that there was an Ice Warrior on a submarine and a mummy on the Orient Express. I know we sat together in the Cloisters and she told me something very important, but I have no idea what she said. Or what she looked like. Or how she talked. Or laughed. There’s nothing there. Just nothing.
He knows what it feels like to be missing something.
Whereas if he’d been comparing the situation to Journey’s End, he would’ve wiped her mind anyway then found some rain to feel sorry for himself in.
“Moffat refuses to reference things he didn’t create” is a really fucking weird thing to say about an episode that prominently features a photograph of Susan
I’d say it’s not even a fucking weird thing to say. I’d just go all in and say it’s fucking idiotic.
look he knows his memory was wiped but he doesn’t remember it
re: clara references: i really just did not like her as a companion but the ghost of rose did linger for a really long time so it’s not unprecedented … i do agree donna would have been the better reference there though and like i don’t fucking know why after donna the doctor who force mind wipe someone so i’m blaming moffat
and for the record moffat does entirely ignore cannon his doesn’t create. even cannon he does create lmao okay like susan is there fucking sure because she’s not new who honestly catch him references anything from new who he didn’t create ever? no. besides, he wasn’t the one that brought sarah jane back. moffat has his head so far up his own ass and that sentence is true as shit not only does he not reference things he doens’t create he borderline refuses to admit they even happened or held any source of narrative importance (an example here, if we are being petty, could be the doctor on mind wiping and donna) and sometimes just writes them as though they didn’t happen (literally countless examples)
References from specifically RTD’s Doctor Who that featured in Moffat’s series (With images and gifs this time, as I have them with me and I’m bored)-
Holograms of all the past Doctors, including Nine and Ten, in The Eleventh Hour:
Magpie Electricals seen in The Beast Below:
Nine and Ten (and Rose too, apparently, though I haven’t got a shot of her) seen (briefly) in flashback in The Lodger:
A ton of past villains, including RTD’s Judoon, in The Pandorica Opens:
RTD-era TARDIS featured very prominently in The Doctor’s Wife:
Holograms of Rose, Martha and Donna in Let’s Kill Hitler, there to give the Doctor guilt and remind him what he’s capable of doing to his companions:
Rose and Jack both mentioned in The Wedding of River Song as reasons the Doctor doesn’t want to die:
(who made those original gifs?)
Ten, RTD’s creation, written by Moffat in Day of the Doctor. Keeps his last words “I don’t want to go” as the last words ever said by him on screen:
Rose/Bad Wolf:
The War Doctor seen regenerating into Nine (Moffat on that scene):
A wall of past companions and friends, including some pretty obscure RTD-era ones like Erina Magambo:
The relationship between the Doctor and Elizabeth I, something RTD created back in “The Shakespeare Code” and Moffat carried on (now we know why she hated him so much in TSC. He never went back for her!)
Clara views some past companions in a Moffat-written minisode:
The references to where the Twelfth Doctor got his face:
Reference to Rose and Martha in Before the Flood:
Flashback to Donna in The Girl Who Died, inspiring the Doctor to save Ashildr (this was not a small part of the episode):
(You want a Donna reference that works really well? There it is. After thinking of her, he saves another woman to make himself feel better, dooming her to a life she doesn’t want. He never learns.)
Reference to Jack Harkness (co-created by RTD with Moffat himself, but still) in The Girl Who Died:
And finally we’re due for the return of John Simm’s Master, as seen in the trailer:
Soo… there’s that. (Sorry for the long post). But one other thing I haven’t seen mentioned? Doctor Who is for children. I bring this up a lot because everyone constantly forgets it. The audience Moffat has been writing for for the past couple of years were not actually alive yet when “Rose” aired. They probably have, at best, a passing familiarity with Donna. To them, Nine is just another Doctor. Rose is just a random pretty lady with sparkly eyes.
That all these references to RTD’s era are in there anyway says rather a lot I think.