Response To “The Magic Trick You Didn’t See” / The Coffee Theory

Now we’ve had this bi-generation I just think we should go full unhinged and have gold tooth turn into Simm Master. Have a full ‘why has this face returned?’ parallel. Shove him into retired life with Tennant’s doctor. Scale down their enmity to absolutely microscopic proportions. From cosmic scale to just domestic life. Have the Nobles stuck in the front row watching them sort their shit out.

I want them trying to survive Sylvia Noble together. I want them at war with their neighbours. I want them battling with the chaos of Evri deliveries - ‘not even the TARDIS can locate the safe place they’ve apparently left it in’. Have them arguing in Tesco over whether it really matters whether eggs are free range. They can make up by getting their own chickens which The Master can regularly threaten to roast much to Rose’s horror (but he won’t because he named them after the Teletubbies and The Doctor knows he’d never hurt Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa or Po… and he just enjoys having dominion over lesser creatures or something 🙄)

I want aliens turning up for their regularly scheduled fuck with London at Christmas time moment only to be faced with the two of them in their matching Noble family Christmas jumpers (and they will be wearing them because have you met Donna?) And no, The Master hasn’t gone soft, he doesn’t care about Earth in general, but the Strictly final is on and he’s a little invested in that.

I want Donna, in her new UNIT job, explaining this to her new colleagues. Because they know The Doctor and The Master, they’ve seen the files, and they just…live in her garden now.

Fans: There's nothing random and accidental in Good Omens!

Neil: The clock jumping forward a few minutes in the kiss scene is a continuity error, I'm afraid.

No but like listen to me, the ENTIRE REASON that Gabriel could throw away everything he had for a happy ending with his demon love when Aziraphale couldn't is that Gabriel never actually cared. Abandoning heaven is easy if you don't believe in anything it stands for and were only ever in it for the power. But Aziraphale? Aziraphale is an idealist. Fundamentally, when he goes against the letter of heaven's law, it's because he believes that he's fulfilling a deeper obligation to heaven's true purpose.

Aziraphale's values and goals are good in the real sense of the word and not merely Good in the visible and performative way that most of heaven operates, but he still believes that heaven can and should epitomise that goodness. Conversely, Crowley (the one being Aziraphale has ever met who actually understands and shares Aziraphale's values) has given up on institutional salvation. He's seen both heaven and hell up close and knows they're functionally identical, except that heaven has nicer views. They want the same things, but they can't agree on how to get them.

Gabriel and Beelzebub don't have this conflict. Neither of them cared about anything enough to put it above their own self interest - it's just that their feelings for each other transformed that self interest into something softer, something that maybe grew into real empathy. This is why the path to their happy ending came easier for them, and Crowley and Aziraphale have to walk a more winding road.

Guys. Let's talk about the Eccles cakes. Shall we?

When Crowley orders six shots of espresso, Aziraphale considerately asks for something that "calms people down". Nina then suggests him to get Eccles cakes.

Now the word, "Eccles" originally means "The church". It foreshadowed the season finale where Aziraphale asks Crowley to join heaven. It is a callback to Crowley being the (sauntered-vaguely-downwards) fallen angel. Crowley was given a choice to join heaven again. To eat the Eccles cake. But he doesn't. He doesn't want to be calmed down and hushed. He has found his voice, his own side. He knows the truth about Heaven and Hell and God.

The Eccles cake is also called the "squashed fly cake' because the inside is filled with black currants. This could be a metaphor for hell. How Crowley was also asked back to hell and he said no.

Aziraphale ordering Eccles cakes shows the inner struggle that he is facing. He cares for Crowley. He wants to be there for him. But at the same time, he believes whole heartedly in heaven. He still thinks of God's plan as ineffable. As indubitable. He believes that Crowley and he will be happier in Heaven. He fails to see that even if heaven seems to be the side of "truth and light", on the inside it's all squashed flies. It's just as bad as hell. That when heaven ends life on earth it will be just as dead as hell ended it.

Tell me you said no.

Tell me we were on the same page, that you know Heaven is just as terrible as Hell, that there is no good side, no right people, that both sides are happy to destroy all life on Earth if they come out on top.

Tell me you said no.

Tell me you remember how terrified they made you every time you did something good that wasn’t Good by the laws of Heaven. Tell me you value yourself more than that.

Tell me you said no.

Tell me I wasn’t alone in seeing all that cruelty done to humans and wanting no part in it. Tell me you’re not going back to help those people.

Tell me you said no.

Tell me you’re not going back to the people who hurt me first, the oldest, deepest wound. Tell me you understand why I can never go back there. Tell me you know I didn’t deserve it.

Tell me you said no.

(Almost) exactly my sentiment! Thank you so much for expressing it better than I ever could hope to do myself.

RTD explaining why he didn’t put Then-Three in Thirteen’s outfit, is not an excuse. It is his genuine thought process.

Nobody has to like it, I don’t like it, I understand his reasoning but I would still have done it anyway.

But no, damn it, the trans rights campaigner is not transphobic for fearing the British public’s transphobia.

Look. Have a moment of honesty with me right here. Is there not even a teeny-weeny bit of you that wanted Ten-Three in 13’s clothes because you think it would look a bit funny. Because it would have, that’s why we made funny art about it.

I do not think it’s beyond the pale, for Russell to know that would be the case, and go, ‘No. I don’t want that to be a laughing matter.’

The episode he’s got next has a trans character in it. Deliberately casted as trans. This will be a feature. Considering that it is something that will be handled seriously, him not wanting to start off on the foot of ‘ha ha man look funny in lady’s clothes’ is understandable.

Again, I think it would have been alright, but it’s understandable he is afraid of this. He has been incredibly vocal about trans people and trans issues, he has not been sat idly by as trans people are being attacked as Britain becomes TERF Island, please take a moment to understand what a gay man of his age is thinking seeing all this, people’s reactions, the legislation, he’s watching time run backwards.

Perhaps you had to be there, but even with Doctor Who’s drop in popularity, you should’ve seen the reactions to things like the pregnant man in Chibs’s first series. Russell knows his own joke with Cassandra that was just meant as a comment on her not remembering her life was taken and used by goddamn transphobes.

That he is afraid that your first reaction to Ten-Three in Thirteen’s clothes would be a giggle, is not unfounded, or unreasonable, and while I think he is catastrophising here, we are currently in a state of catastrophe over trans issues and depictions, that he is trying to make better, not worse, when he is aware that this moment will be ON THE EVENING NEWS. For every single Not-We to see.

He clearly is covering trans issues, we know he’s covering trans issues, doing so in an episode where he brings back David Tennant so literally everyone and their mum is going to watch and he knows it. And he wants to do everything right so that people do not just go into it with ‘man dressed as lady lol’.

We all would probably have taken the risk here. Felt that doing this might be more boundary breaking (positive) than funny (negative). But a moment of empathy for why he would choose to do this. Because we might have taken the risk and that turn out to have been the wrong move. That he wants to be more careful than risk adding even a splash of fuel to the fire is completely understandable, and if you don’t think so, you might not realise how much trans people in my country are already being burned.

All praise to DT – the patron saint and/or totemic being of us all, Who Cannot Sit Normally. 

I, for one, find this exact arrangement of lower extremities quite comfortable. Years of reading crouched in various crooks and nannies + breaststroke swimming have got my joints used to being put in positions that are not conventionally normal for the average human. Having knees that do… well, turn outwards, I guess is the right way to put it –  is pretty useful. 

Full credit for tag furniture_abuse goes to the incredible @mizgnomer, of course. (I'm awfully sorry if I'm breaching the Tumblr etiquette there, tagging non-mutual, but that blog is a bona fide treasure trove of all things DT-related, especially visual stuff.  It was the reason I came to Tumblr at all, for what it's worth.)

Heyyyyyy I’d really like to talk more about the ball, who’s with me.

Because for all its glitter, the ball is dark. No, seriously, it’s dark. It’s eerie, it’s disturbing, and the narrative doesn’t shy away from showing us just how much. 

As in a classic fairytale, mortals are being spirited away into another realm to dance through the night. Here, however, we see exactly who is orchestrating the dance, and why.

And we empathize with him, but watching Aziraphale has never been so painful or so unsettling.

Nina arrives distraught and is immediately hit with the realization that she doesn’t feel distraught, even though she knows she should be feeling it. She confronts Aziraphale and he just tells her: oh yes! :) no long faces tonight! And she is disturbed throughout the ball, thinks she is losing her mind, questions and fights the enchantment… but from time to time, the enchantment still takes hold.

And just—

Aziraphale. Aziraphale, you do know that manipulating people is wrong, don’t you? You… do know that? And yes, of course, neither Crowley’s nor Aziraphale’s approach to morality is human. They are eldritch, they are otherworldly. It was Crowley who changed the paintball guns into real guns in S1, though of course, the humans still had choice in using them.

But the ball is still different.

We’ve never seen Aziraphale do anything quite so disturbing before, or go so obviously deep into his own delusion. There are moments during these scenes when even Crowley, permanently frustrated, is very nearly disturbed. (“Angel! What are you doing?” or “Making it rain is one thing, but a BALL?”)

I fully think that by that point in the story, Aziraphale is not all right. He is in an anxiety spiral, denying reality fiercely, obstinately, disastrously, not listening to any of Crowley’s hissed warnings. Yes, yes, he is giddy, he is in love. It’s so very important for him that everything go RIGHT this night, the night he gets to dance with Crowley. Is he even aware of everything he is conjuring up, of the enchantment he has woven? The humans who step through the doors of the bookshop change: their clothing, their mood, their speech patterns… By this point, is Aziraphale doing this consciously at all? Or is reality conforming to his expectations, forcing everyone into a replica of the nineteenth century while Aziraphale himself, distracted and smitten, works himself up to inviting Crowley to dance?

In the first few episodes, as fear and danger grow, as Aziraphale is faced with the danger specifically to Crowley (I don’t see why he would risk his existence for you, Shax tells him in the car), Aziraphale only denies reality all the more fiercely, only holds on to his plans tighter, only puts more force into them and exerts more control (really, rather like the archangels with their Great Plan).

And the ball, beautiful and otherworldly and eerie as it is, is also a dire warning. 

In the morning, it will be Crowley, not Aziraphale, who will get told off for manipulating Nina and Maggie. Aziraphale won’t reflect on this. He won’t be forced to reflect, and Metatron will manipulate him in turn.

There is a plan to follow. The show must go on.

GOD the ball is so dark.

Me: Fuck, David aged like fine wine, he looks so hot now

Twitter weirdos: He looks old now

Me: …… you all too young to appreciate men anyway

So, everyone has pointed out how funny it is that fifteen claimed to have gone through therapy and be fine now only to immediately act just like his old traumatised self and it is but like…

Has anyone considered fifteen was lying?

What if he hasn’t actually experienced that domestic bliss that fourteen got to enjoy or have fourteens memories following their split at all?What if he just told fourteen he did to convince him to stay on earth and be happy so fourteen could have a chance at happiness that fifteen believes he will never have and doesn’t deserve and his seemingly incredibly upbeat personality is just a facade?

I mean this sounds incredibly in character for the doctor to me tbh