From: jblum@hamlet.umd.edu (Hi ho -- Kermit the Frog here...)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho
Subject: Re: Thursday Afternoon Review-"Time's Crucible" !SPOILERS!
Date: 8 Jan 93 04:07:24 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park

Meow!  Spoilers!




and one more...


Well, Stephen gave a great review to Time's Crucible -- he agreed with me
on almost every point.  :-)  But there is one thing he might have missed.
As he wrote:

        4) The biggest problem of all.  No explanation of where the Processes
                came from or what they are and only theories about what they
                were up to.  Similar problem to that in "Ghost Light" where
                we learn nothing of Light's origins.  That wasn't so bad
                as we were visiting another place in that story, but this is
                a far more personal attack on the Doctor, so I feel we should
                know his villain a little better than we did.

There _IS_ an explanation of the Process.  It's extremely oblique, and open
to interpretation, just like "The Other" is, but it satisfies me.

Look at the scene immediately after the last early-Gallifreyan flashback.
The Doctor is powering the TARDIS up to dangerous levels, and he tells Ace:

  'My TARDIS,' he growled.  A new, cold determination was in his eyes.
'You're right, Ace, of course you are.  Now we've seen what it can do.  I
never realized its potential before.  There's nothing my ship can't be.  It's
not just a passe-partout to the universe.  The possibilities are infinite!
Who cares about the world outside?  We can create our own in here!'
  'No, Professor!' she shouted, grasping his arms.  'That was in crisis!'
The power was screaming in her head.  It reflected in his eyes.  She thought
he would burn her.
  'Anything we like, Ace.  Just name it.  Anything!  We can make the stars
sing.  Infinite beauty, infinite mystery.  And infinite power in the Process!
All here in my TARDIS!  We need never go out again!'

Note the capital P.

The Process is a process in the TARDIS computer, made real in the twisted
spatial state of the City.  Created by the Doctor's own mind for the purpose
of recreating the TARDIS in a new form.  The involvement of the ancient
Gallifreyans comes from the Doctor's other main obsession at that point --
what really happened on Gallifrey in the Dark Time.

The explosion which follows is the Process being loosed into the TARDIS's
tangled web of time.  This is the beginning of the loop of the Cat's Cradle,
when the process jumps from here back to the point where the Doctor first
noticed the disturbance.  The loop is now closed.

As the Doctor himself says, once he is freed from the obsessions which
created the Process, "We'd been to one extreme" (of the tangled time).  "We
had to go to the other to balance it out."

Ace brought the Doctor back to his senses after that scene and the explosion,
and the Process was cancelled -- but not deleted.  (UNIX buffs, think of it
as a kill -1.)  Its Future was stolen.  In crashing, it formed an infinite
loop which became the tangled course of the story.

So this theory -- that the Doctor himself unknowingly twisted the Cat's
Cradle -- both explains the Process's name and origin.  It also makes
its destruction a bit clearer -- it was just a kill -9.

Anyone who wants to explain why the Process behaved the way it did, you're
welcome to it.  This is just a start.