She Said, He Said.



TV Uploaded and broadcast after tonight's episode, She Said, He Said is a nuWho equivalent of the Troughton Web of Fear trailer filmed in the style of the Steve Lyon penned framing material with Ian Chesterton from the VHS release of The Crusade or with all that memorabilia Tom's Shada escapade ("Beat you cock!").  We're offered two contrasting approaches to the soliloquy, looking everywhere other than at the audience or addressing us directly, which means Jenna-Louise is left to uncomfortably talk into space until she's confronted by the Tussaud's version of the Eleventh Doctor.

Exposition wise, it's mostly a tease, offering a synopsis of what we already know, though it does illuminate something which has been bothering me for the past seven weeks.  Other than the Doctor, Clara's barely spoken to anyone else about herself in an intimate way.  There's the small child in Arkadin and the Professor in Cold War, and herself in relation to the TARDIS but most of anything she's done has been plot based, generic companion stuff.  In that sense, this is the longest time we've spent with her covering the existential essentials and we still only scratch the surface.  She loves him, but she's not sure why.

Although the unreversed "He Said, She Said" is a relatively common phrase, it does also give me the opportunity to recommend the underappreciated and generally ignored 1991 film of the same name starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins as television journalists falling in and out of love, which utilises a Roshomon structure (cf, The Girl with Two Breasts episode of Coupling) to show the situation from their differing gendered and interpersonal perspectives, which is also, obviously what this prolquel is attempted to do too (and we're back on topic).

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