Timelord Art is different from other Art because it contains
archetypes of the collective unconscious that transcend time or space,
universal images observed from the outside but also experienced from the inside
so they look different and cause a difference. These archetypes lie hidden and
dormant in the Art until they are activated to cause a stir or restore order,
depending on whether they are monstrous or heroic. On recognition they come
alive with significance to the Psyche (soul) and the Cosmos (society), linking
inside with outside, causing change.
They appear as geometric patterns like the circles and
hexagons associated with the tardis’ interior and later fused in the art
sculpture behind Tom Baker on the Gallery walls( patterns first recorded in
geometric engravings of Neolithic stone
walls at Knowth 4000BC), or as Good/Evil adversaries like the Doctor( who first
appears in English medieval morality plays as an agent of regeneration) and
Zygons ( monsters who duplicate or delude or deceive, as old as zygotes or devils
or chimeras),as the enigmatic wise man who is the overall curator or custodian
of the National Gallery, as an absurd fairytale queen with her consort Doctor
10, as the quest narratives of the doctor’s
epic journey through 12 incarnations (see classic Greek epic of Odysseus
with his 12 ships etc, a number that signifies completion ),as the mythical lost paradise of Gallifrey (see
Atlantis, Shangri-la or Camelot etc) or
as the modern archetypal individuation process the war doctor undergoes in reflection
as a form of “depth analysis” with his Conscience/ “The Moment”, itself described
as a Timelord creation, a weapon whose mentality is capable of devastation.
All these archetypes are Artforms of the Timelords,
themselves archetypal mythical godlike figures whose power source is the “Eye
of Harmony” as symbol of a Unity generating itself from within itself.
Mysterious images of Timelord Art are drawn from deep within, reflections of
the inside on the outside. “Day of the Doctor” is an episode full of this Timelord
Art.
............
“I never PICTURED you doing it”, says Clara as the Doctor
faces his crisis of consciousness about whether to annihilate everything,
meaning she had no image of this awful moment in her Mind, finding it
impossible to accept that the doctor really committed an atrocity. She only
sees him as a good heroic healer, from one side. But monstrous mental pictures
do exist in Timelord Art where “slices of real time are frozen in suspended
animation, bigger on the inside, oil paintings in 3D”. Unlike normal two
dimensional Art, the effect is dynamic, as if walking into a painting and
moving around, or as if the painting leaps out at you in 3D computer graphics.
All Art holds the moment still (See Yeats “Byzantium” or Keats “Grecian Urn”),
but this Timelord Art is different because vital, literally capturing monsters
and heroes and universal narratives in images that are archetypes.
(Computer graphics 3D Art. A hidden image leaps out at you as you "reflect" on it)
The painting of “Gallifrey Falls” is an example of Timelord
Art, a luminous 3D picture of the fall of Arcadia ( fallen paradise),the name
of a city that was also a fallen paradise in Ancient Greece, so of universal mythical
significance. Deep in reflection, the
Doctor is disturbed because he recognises it, “a painting that doesnt belong in
this time or place”, he says. Reflection is the key condition for this art to
be viewed. He knows it should not be on open display with the more easily
accessible portraits and landscapes of the National Gallery, so he asks for it
to be placed in the “Black Archives”, a top secret fortified location inside
the Tower of London, “the highest security on the planet”.
(Gallifrey Falls")
More Timelord Art is kept in the secret “Under Gallery”
beneath the public National Gallery of Trafalgar Square, the symbolic heart of
the kingdom. Here dangerous subversive paintings are kept under lock and key,
accessible only to the initiated who recognise their worth at the right time,via
reflection. Access is behind a portrait of the fairytale courtship between a
goddess like Elizabeth 1 and her consort Doctor 10, a hidden door that opens into utter
darkness where “art too dangerous for public consumption” is kept.
(Timelord Art containing monsters in Under Gallery)
This dangerous art is Timelord Art that contains monsters
trapped in time. One painting is a copy of Gericault’s “Raft of Medusa” where
shipwrecked cybermen are clinging to the raft.
And actually, the original version of 1818, now hanging in The Louvre,
was considered subversive at the time because it dared to portray passion and
violent movement, an action painting which would have been just as disturbing
to its contemporaries as 3D art is to us. This new Romanticism broke through
the conventions of classic static posed composition. Another painting in the
style of maritime art is of a tempest tossed sailing ship with what looks like
sea devils beneath the waves. Both paintings portray vessels bearing characters
across turbulent seas, images from deep in the subconscious. Old religions used
images of manned sailing boats at sea avoiding devils as allegory of the soul’s
journey in life,(see 14th
century ship woodcut from “Le grant kalandrier et compost des Bergiers”), an
image still used by sufi mystics in their stylised calligraphy.( Janet
Hyland and Plain Paintings: Boats and a Song).
(Raft of the Medusa with cybermen)
In the collective unconscious of the “Under Gallery” everything
is usually kept safely contained, however “something unknown” has got out of
one of the luminous landscape paintings. Monsters called Zygons have seized the
“favourable moment “and broken out of their paintings, causing chaos and
confusion by duplicating themselves disguised as harmless. Everything is
consequently out of order with the doctors unable to tell who is good and who
is bad, a stalemate threatening mutual destruction deep in the inner control
room of the “Black Archives”. These extreme forces are causing an imbalance
that threatens the stability of existence (the “kingdom”), or, as Kate says,
“If these creatures have access to the Black Archives we might have lost control
of the planet”.
(monsters leaving the painting)
At such a moment of crisis there is a plan which involves
recalling a hero (the doctor), “remember you pledged yourself to the security
of my kingdom”, writes Elizabeth, “In this capacity I have appointed you as
curator to the Under Gallery where deadly danger to England is locked away.
Should any disturbance occur it is my wish you be summoned”. Summoning is done
via an exhibit, the Fez hat, a symbol that unites the three doctors of this
episode, also linking them back to the first doctor who wore a related oriental
hat, the karakul. In the Under Gallery, doctor 11 recognises the Fez and is
irresistibly drawn to it, placing it on his head before throwing it out to link
up with his other likenesses or persona. This inclusive 3 in 1 unity brings the doctors
together in remarkable strength, a strength that reaches beyond the “warring
opposites” like Good/Evil.
The monsters threaten stability because they are out of
place and out of control with inflated cravings to seize power, megalomaniacs
difficult to identify because disguised and not looking like monsters. The
danger is critical when it reaches the “Black Archives”, the inner control room
of the Tower, a place so fortified nothing can usually get in, even the Tardis
with all its imaginative powers. Those
who do enter or work there “have their memory of it immediately erased”, so
it’s a place of abstraction, without image or recall. However the monsters have
got in and are locked in a stalemate of duality with the humans, surmounting each
other’s polarity with potential to annihilate.
They are saved by the arrival of the 3 doctors acting
together in unison, walking out of the Timelord Painting and into the room. It
was the only way they could get beyond the defences, by using Art. The doctors
change the situation by changing perception. Only in collective amnesia with no
one remembering who they are as separate specific individuals or entities can
the opposites act together in unison to restore peace and equilibrium by
cancelling each other out. So archetypal heroes and monsters and their stories of
combat are living in the 3D effect of Timelord Art.
(3 in 1 doctors leaping out of painting)
There are other examples of this Art in the episode; the 3D
interior of the Tardis as seen from the door , the 3D holograms used by the
Commander Timelord on Gallifrey, the 3D “projections of reality” presented by
the Moment where distraught Gallifreyans run around the doctors as if real.
Timelord Art is outside time, appears different, magical, luminous with strange
colours, surreal or ethereal. It has the quality and significance of visions
from dream or reverie, painted by the hand of a different consciousness.
(3D Art of Tardis interior,the Imagination)
All these images are relevant to this “crisis of
consciousness” that the war doctor is experiencing as a divided self with his
Moment of reflection/conscience over a decision about mutual destruction. He
himself could be in a Timelord painting as he stands in front of a surreal
desert landscape, a shimmering dream landscape that seems lit from within. Is
he a monster or a hero in this painting as he tries to make up his Mind, or is
he both?
(war doctor in a surreal reality)
“I was thinking” he says. “I know,I heard you, all of you
rattling around in your head. Doctor, thats the name in your head. If you’re
trying to develop an Ego you’ve got the job”, says the Moment. He is talking to
himself, something that happens to the other doctors too in this episode, as
these heroes of action become men of reflection. The barn where the doctor
examines himself is surrounded by a strange light with eerie music, similar to
the strange unworldly background light in the woods of the Elizabethan
sequences. Elizabeth’s soldiers want to “have the head of the doctor”.
This doctor is on a journey of the soul, deeper and deeper
into the psyche where archetypal images show their significance from the
collective unconscious. So the episode moves illogically like a surreal stream
of consciousness, non-sequentially, connecting by illusion or association or
paradox in mirages that form from the inner spaces of the psyche. These
universal narrative images are Timelord Art where monsters and heroes and
symbolic happenings are aspects of the Psyche painting its own picture, telling
its own story, imprints that print out, appearing visionary or numinous. The
images of the psyche’s internal structure are projected outward into an Art
that move us like no other because deep inside us as well as outside,
experienced while observed.
In the war doctor’s story, a warrior of action facing a
crisis of consciousness is forced into reflection. As he becomes more
self-conscious he sees himself in the various guises or persona he has adopted
including his current form as the unacknowledged mass murderer. He sees his
battles with foes, the divisions and multiplicity of contradictions or
paradoxes or anomalies that cause feuds and differences. He sees the other as
an enemy and not himself, and it all seems to fall apart. In the development of
his Ego that “The Moment” deems necessary he encounters monsters like the
Daleks in ordeals of inflation, denial, delusion and projection across the sea
of his subconscious, psychic adventures, like a ship at sea....
This journey inside takes him through the “Under Gallery” of
his subconscious with all its dangers to the centre of it all in the “Black
Archive” at the core of his being. In great peril of annihilation, he tries to
pull himself together as 3 in 1 (in Depth analysis this trilogy is called
Ego/Self/Shadow) to prevent further disintegration. Finally, realising himself
as a unity of all things, Good AND Bad, including all negative aspects and
unacknowledged parts of himself hitherto unknown or unconscious (monstrous),his
integrated self is transformed and energised to free himself, “change his mind” and “find
another way” out of the crisis. The self-generating power of the unified vision
of the soul is a moment of enlightenment or inner light. Recharged and
reorientated, the war doctor is ready for action in a balanced combined act
that will save the day and save his soul. This is a psychic process that is
represented in the Paintings of the story, but also in the Story of the
paintings.
(door in to the Under Gallery)
The experience of the journey changes him, but it also
changes the world because the soul drama is also a cosmic drama, a Unity of
Being known to the Timelords from their Eye of Harmony. When doctor 11 steps
forward to take his place amongst the others in the frieze of doctors at the
end of the episode, he does so with full awareness of his purpose and direction.
This is Timelord Art portraying the same story told again and again since the
beginning of Time and Consciousness, the epic story of the solar hero. There
are variations of culture but the structure is universal. The players may look
different but the performance is the same, as the 12 doctors look different but
play the same role, as the original of Kate is “kept to refresh the image” for
the zygon copies. In moments of inspiration the three doctors realise this
connection, “same screwdriver, same software, different place/same device,
same software, different case”, they say. And we could say of the epic hero
“same software, different face”.
(Frieze of Doctors)
The image of the spirited plucky solar hero and his story
appears through time, from Neolithic rock paintings to the earliest written
epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia, a region mentioned by Doctor 11 in this
episode. The solar hero is a “man of light” and radiance, depicted with a halo
in Manichaean and rock art, as in medieval icons, before developing the regenerative
light of Doctor Who, a figure who offers hope and salvation for a people
through his own struggles and ordeals, bringing warmth and strength and
enlightenment, defying the threat of dissolution by fire of a sun burning out
the “end of days”. He appears mysteriously in the East out of nowhere,
travelling across the sky in a boat (Egypt) or a chariot (India) or a policebox
(Dr Who), rising in majesty and strength to heights of accomplishment before
sinking and disappearing into the west where he descends into the underworld of
his night sea journey to conquer its adversary of darkness, knowing that he
will return to rise again when needed, as the doctor returns here to help
Elizabeth1,as King Arthur will return as the “once and future king”, as the
messiah of some religions promises to return victorious, Sol Invictus, as the Doctor of the Tardis
always turns up at the right time.
Doctor Who,Man of light)
Rock art of haloed Men of light,10,000BC,Val Comonica,Italy)
(Mohammed as Man of Light,on fire,as he starts his night journey)
This figure is an archetype that embodies the movement of the sun
through the 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night, and through the 12 months of
the year in the astrological divisions of the 12 signs of the wheeled Zodiac, all Life itself. Twelve is the number of cosmic order calculated from the cycle of a sun that
governs our existence, and the sun’s hero/gods are tied to this number; the 12
ships of Odysseus, 12 Olympian gods,12 successors of Mohammed,12 disciples of
Jesus and of Mithras,12 knights of the Arthurian round table,12 labours of
Hercules etc, even 12 jurors who determine justice from the Law, and 12 in 1
Timelords who gather together protecting their planet, a semi circle that
reflects the vault of the heavens from earth. ( The 13th number is
the problematic “plus one” or “year and
a day” or “odd one out” or “out of time”
twelfth night mayhem, the number of “Unbeing” that can be lucky or unlucky depending on
viewpoint, but best included ,unlike the” left out” fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s
Christening or the left out war doctor!)
(The 13th)
Clearly this solar
hero or sungod figure is always closely connected to the measure of time since
time is connected to the sun and its journey through the day and through the
zodiac. He belongs to both worlds of linear historical time where he exists and
cosmic cyclical time where he is mythical. That connection is in Doctor Who
too. Long before the Doctor was described as a “Timelord” he was a sort of Old
Father Time playing with clocks and “melting time” in the Tardis (See Edge of
Destruction 1963). So he seems to control time holding fate or destiny in his
hands. He also seems to defy time with clairvoyant abilities of divination or
regeneration, transcending death.In this episode as the "war doctor" he holds the Moment as a time bomb.
(The Time bomb)
Like Odyseus or the Celtic Aengus, Doctor Who seems to be
wandering about aimlessly in a strange voyage of contradictions and ambiguity(the
word planet means wanderer) until he meets the numinous curator of the
paintings who makes him conscious of his purpose and direction as a story
nearing completion of its cycle. He is now empowered, fully conscious of
himself and his place in the scheme of things, a true hero representing the
archetype of the human spirit at its best, defiant and shining and confident.
“Clara says I’m just wandering about going nowhere but it’s not true. I have a
new destination. My journey is the same as yours. It’s taken me so many
lifetimes but at last I know where I’m going, where I’ve always been going;
home, the long way round,” he says. He faces his future which is an end and
also a beginning with this clear unified vision, at One.
(The symmetry of Being at One in the mysterious barn of light)
Like all solar heroes, the doctor’s cosmic drama is recorded
in the art of the Epic, a narrative that began in 1963, nearing completion in
2013 with an aging 12th doctor, bringing us full circle to begin
again, the homecoming that is the real destination of all heroes. Tennant even
wears the long dust coat of an epic Western as doctor 10!
Traditional criteria of the epic artform are present in this
episode; the ceremonious grand tones and elevated grandeur found in the
Gallifreyan sequences, the long tale of
legendary superhuman hero of cultural
significance engaged in great battles (involving a so called “last battle”) and
moral victories that is the tale of the doctor, a human drama on a grand scale
in a war of opposites, elevated sonorous speeches like the pompous monologues
of the war doctor in the wilderness, the role of gods or Fate intervening as
things happen inexplicably and beyond human control, and always beginning with
the Epic Question that is designed to take the man of action deeper into the
man of reflection, the question that starts the inner journey about the meaning
of life and one’s place in it, the self-questioning that leads to self
discovery and a change in tone.
With Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita the question that stops the
action and starts the reflection is “whats the point? What does it mean?” In
the Arthurian grail epic the question is “What ails thee?” but it takes three
attempts to pose the right question. In this episode of Doctor Who the question
is asked by the dying dalek, ”what do these words mean?” and by the war doctor
“Why are we all together, why are we here?” and by the remarkable curator,
“what do you think it means?” These are the questions that take the narrative
inwards, deeper. In realising his own unity as a person he realises his place
in the cosmic scheme of things so that the journey inwards is also a journey
outwards, an adventure and discovery in both directions.
(sitting with The Moment personified in reflection in the barn of light)
........
Timelord Art contains images not there for all to see, hidden
away waiting for the right moment to be activated, as legendary heroes wait to
be recalled at the right time. The images are only visible with insight, a
viewpoint gained after perilous ordeals on a difficult journey through the
threefold nature of the world and the psyche (above, below, between/ three
gunas/ three time zones in this episode of England 1562,London 2013,mythical
Gallifrey).
This is meaningful art full of images from the psyche
leading to social and psychological change, art that “changes your mind”. When
the heroes or monsters leap out of their paintings or the Fall of a Paradise
like Gallifrey becomes a frozen 3D image, when the hexagons or circles of a
sacred geometry hold our attention, we are facing the primordial constructs of
a Psyche that determines existence but is always beyond grasp, “because there’s
always something we dont know” consciously. Timelord Art contains moments of
that elusive process in numinous images, visions, motifs, projections, symbols
and narratives. And this episode itself is an example of that Art, taking the
doctor on a journey through himSelf as well as the Universe.
( Inner Geometry of Tardis and facing The Old Man as one of his former selves)
(bbc copyright to photos)
(bbc copyright to photos)
