DT Talk Throwback: My Interview W/David Blair, Director Of Takin' Over The Asylum

HANDS. And a well made point about the distinction between the TV and Film BAFTAs. But mostly HANDS.

This proves my point......

I need to make a comment(ary) about this ABSOLUTELY LOVELY photo.

One of David's promo shots for the BAFTAS

Okay, so here's the comment(ary).

I want you to take notice of DT's hands - his thumbs, knuckles, and loooooong fingers (as if you hadn't already, I know, but I'm just making sure!)

I say this because those hands are so uniquely his, especially the way he bends his thumbs...the length from the tip of his thumb to the first knuckle, specifically. Hell, all the joints of his thumbs. Most people don't have that length between their joints. Nor do they usually bend BOTH those joints, as DT does. I bring this up because in my analysis of the obscure short film One-Eyed Jacques - and specifically about whether or not David was in this film, and why I think he was, and my evidence for why I think he was - this photo highlights the "uniquely weird DT hands and fingers that help us recognize him even when we can't see his face." Because in that film, his fingers are the only things we see! So thank you, BAFTAs, for providing me with wonderful photographic evidence supporting my theory. And oh, yes.... Before all of this blows up with regards to "OMG David's never been nominated and how dare they ask him to host!" - keep in mind the BAFTA film awards they've asked him to host are separate from their TV awards. David's films have notoriously been so-so, so it's no surprise he hasn't been nominated for any of them. It would be sillier if they'd asked him to present the BAFTAs for television, since it is his TV projects (like Broadchurch, Des, and Litvinenko) that really should’ve been nominated.

“I need you” isn’t “I love you,” and it isn’t “Yes, let’s go off together,” but the thing is, it might as well be. And it might be one of the more honest things Aziraphale has ever said.

He has never said it aloud before now. Not like this, with eons worth of raucous indignant feeling crawling up into his throat. He had not wanted, not expected to say it like this, mocked by his own stricken reflection in Crowley's sunglasses, each lens a dark mirror.

"I—I need you," says Aziraphale, and his voice breaks down the middle. It might as well, for he's confessed too late. Crowley is shut to him, recedes from him like a wave broken on the terrible bedrock of Aziraphale's futile stubbornness.

And still, even like this, Aziraphale needs him.

His presence, his constancy. His unfailing, tenacious friendship.

Crowley’s kindness, his softness, his solicitousness under the prickly façade Aziraphale sees is just that—a layer that can be so easily peeled away to reveal the deep core of caring beneath, too entrenched to be deserved by any world they could live in. He needs Crowley’s unguarded gaze, needs the way Crowley’s forever looking at him across distances when he thinks Aziraphale doesn’t notice: chin tilted up, eyes soft as marigold petals.

A phone call away whenever anything or nothing at all happens is Crowley’s dear voice; his lovely dry humor; his sauntering, slithering, improbable walk despite which he somehow flawlessly falls into step alongside Aziraphale anywhere and all the time. His hip knocking against Aziraphale’s, casual as anything and yet so much more than. Flashes of black and wisps of red flitting in and out of Aziraphale’s periphery for thousands of years.

He needs their circuitous arguments, their winding ethical debates—after most of which they somehow end up on the same side, that is, their own side, terrifying and exhilarating in its Promethean familiarity—and Crowley’s chaotically-sure moral compass. The times Crowley is braver than Aziraphale could ever be; and the times Crowley reminds him of how brave he actually always has been.

And Aziraphale needs even the great big awful rows, the ones that end in their standing on opposite verges of another chasm of their own making. Because the culmination of such a fight is always the meeting again in the middle. It’s the low sweeping bow of their apology, a ritual not half earnest for all its facetiousness, which says so much without either of them having to utter a word. Crowley holds a whole conversation in the dip of his fiery head and the exaggerated flutter of his elegant wrists, when it’s his turn; and, when it’s Aziraphale’s, the hashing-out of differences is there in the way he executes each familiar movement with the practiced ease of a faithful courtier, though it’s been ages since he stood in any king’s court.

He needs the knowledge that they always forgive each other. Because, well, they do. They must. They will. What’s a spat or a quarrel or even a proper falling-out to two beings like them, to him and Crowley?

Aziraphale needs Crowley’s happiness. His truest happiness. If that isn't the crux of it all, what is?

He remembers the ancient light of Crowley's joy, how it had shone once about both of them like an aura through the blackness of undeveloped space. It never left, all that bright, barely reined-in giddiness, all that frenetic energy, but he's transmuted it, magpie-like, into something else. Aziraphale can sense it whenever Crowley brings him a new vintage record to add to his collection. Whenever Crowley pulls out Aziraphale’s chair for him outside Marguerite's, or orders just what he likes for him at the Ritz. Whenever he drops into the shop unannounced with a little box tucked under his arm, full of gorgeous petits fours from the new bakery Aziraphale hasn’t yet tried, and says, gleeful, Ohhh, you wouldn’t believe all the wiling I had to do to get my hands on these, angel. You’ll have to thwart me for this, I know. But first—no, no, no, first! The only sensible thing for you to do would be to try them… you’ll like the pear macaron...

And of course Crowley is right. He's right about most things, isn't he, after all? Because Crowley knows him, and he needs to be known, but it simply wouldn't do for anyone else to be the one doing the knowing.

Aziraphale likes the pear macaron, just as Crowley knew he would.

He likes all the things that come along with Crowley, really. The fast car, oh yes, sleek and stylishly classic and so very Crowley through and through, though Aziraphale has committed staunchly to grousing about it. The way no companionable silence held in Crowley's company is ever truly silent. The jaunts to the park on seasonable days: Crowley's touch lingering where he pours frozen peas for the ducks into Aziraphale's cupped palm; the fondness in Crowley's tone poorly disguised as he points out his favorite mated pair trawling placidly across the pond. The drinking together long past the small hours of the morning in the back room of the bookshop, where the walls are the same warm ochre shade as Crowley’s eyes.

It isn't ever so much about the drinking as it is about the together bit. How the space between them dwindles with the syrupy passage of time. How Crowley softens and melts into the settee. How he becomes Aziraphale's to watch, for once. How he grows so wondrously relaxed and gloriously at home there in Aziraphale's space that Aziraphale begins to wonder if this will at last be the night Crowley does not, eventually, get up and retreat back to his Bentley to take himself away again...

There is always that fragile little moment, right after sobering up, when everything in their universe seems at the same time to be entirely too set in stone and entirely too much as though it all hangs by one delicate, dissembling thread. Always the split second in which Aziraphale looks into Crowley's guileless face and remembers he could unravel everything with a single tug.

Yes, one sharp tug on the lapels of Crowley's jacket would do it, he knows. How easily it could be done... Tumble the two of them into one another, just then, and they would never be parted again. And his deft-tongued Crowley would lick the heat and the aftertaste of Talisker into Aziraphale's mouth, then, before it had the chance to dissipate completely.

He could. He could.

It's in those stretched milliseconds, brimming with a tender longing so acute it tips right over into an agony, that Aziraphale realizes: I do need all of you, darling, don't I? So terribly much it might unmake me one day. Never mind Aziraphale's most fickle and blustering attempts at denial, he knows this to be true as he knows the truth of little else in the cosmos.

And perhaps today is that day—the day Aziraphale will dissolve and be remade in the permanent shape of lack.

I'm not particularly on board with "Crowley is Raphael" theory, but that's a very interesting take on this (and from a strictly logical point of view!). And though I'm not exactly swayed, I'm more and more intrigued. We'll just have to wait - and hopefully, see!

where the heck is Raphael

I assume we all agree that the narrative is strongly implying that Crowley was but a common angel (the 25 lazarii miracle, the high rank clearance, what he says to Gabriel about knowing how it feels, how he does not tell Aziraphale his name when they first meet during the galaxy creation scene, the fact he knows The Metatron -an angry and flame surrounded versione of The Metatron, Saraqael having worked side by side with him, and also maybe some too powerful miracles here and there like in S1 when he was able to froze time for himself, Aziraphale and Adam in a sort of Heavenly space in the middle of a Very Important Moment) ...so the point is which not common angel was he.

From my very personal point of view the main thing in favor of him being Lucifer is that I would love that sentence in S1 to be the opposite of what we thought it to be. I'm referrinf to: "I was just minding my business one day and then, oh lookie here, it's Lucifer and the guys"; the last part would therefore be not something Crowley said, but something that was addressed to him. Someone came there, took a look at him and went "ohh, it's Lucifer and the guys" and started to complaing about the food. I appreciate this kind of 'irrelevant subversion' of how you first pictured a told (and not yet shown) scene in your mind. Also it would be fun for Lucifer to be, in this universe, not the mind behind the rebellion but someone who was just minding his business and someone else saw as the right person to go to to give further resonance to some minor issues about the food.

But.

But from the same very personal point of view, I'd love for Crowley to be Raphael because I would love for the Great Raphael to be a fallen angel in this retelling of christian mythology. Lucifer is THE fallen angel, everyone knows he was the first to cast down the pearly gates; most christians associate him with Satan, call him the first sinner, consider him inherently baaad.

But Raphael? One of the greatest angels? One of the saints? To be one of the fallen?

Just. Lovely.

Also I recognize the story has an important hole here:

Where the heck is Raphael?

At least Lucifer was mentioned, also Hell has so far not had the same amount of screentime as Heaven has, so I don't see the absence of Lucifer (given that in this universe Satan≠Lucifer) as deliberate as the absense of Raphael.

Everyone is familiar with Gabriel, Michael and Raphael as they are familiar with Lucifer. Yet Raphael is never shown nor mentioned.

Everyone is familiar with Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, almost no one is familiar with Uriel and Saraqael and no one is familiar with hecking Sandalphon. Yet they chose not to use the famous trio Gabriel-Michael-Raphael to straightforward let the audience know 'this is Heaven's Small Council'. No, they get rid of Raphael like he was a barely known angel, like he was an angel no one knows the name of before reading about angeology, like he was a Sandalphon.

Listen, this is deliberate.

The absence of Raphael is deliberate.

And I would love for him to be the 'angel who fell because he was asking too many questions'.

I would love for him to be the powerful Supreme Archangel that was just minding his business when Lucifer and the boys reached out to.

May I add.

...even if Crowley is not Raphael, I'm sure Raphael would pop up somewhere else, because the narrative has strongly pointed in the direction of a fallen Great One.

I refuse to believe The Metraton said

"For one Prince of Heaven to be cast into the outer darkness makes a good story. For it to happen twice makes it look like there is some sort of institutional problem." about some hecking Sandalphon.

--

Little addition because I have never seen this Very Valid Point mentioned:

Crowley gives away a lot of younger sibling energy when interacting with Gabriel and Middle Child Michael 😌

Actually, it's really interesting how Crowley was right in episode 1. Keeping Gabriel around *was* endangering their lives. Beelzebub told him about the extreme sanctions, and Crowley learned how bad it all was, and he knew he had to go back to protect his angel. So he goes back to the bookshop and apologizes. Not because he was wrong though, but because he knows full well the angel made up his mind. Aziraphale WILL do what he thinks is right, even at the cost of himself. Crowley knows him too well. And so he apologizes, even though he was right, and spends all season protecting them both. Perhaps he doesn't tell Aziraphale about the book of life because he full well knows that it wouldn't make a difference. Save some kids and go to hell. Love a demon and be destroyed. Help an old enemy and be erased from existence. It wouldn't matter. So he spares Aziraphale the stress of it and he decides to help as best as he can. The result of it all being that Aziraphale sees all of this as him and Crowley teaming up to do the right thing, and Crowley sees it as saving Aziraphale when he knows Aziraphale won't save himself.

fourteen and the toymaker making out sloppy style but fourteen is actually kissing tooth!master

Aziraphale and Crowley don't communicate and it stems from their first meeting.

Let me explain.

Before the Beginning, Crowley is at his most honest and his most vulnerable. He tells Aziraphale so excitedly all about stars and how long it's hoping to take for them to form.

Aziraphale is also bluntly honest (a trait he never really loses but does learn to temper) in telling him about the 6K year timeframe.

Crowley then mentions creating a suggestion box and Aziraphale frets over him, concerned already, and we all know how much trouble Crowley got in for asking a few questions.

This sets the tone for everything after.

Crowley stops being honest - "I'm a demon. I lied." - which also means Crowley has been disparaging his own demonhood at least since Aziraphale looked at him askance on a wall and said, "You're a demon. That's what you do."

Aziraphale stops trusting him, but he never stops being polite. Crowley doesn't attack him, so he doesn't attack either. Not at the Ark, and not with Job's goats. Aziraphale is still vaguely seeing the angel he saw in the stars.

Crowley even gives him the permit so he can doublecheck that everything's above board, so to speak. Then we've got Crowley lying straight to Aziraphale's face about killing Job's children because Crowley still sees the angel in the stars who told him the world and his nebulae were going to prematurely end.

The angel who let kids die in the Flood.

Yes, the angel who shielded him on the wall and gave away a flaming sword, so there's some comfort that he won't instantly get smote - "smitten" 😇 - but still the angel who staunchly toes the party line.

After all's said and done and Aziraphale cries about being fallen - cries over being just what Crowley is, even after seeing Crowley circumvent Hell's rules - Crowley tells him he won't tell anyone.

Crowley is good at not telling anyone things, but so is Aziraphale.

Season 1, we get this. Crowley doesn't tell Aziraphale about the hellhound until the last minute. Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley about finding Agnes's book. Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley he's meeting with Nazis, and Crowley certainly never tells Aziraphale how he knows them. 

Season 2, we get more. 

Things Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley:

• Deringer in a carved out book and gun license

• Drivers license he's had for 90 years - as long as Crowley's had the Bentley

• Why his French is so bad (not until he's asked a direct question)

• He knows Crowley likes to rescue him

Things Crowley doesn't tell Aziraphale:

• Beelzebub dragged him to Hell and made him an offer

• He'd never shot a gun before

I'm sure there are more things I'm forgetting, but those are some of the big ones.

More evidence of their continued lack of communication after the Apocanot is the apology dance. (Although I love it and do need to see Aziraphale do it too.)

Crowley is not wrong, and Aziraphale is not right. They are both both. But that never gets discussed, which is why Crowley never has to talk about being brought to Hell. He never talks about Aziraphale being threatened by Extreme Sanctions.

Aziraphale doesn't know why Crowley comes back, but he very likely assumes it's because Crowley wants to do the right thing after all. Aziraphale is still thinking about the angel Crowley was (season 1, "You were an angel once") and sees every single instance of good as PROOF that Crowley could/should/wants to be an angel again.

Additionally, some of the things they do say don't get heard. Aziraphale likes to tell someone he's doing good now that he's no longer reporting to Heaven. Crowley teases him for it twice, back to back. Tone of voice and "doing good again, angel?" after Maggie says something about the rent.

Aziraphale craves being told he's doing the right thing. Aziraphale has been pushed into a place where he won't get that from the place he always has because Heaven is out of reach. If he'd communicated this to Crowley, who is doing everything he can as always to keep him safe, that Crowley would keep teasing him? That Crowley wouldn't gesture to someone in need and say, "Right. Have fun, angel." Anthony J'acts-of-service Crowley would absolutely let Aziraphale have all the bouncy fun miracles in the world without shame. 

Also, when they discuss how to make Nina and Maggie fall in love. Crowley's idea - canopy, rainstorm, vavoom - is absolutely informed by his own experiences, but he doesn't leave it at that. He says he "saw in a Richard Curtis film." He won't let that uncomfortable truth live in reality, pushing it off to humans and film. The realm of fiction, as Aziraphale immediately latches onto.

They don't talk about themselves. They don't talk about being an US. They said their side without getting into the nitty gritty of what that means to the point where neither knows where the line is.

Aziraphale says our car and when Crowley refuses because my car, Aziraphale also says they both get use out of the bookshop. Our car, our bookshop. It's a melding that Aziraphale assumes is perfectly natural, but Crowley hasn't seen it that way. They haven't talked about it.

And when they finally do, Aziraphale is running on the assumption that because Crowley does good and was happiest as an angel, looking over a colourful nebulae - so happy with it, he didn't want to lose it and ended up Falling for it - of course Crowley would want to go back. Of course Crowley would want to be in charge (second in command) since it means doing what they do on a larger scale.

Crowley, however, is still keen to keep going as they have been. Alcoholic breakfast at the Ritz, fixing up the bookshop like nothing happened, getting Muriel away so it can just be the two of them. Crowley is ready for the status quo. Although he does have new knowledge that the car and the bookshop are theirs, he and Aziraphale still carried the plants back to the Bentley.

They are still not talking.

And when they do, it's too little and it's too late. And they never ask each other why.

Next season, they need to learn how to ask why. And I have faith they will.

It might be an unpopular view but I don't want Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship to have been part of the ineffable plan. I don't want their love for each other to have been just another chess piece on God's board, destined, since their creation to fall in love. They deserve better than that.

If anything, I want their love to be in spite of the plan. For, just like their sense of right and wrong, their emotional growth together to be hard fought and all their own. I love the idea that it flies in the face of what is expected from an angel and a demon.

I don't want them to love each other because they are supposed to. That would be so diminutive. I want Aziraphale to love Crowley because he's Crowley and Crowley to love Aziraphale because he's Aziraphale. Divine plans and prophecies be damned. Being part of the ineffable plan would erase the agency and beauty from it. Their love is theirs.

really love how throughout a lot of smith and jones martha is really skeptical and apprehensive towards ten (+ one of my favorite exchanges between them - "what, people call you 'the doctor'?" "yeah?" "well, i'm not. far as i'm concerned, you've got to earn that title."), not taking everything he says at face value, even doubting the fact he's an alien until over halfway through the episode.. And like. i really truly think the thing that wins her over isn't him kissing her or any of the other insane mixed messages he manages to send, it's this scene here, where he /earns that title/ in her eyes:

(+ david's bit in the commentary, where he says: "[the doctor] has actually sacrificed himself, and - i would say, that that final act of selflessness is what finally, eventually, welds martha to him. [...] and she now returns it. she returns that act of selflessness.")

this is what their relationship is built on. it isn't about martha being the second-best replacement to rose or a rebound or whatever. bc it isn't really about rose. it's about doctor-in-training martha meeting someone (quite literally, "the doctor") whose ideals she aspires to, and doing her best to be the same person to him as he is to everyone else. it's about ten in return admiring her intelligence and inquisitiveness and how she cares for human life, recovering his compassion, letting himself lean on her for support - and then remembering at the most inopportune moments that he's supposed to not need anyone and be on his own forever. And around in their little nightmare loop they go where they save each other over and over until one of them breaks

i've seen ppl look at martha and go "why she does she admire/why is she so in love with ten if he acts like that to her?" or something along those lines and like. it's not just the fact she's in love with him (in fact i'd argue she actively tries to push it aside post-gridlock). it's the fact that she knows he's the kind of person to put everyone else's lives/well-being over his own. she trusts him to save her when she's in trouble even though it's been like two days at most that they've known one another bc she recognizes that same "deep all-encompassing drive to help others" in him. and she also recognizes, much much earlier than him, that he needs someone to save him, especially when he's unwilling to save himself. and yeah for a bit she thinks he returns her feelings and is just playing hard-to-get, but she realizes pretty early on that this probably isn't the case, and i think that realization fully solidifies here:

(this is when she's listening to ten talk abt gallifrey). And idk it might just be me but i think this expression isn't just her empathizing with his loss. it's also guilt, for wanting something from him that he's clearly unable to give when he's wracked with so much grief. (and you see it in the next episode, where tallulah asks if they're together and martha says for certain that they're not, and that he doesn't know about her feelings for him. she keeps everything to herself bc she now knows that when he shut her flirting down at the end of 3x01 it was the genuine reaction of someone who a) isn't interested and b) is scared of getting close with someone else again)

freema described their dynamic as "she's keener than him" and i think about this all the time. martha doesn't really take what ten throws at her. what she does instead is constantly poke holes in his already-failing front of "i will show someone the wonders of the universe so i can ignore what is wrong with me". what she does is stand up and fight him when he tries to go off on his own. what she does is put aside her well-being in favor of helping someone - just like what she saw him do for the people in the hospital when they first met. tldr, that's the doctor and his doctor and rip martha you would've loved who's gonna save u now by rina sawayama

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.

I'm seeing some confusion out and about over the title A Companion to Owls (generally along the lines of 'what have owls got to do with it???'), so I'd like to offer my interpretation (with a general disclaimer that the Bible and particularly the Old Testament are damn complicated and I'm not able to address every nuance in a fandom tumblr post, okay? Okay):

It's a phrase taken from the Book of Job. Here's the quote in full (King James version):

When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness. My bowels boiled, and rested not: the days of affliction prevented me. I went mourning without the sun: I stood up, and I cried in the congregation. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. --(Job 30:29)

Job is describing the depths of his grief, but also, with that last line, his position in the web of providence.

Throughout the Old Testament, owls are a recurring symbol of spiritual devastation. Deuteronomy 4:17 - Isaiah 34:11 - Psalm 102: 3 - Jeremiah 50: 39...just to name a few (there's more). The general shape of the metaphor is this: owls are solitary, night-stalking creatures, that let out either mournful cries or terrible shrieks, that inhabit the desolate places of the world...and (this is important) they are unclean.

They represent a despair that is to be shunned, not pitied, because their condition is self-inflicted. You defied God (so the owl signifies), and your punishment is...separation. From God, from others, from the world itself. To call and call and never, ever receive an answer.

Your punishment is terrible, tormenting loneliness.

(and that exact phrase, "tormenting loneliness," doesn't come from me...I'm pulling it from actual debate/academia on this exact topic. The owls, and what they are an omen for. Oof.)

To call yourself a 'companion to owls,' then, is to count yourself alongside perhaps the saddest of the damned --not the ones who defy God out of wickedness or ignorance, and in exile take up diabolical ends readily enough...but the ones who know enough to mourn what they have lost.

So, that's how the title relates to Job: directly. Of course, all that is just context. The titular "companion to owls," in this case, isn't Job at all.

Because this story is about Aziraphale.

The thing is that Job never actually defied God at all, but Aziraphale does, and he does so fully believing that he will fall.

He does so fully believing that he's giving in to a temptation.

He's wrong about that, but still...he's realized something terrifying. Which is that doing God's will and doing what's right are sometimes mutually exclusive. Even more terrifying: it turns out that, given the choice between the two...he chooses what's right.

And he's seemingly the only angel who does. He's seemingly the only angel who can even see what's wrong.

Fallen or not, that's the kind of knowledge that...separates you.

(Whoooo-eeeeee, tormenting loneliness!!!)

Aziraphale is the companion.

...I don't think I need to wax poetic about Aziraphale's loneliness and grappling with devotion --I think we all, like, get it, and other people have likely said it better anyway. So, one last thing before I stop rambling:

Check out Crowley's glasses.

(screenshots from @seedsofwinter)

Crowley is the owl.

Crowley is the goddamn owl.