Howling:Flickering light bulbs...

Den of Geek recently made an article about something they had noticed in each episode so far: flickering light bulbs. A light bulb was seen flickering in the room where Amy was captured in "Asylum of the Daleks", a light bulb was replaced in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", the street lights were flickering in "A Town Called Mercy" and the Doctor was seen replacing the light bulb on the top of the TARDIS at the end of the Pond Life mini series. I think they're onto something. Could it possibly be teasing an appearance of the Silence, the Weeping Angels, the Cybermen, the Dalek puppets or something else? 94.72.192.2talk to me 21:18, September 16, 2012 (UTC)

It could easily be teasing an appearance by something. However, as your own post shows, there's quite a range of possibilities for what that something might be. Even your "something else" can be split into two: 1. something else that we've encountered before that you left out of your list to avoid the list filling the screen or 2. something else that we have no chance of guessing because it hasn't been introduced yet.

If (big if) it really is a harbinger of something, my guess would be that its main narrative purpose will be to show that the something has been following the Doctor for a long time. It'll be worth watching for signs that the Doctor is getting suspicious about it. There may, in fact, have been such signs in A Town Called Mercy. He didn't seem entirely convinced by the "obvious" explanations offered by the other characters.

The danger, as always, is that we might be over-interpreting things. I don't think we can avoid that danger without also missing what Moffat's getting up to. --89.240.254.19talk to me 00:34, September 17, 2012 (UTC)


 * The lightbulbs are a,most certainly nothing. In Asylum of the Daleks, the lightbulb seemed like it was just supposed to invoke the light bulbs on the Dalek's heads that blink whenever they're talking. In A Town Called Mercy, the reason they were flickering was obvious, and you really wouldn't expect them to work properly under those conditions. In Dinosaurs on a Spaceship the lightbulb was not flickering. It just wasn't working, and it seems to have been a problem with the fitting. Really, it was just a plot device to bring Brian to Amy and Rory's house. In Pond Life, the bulb most likely just burned out, and it was a chance for the Doctor to perform a mundane task. I think there was also a joke about that bulb in one of the Night and the Doctor episodes.Icecreamdif ☎  01:43, September 17, 2012 (UTC)


 * As much as I love over-interpreting, I would tend to classify that one as a motif, like the 'eyes' from previous seasons. But it's a good catch, I definitely think the motif is there between the TARDIS bulb change, Bryan, and Mercy (missed the Asylum one).  Granted, two of the big bads at large right now (Angels and The Silence) have displayed disruptive effects on lightbulbs for different reasons.  I would be extremely surprised if we don't see the Angels do that trick in the mid-season finale, but even that wouldn't elevate it out of the category of 'Series 7 symbolism'.  What might elevate it, is if we revisit the 'faulty fitting' in Power of 3.  Wibbly-Wobbly  ☎  05:27, September 17, 2012 (UTC)


 * ...point of order, though. I went back and checked, and realized that, even though the main plots of Asylum and Dinosaurs were off-world, all 4 lightbulbs were Earthside (granted, a filament bulb, even the Mercy ones, are idiosyncratically Terran tech).  Wibbly-Wobbly  ☎  05:51, September 17, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm still not sure if I would say that the eyes in season 5 were a motif. I think there were just eyes in a few episodes, and people were seeing patterns that weren't there.Icecreamdif ☎  21:22, September 17, 2012 (UTC)


 * Professional astronomers (but, admittedly, only a few of them) did precisely that with the "canals" of Mars. If you look hard enough, especially at things just on the borderline of visibility, you will see patterns that aren't there. We're all looking pretty hard & any clues Moffat leaves lying about will be on the borderline of visibility. To adapt a familiar phrase: Caveat spectator! --89.242.75.176talk to me 05:22, September 18, 2012 (UTC)

Either way it's fun to look for these things, even if they are coincedences. There was another scene where the lights went out in this week's episode, around the part where the cubes begin the countdown. 94.72.194.203talk to me 22:08, September 22, 2012 (UTC)

What's interesting about the most recent one is the that power outage, although well-timed, seemed completely idiosyncratic. The rest of the world didn't seem to have a massive power outage, and the Doctor seemed to almost treat it as a new line of questioning with Stewart, ending with a 'Hmm' as he got back to business. The flickers always seem to occur at natural moments in the plot, but are strangely unrelated, and everyone has approached them the same way - with an exaggerated aside of confusion followed by getting on with what they were doing. Wibbly-Wobbly ☎  21:16, September 23, 2012 (UTC)


 * The Christmas thing seems like it has to be either an actual plot point or a red herring, but the flickering lights could just be a "theme motif" that's real and intention, but doesn't mean anything in-universe. Like the countdown in series 5, which was there to give the story arc a feeling of building urgency, but gave us absolutely no clues (even retroactive) to the finale. (As for the eyes, that still isn't clear, but I vaguely recall Adam Smith saying the only reason he shot so many closeups of Amy's eyes was something like 'With an actress like Karen Gillan, wouldn't you?'). Of course even if that's the case, that doesn't make it any less interesting. --70.36.140.233talk to me 21:55, September 23, 2012 (UTC)

It might be teasing the appearance of the Angels in the next episode. I would certainly put in little teasers like flickering light bulbs in each episode if I was a Doctor Who writer. Part of the fun is that these arcs don't actually lead to anything, because you feel clever for noticing them and it's nice to see a continuing theme that isn't always given to you on a plate at the end of the series. It's something that makes Doctor Who unique in a time when the audience are usually treated as idiots. 94.72.194.203talk to me 18:56, September 24, 2012 (UTC)

What a surpsise! We got several flickering light bulbs in "The Angels Take Manhattan". 94.72.194.203talk to me 19:42, September 29, 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I'm as astonished as you are! :) --89.241.77.184talk to me 21:44, September 29, 2012 (UTC)