Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-26975268-20130407222910/@comment-10408536-20130604064546

Hi.

First post here. I'm a frequent reader, and as I really loved this episode I decided to poke around the pages a bit. I'm a little surprised that the ambiguity in the term Sun-singers of Akhet hasn't been addressed in the pages themselves, though it's been covered pretty thoroughly here. The page for that term clearly defines it as a star system. So I'm curious, did you guys give up on the debate, or did you come to a consensus?

When I watched this episode, I felt some ambiguity was derived from not knowing whether the Doctor answered Clara's question ("the who of what?") directly or obliquely. He often does answer companions' questions obliquely--often making flat-out deflections--so I'm not sure it's fair to assume it was a direct answer.

I agree that no weight should be given to Clara's use of the pronoun 'who'. If the Doctor gave a direct answer, then the Sun-singers must be planets. But he may have answered more obliquely, beginning by telling Clara about the seven worlds merely because he wanted to, and implying that the 'singers' are the inhabitants of those worlds. I really don't think either option would be out of character.

Which brings me to another interpretation...

It seems no one has suggested that 'Akhet' is the name of the star system, not the star (or not only the star). In other words, by saying "Seven worlds", the Doctor was (somewhat obliquely) answering the "what" part of Clara's question, rather than the "who".

The 'Sun-singers' would then be the inhabitants 'of' Akhet (like Joan 'of' Arc).

The name fits, as the inhabitants of this system certainly appear to do a lot of singing. It also fits the phrasing that the pyramid is a "sacred site *for* the Sun-singers"--i.e. its sacredness is perceived by the people, the inhabitants of those planets.

Of course it's all a lot of meaning to hang on so few words--but that's sort of my point. It's a bit ambiguous, so maybe the page shouldn't be so definitive.