When The Lion Called: Eight Years On

Eight years ago, on 26 November 2006, I nervously clicked on the "register" button for the online forum of a website called The Lion's Call, little knowing that it would change my life. I was fairly new to the world of the internet, my family having only gotten a dial-up connection at home in the January of that year. This was before the days of Facebook (at least it hadn't yet become a "thing", although MySpace was popular with my friends) and I was highly suspicious of signing up to anything that required giving out email addresses and other details. But this website, which I had been browsing recently, seemed like a friendly and safe site and it made clear that it was a Christian site and there were strict rules about minors being allowed to join and what could and could not be posted. I decided to risk it. In retrospect, I was a bit like Lucy Pevensie, taking those first cautious steps through the wardrobe into a woodland of snow and a great adventure.

The Lion's Call website (TLC) was created by Kristi Simonson for fans of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series and, apart from the discussion forum (which was what I was signing up to join) it had other interesting features including a character builder, some simple games, and write-in threads like "you know you're addicted to Narnia when...". The forum in those days was small and mainly involved discussions relating directly to the Chronicles of Narnia books, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe film (which had been released just less than a year before) and speculations about the Prince Caspian film that would follow it. I think the first thing I ever posted on the forum was a comment on a discussion about what became of Susan Pevensie after the events of The Last Battle, something I had been thinking about a bit in the last year. The ideas I had had about that became the germ of my (still ongoing) fan fiction story about Susan, which one of the TLCers was to convince me to start four years later. After joining the forum, it became a regular ritual to visit the site when I got a chance and read and comment on the latest discussions.

In February of the following year, I started University and I would often visit TLC when I was dropped off early in the mornings before the library had opened and the computer LANs were not yet busy (few people had their own laptops in those days). As the years passed, the website grew, and the forum became larger and more active. We found that many members had more in common than just our interest in Narnia and we started discussions on other topics including other fantasy worlds (especially Tolkien and Middle Earth) and faith and religion. We also had many members who were budding writers of fiction or poetry and so forum threads started on discussing writing, and people would share whatever they were working on. The site developed well beyond Narnia and became a real community where people felt safe sharing even personal issues.

I had known from the start that the site also had a chat room, but I never went anywhere near that part of it. Chat rooms were dangerous and "evil"; my parents wouldn't approve and you weren't allowed visiting chat rooms on the university computers in any case.

But then in December 2010, four years after I joined, there were posts on the forum about a planned Day of Prayer to be held in the website's chat room. Enough things had changed by this point that I felt confident enough to venture into the chat room to join the prayer session: and by now I knew that I could trust the people on the site. Also, earlier that year we had finally upgraded to broadband internet at home and I now had my own netbook computer. I was also a whole lot older and (theoretically, at least) two degrees wiser.

Joining chat opened up a whole new chapter in my life. These people with whom I had only communicated remotely (by reading and responding to forum posts, often overnight, because of time differences) I could now "chat with" (using text) in real time. I also hadn't realised, but in the last year or so more and more of the discussions had moved over from the forum to the chat room (which would explain why the forum had become more quiet than it had been). More importantly, I got to know the other members on the site at a deeper level because we could ask and respond to more personal questions in a less formal and less public setting.

I joined TLC chat at a critical period of my life. I had been applying for scholarships to Oxford and the TLC community had played a large part in encouraging me through that process and praying for me (even before I joined chat). Being the shy, reserved person I am, this online community gave me a safe place to share my concerns and struggles (I had always been better at articulating my thoughts in writing than in speech).

In June 2011, I joined Facebook for the first time. By now, it had been confirmed that I was going to Oxford, and I wanted to be able to keep contact with my friends and family in South Africa. By this time, TLC, had developed something of a presence on Facebook as well and through that and private messages I became Facebook friends with some of the TLCers (cautiously, and only with those I trusted, because on TLC itself we were encouraged not to divulge private details). And for the first time the window was opened onto the "real lives" of many of my TLC friends - I got to learn their real names, see what they really looked like and learn a bit more about their lives outside of TLC.

Picture by Lily of Archenland

When I moved to Oxford, I was privileged to meet two TLCers in real life: a British girl, and an American lady, who was visiting the UK with her husband. I got to stay at the home of the British girl on a number of occasions and we have since become good friends.

It's impossible to describe all the things that have happened in these past eight years, but I wouldn't have missed them for the world. I am now a staff member on the website and editor for our news team. The social, spiritual and intellectual blessings gained from being part of the TLC community is something that can't be measured. I am eternally grateful that I clicked on that "register button" all those years ago.

My Whovian Theory

With all the crazy way-out and wacky Doctor Who theories floating around, here's another to add to the mix. You can call it my "Missy Theory," but it's a bit more than that as it attempts to explain various odd things that have been going on. It's completely ridiculous and if Moffat dares anything remotely like this I will personally march the length of Africa and remaining distance to have words with him. But here it is:

In the cliff-hanger finale of Series 7, Clara enters the Doctor's time stream in order to reverse the harms caused by the Great Intelligence having done the same thing. Not content to leave Clara to her fate, the Doctor insists on going in himself to rescue her, despite the potentially devastating consequences of such an action. The Doctor finds Clara and we're all wondering just how they are going to get out of this one, when Moffat throws one of the greatest curve-balls of his career and introduces a never-before-seen regeneration of the Doctor played by John Hurt. This is a mysterious regeneration that the Doctor himself has chosen to forget/suppress and is described as "the one who broke the promise". We are so taken aback by this sudden revelation, and the intrigue it presents for the highly anticipated 50th Anniversary episode, that we forget to worry about how Clara and the Doctor are going to escape the Doctor's time stream. Several months later, the Anniversary episode arrives and a month after that, the Christmas Special and the climax of the Eleventh Doctor's tenure. All this excitement and build-up and the emotions of Eleven's passing mean that we don't have time to fuss over the technicality of how Clara and the Doctor escaped his time stream.

But that has passed, and we're up to the 12th Doctor's fourth episode. The dust has settled and we're adapting well to this very different and yet somehow familiar new Doctor. But just how did he and Clara escape? Will we ever know? Probably not. But what if....what if they didn't escape? Or rather, what if there was no possibility of them getting out on their own?

Moments before entering his time-stream, the Eleventh Doctor has an emotional heart-to-heart with his sometime wife, River Song. She is present on the scene only through a mental link with Clara resulting from an earlier dream-induced time-travel conference. Through the course of the episode, we learn that the version of River who is present is River from after the events of Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, where she dies in order to rescue hundreds of people trapped inside The Library's computer's hard drive. The Doctor, in return, uploads her consciousness to the library's computer where she is destined to live out her days (or eternity?) with her crew of archaeologist friends.

The last words that River says to the Doctor before he enters his time stream (after begging him not to go at all) are:

River: Oh there's one more thing.

The Doctor: Isn't there always?

River: I was mentally linked with Clara. If she's really dead then how can I still be here?

The Doctor: Okay, How?

River: Spoilers. Goodbye. Sweetie.

What did she mean by this? Surely more than simply that Clara is still alive. The Doctor already believed as much so that's hardly a spoiler.

Here's my theory. What if, knowing that the Doctor would never be able to exit his time stream and rescue Clara, River found a way to rescue both of them by uploading them from his time stream onto The Library's database? I haven't worked out the details of how this would be possible but it's hardly more impossible than any other means of escape the Doctor might find.

What if, on being uploaded to The Library, instead of finding themselves in the parts of the library we recognise from Silence/Forest, they are uploaded into a kind of adventure room/simulation programme on the computer's hard drive. I get my inspiration for this from various science fiction sources that I grew up with as a child. I imagine it as something like the holodeck from Star Trek, but inside a computer. Or something like the Imagination Station from Adventures in Odyssey (which is pretty much the same principle). The living-inside-a-computer bit, takes inspiration from various places (including Silence/Forest themselves) although is probably largely influenced by one of my favourite television programmes as a kid, the little-known 90s Canadian CGI series, Reboot. My "holoroom" would be comparable to a "game" from Reboot, but with significant differences. Obviously there are parallels here with The Matrix, but since I have yet to actually watch any of  The Matrix films (I know, I'm a bad person), I'll leave you to make your own comparisons to that.

Based on this theory, I hypothesise that everything that has happened since Name of the Doctor has actually been simulated adventures experienced in this holodeck-type-place. I realise that this has some serious problems and some even-more serious consequences for what has happened in recent episodes (which  I'd rather not even think about), but let's gloss over those for the time being. This theory does explain a few oddities that have taken place recently: like the presence of three Doctors at the same place at the same time; like how the Doctor was able to change his actions to end the Time War on Gallifrey when the Time War ought to be time-locked and inaccessible; like how the Doctor was miraculously able to get himself another twelve regenerations, just as he was about to run out.

But, more significantly, it explains a few of the mysteries raised thus far in Series 8: Who is Missy, and what is The Promised Land? I suggest that whenever someone "dies" in the holodeck-world, (because this is all happening inside a computer database and they are all saved as data), instead of actually dying, their data-string consciousness is transported out of the holoroom into another, central part of the library's hard drive - the place we see River and her companions at the end of Forest of the Dead. This is "The Promised Land" also known as "Heaven".

And who is Missy? Well she's not actually Missy, her name is Miss E, short for "Miss Evangelista". Who? The pretty but ditsy girl who was on River's archaeological team when she met the Doctor in The Library. She was incorrectly uploaded to the library database the first time and as a result was able to see the falsehood of what was going on when others couldn't. Her face got fixed in the clean upload after River's death, but I'm not quite sure what that did for her intellect. Now, how and why Miss E has become the gatekeeper of The Library world (well the part where people go when they die in the holoroom) beats me; and I'm not sure exactly why she thinks that the Doctor is her boyfriend (when the Doctor's wife lives in the vicinity) but I'll leave it for someone else to figure that part out. :P

As I said at the start, this is a fairly horrible theory, and Moffat had better not be attempting anything of the kind. But I've had a bit of fun playing with it and wanted to be able to share it. It's already had some handy side effects. Since I originally came up with the theory we've had an episode with Robin Hood. Not only did Robin Hood turn out to be real, but but he was uncannily just a little too perfect - matching certain versions of the legend down to exact details. We've also had some other impossible stuff like good Daleks, and a town called Christmas (I'm just joking about that last one).

So that's my theory. I realise it has plotholes the size of the crack in Amy's room, but whenever were plotholes a problem for Whovian fan-theories?