And in some ways, they are.

[talumin]

OK, WTF?

These two episodes were fantastic and amazing and fantastic and wow. Two Doctors? SHENANIGANS! THERE ARE SHENANIGANS GOING ON ALL OVER THE PLACE! I felt this was a perfect mid-season set up for the finally. We're going along with our shiny happy adventures with pirates, huzzah! And look, wacky hijinks with the TARDIS! And then bam! And we're all like "what is this...? I don't even..." and basically the internet explodes with theories about what the blue fudge is going on.

I could go on and discuss theories about where this season is going and and the second self and other things I wrote in my thesis, but instead I want to talk about the Red Snapper. This is like a red herring or a macguffin but it isn't. For those who aren't up-to-date with these terms, here's some definitions.

The Macguffin: a device used to drive the plot but that isn't really that important. The spice must flow. It's the thing that gets the ball rolling but doesn't actually mean anything. Hitchcock was the one that brought it into the public lexicon. It shows up in a few Guy Ritchie films too (the shotguns in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are a good example). The invasion of Naboo in Star Wars: Episode I counts as a Macguffin as well. If the story is the quest for an object, and wonderful adventures and experiences happen along the way, then the object is a Macguffin.

The red herring: a plot device that deliberately misleads you away from the item of significance. Most commonly used in detective or crime stories. In a crime show, it might be the giant knife found in a suspect's apartment, that turns out to have nothing to do with the crime committed. All a red herring does is throw suspicion onto something other than the thing you're meant to suspect. Harry Potter has a lot of red herrings - see the Philosopher's Stone and the whole Snape is evil sub plot for red herrings.

So hopefully that explained those two. I want to make the Red Snapper a thing. The red snapper is a plot device that just goes nowhere. You think it's going to be a thing because there's all this build up about it, but nothing really happens. Let's use "The Almost People" as an example. Both the gangers and the humans contacted the shuttle. There was a codeword involved and the gangers knowledge of the codeword enabled them to redirect the shuttle to the courtyard. And that's the last we hear about it. The humans aren't trapped because the shuttle isn't where it's meant to be, nor are the gangers shot because they got the codeword wrong (or accepted because they got it right). The shuttle no longer matters. It's a plot that went nowhere. Now, had it been me, I'd have had the gangers get the codeword wrong. The reason they knew it was because they think exactly the same as their human selves. Human!Miranda typed in the codeword but ganger!Miranda knew it because they think alike. But whoever said human!Miranda typed in the word? What if someone else did?

That's really neither here nor there. The point is that the shuttle, that drove the human selves to get the power switched back on, and the codeword used to summon the shuttle that eventually proved useless, are red snappers. It's a plot that branches off and then just fizzles and is kind of ignored.

If you're wondering where the term red snapper comes from, it comes from the movie 'The Perfect Getaway' (with Steve Zahn!). An uneducated (ish) character talks about red snappers to a screenplay writer and uses the definition of a red herring. The screen writer says "I think that's a red herring." The first character thinks about it and says "No, I don't think it is." Red snapper. Tell your friends. It's going to be a thing.