I see what they were doing, but let's go straight to a bit of my Christmas-episode message, directly above:
We had a music-number in the third of the pre-Christmas shows. I enjoyed that, and this one, but hopefully we're not going to have it as a (semi-)regular thing under the new/returning regime?
Ok, that's out of the way. They couldn't have avoided music (even if the plot was about the loss of it!) but I'll not say more about
that whole aspect of the blatant fourth-walling.
Speaking of the focus character's fourth-walling, it had me thinking (ahead of time) that perhaps they were going through the idea of a "Nine Muses" (clearly placed in the same in-universe context as the Toymaster, who was the perverted source (or sink) of play). And 'lo, we do see they are connected. With other possible ones on the way (a Polyhymnia expy would be interesting, if they
are going for Muses, though the Buffyverse might have already effectively done that, or it would have to be an A Quiet Place concept), not counting the heralded big-bad (and, if not the same, Ruby's true parentage!).
I actually mumbled "non-diagetic" to myself as the fourth-wall-break was cued at the end of the cold-open. And some things became
so ND that even the Doctor explicitly namechecked it later on (ouch, confusing for us viewers, not done the way I would have). ((Much subtler was the likes of Sarah Jane's "Mr Smith" which
turned out to be ND, when we find 'him' asked to pop up by "Mr Smith, I need you
quietly..." and he did so...))
Other telegraphings. Early on, whilst on the roof, we saw the edge of the wooden billboard from behind. I immediately anticipated a back-shot to see what the structure was for, but of course that was saved for the (very heavy!) hint post-victory. (Though there's some in-universe logic to be solved. If there's been 30 years of winding down music, was that the thing advertised even before the reversal of the trend, or the reversion of the acceptable status-quo? But a greater power, so maybe beyond the Maestro's level of appetite to consume and remove.) Not as subtle as the Vote Saxon posters, or even (initially) the Bad Wolf concept.
And, 'lost chord' myths aside, both summoning and banishing chords cannot be banished or vanished or suddenly happened upon like that, and must surely crop up surprisingly frequently. Not just to 1920s music-teachers[2]. Why
this chink in history (even assuming direct connection with the John Logie Baird breakthrough - which was 1926, I think, so the world was de-Giggled (with temporal actions and interventions from mid-'20s (c20th) to mid-'20s (c21st)), perhaps opening up the door for Giggle's offspring to start having their own go at changing timelines
slightly prior to that...? ...makes no clear in-universe sense).
Anyway, this is clearly this is the arc-welding episode. We
will see more in this vein. Not sure how happy I am about that, until I see what else they've got coming up in the arc concerned.
[2] Who I rather thought to have initially
mis-mis-gendered Maestro. Unless he wasn't quite the staid interwar gentleman ("Georg(V)ian"?) he presented as, I can't really see him defaulting to identifying someone like that as a man upon first thoughts. He'd have surely been more likely to have to be corrected from "her" to "them", this far outside of any clear cabaret/drag venue. In these more enlightened and worldwise times, I might ask (if possible to tactfully do so) or perhaps try to stay (politely) vague until informed, but someone with predominantly feminine attire looks like they should be "she"d more than "he"d. Or maybe the teacher
was actually a bit of a party-goer within the fledgling Roaring Twenties[3], and I'm just mispresuming myself that he never encountered such company? But it seemed a bit unjustified and a deliberate beyond-inclusive bit of writing intended to continue the 'tweak your face' crusade against the (probably dwindling, driven away) unenlightened audience. Whereas I'd prefer just a more unspoken view where trans(exual/vestite) actors, etc, are not restricted to (and lauded as) equivalent trans characters, but whatever characters they are any good as presenting at. Like I'll accept anyone with a passing Scots accent to play a scot. As any scottish actor that can give a decent estuary-english can always use that, and how I think that new-Rose (Temple-Noble) could have easily survived not being co-labeled as per her performer's history (plot-points/semi-deus-ex aside).
[3] If normally sympathetic/allied, rather than unwillingly immersed in drag-culture, I
suppose he could have just taken particular umbrage against this particular piano-emerging personification and
deliberately 'dead-gendered' them. But then you have to wonder about the lack of genre-savviness of deliberately "flipping off Cthulhu" immediately upon first meeting them by resorting to insults. Which suggests a strange blend of oblivious and observent. Seeing past the clothes, but not the miraculous arrival, or else this is in an establishment (private school grounds?) where seeing an actual
woman on the premises is by far the more absurd event that could happen, even compared with someone somehow cleverly contriving some sort of instrumental-egress in the middle of an otherwise bare room! A riddle for the ages, indeed.
