Martha's bong

Appears in TV:The Pounding of Cooms. Is located on Martha's chest... hnghh - is located on Martha's chest of drawers. Led /who/ to a meltdown (despite only appearing briefly) shortly before Asher and company first reared his ugly head - OneThinks.jpg.

Contents
The bong contains a sort of orange liquid, consistent with the generally orange-toned colour palette of Season 3, particularly the Finale. It contains three pickled onions stacked upon a golf ball, perhaps foreshadowing Zacko's imminent arrival, or even perhaps planted by him as a smug little joke to ease his usurpation of /who/.

/who/ discovers the bong
Near the end of March 2020, some /who/ anons questioned the presence of a bizarre prop in The Sound of Drums. At first, the relevant posts were ignored, but after much forcing, the latent autism caused /who/ to go into overdrive.



Totally Doctor Who steps in
[link video and channel]

/who/ was thinking and thinking with their collective IQ of 90, but no answers came.

Then an anon miraculously came across a Totally Doctor Who Channel, and in that channel, he found the Sound of Drums episode. Hurrah! It was a tour of Martha's flat! However, the mysterious prop was hardly shed any light upon.

And then suddenly...

-scheduled video

-such wow

The Lazarus (rebirth) theory
In a long series of rambling posts Karenfag theorised that the white balls within the vase are moonstones, and that there was a sun and moon-based connection going on throughout the entire series, and more specifically the sun and moon symbols are used to represent rebirth via the cycles of night and day (with the moonstones representing the moon, and the orange vase representing the sun). Below is all the evidence gathered to support that theory so far.



1. Smith and Jones
The episode takes place on the moon and the episode starts with Martha talking to her sister, who has an identical moonstone on display as the ones in the Marthavase. She says "God" when the moonstone appears, which may be intentional reference to rebirth as God (in the form of the son, Jesus) resurrects Lazarus (brother of Martha) from the dead in The Bible.



2. The Shakespeare Code
The leader of the witches is named Lilith in reference to the black moon Lilith, the name in astrology for the mathematical point exactly in between the earth and the moon, which is asociated with sexuality. Lilith the character embodies sexuality as she had the ability to assume the form of a beautiful young woman, a trick she used to ensnare male victims (which she tries on the Doctor too, but fails).



3. Gridlock
There are green Moon symbols all over the under-city Martha and the Doctor arrive at. In S02E01 "New Earth", the Doctor explains to Rose that the moon is the universal symbol for hospitals. The Lazarus rebirth is again a theme as "New Earth" ends with the infected humans granted lives to live in freedom.



4 and 5. Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
The episode is about rebirth (specifically rebirth of the daleks into a human-dalek hybrid). The sun and moon connections come from the fact that it's set in "the city that never sleeps" and solar flares were the planned power source for the hybridisation.



6. The Lazarus Experiment
The name Lazarus is reference to the rebirth theme of the episode, as the plot is about a man who effectively gets "reborn" from a machine at Lazarus Laboratories that undoes his ageing. In The Bible, Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha, and Jesus raised him from the dead. This is also the first episode we see the Marthavase in and Lazarus Laboratories has a lunar cycle banner behind orange light, looking similar to a Marthavase.

In the Doctor Who confidential episode for Lazarus, it's revealed that a golfball on a stick is used as a placeholder for cgi Lazarus monster, and this explains how the golfball in the Marthavase fits into this Lazarus theory. Currently this page doesn't support embedded Webm files, so you can see the golfball in use here.



7. 42
The episode all takes place by the sun, and he stares into the sun in astonishment saying "It's alive!". Also matching the sun/moon connection is that the Doctor wears the same spacesuit again in his next two incarnations, with 11 being in that spacesuit whilst taking a photo of the sun, and 12 being in that spacesuit in "Kill the Moon". Also in Kill the Moon the moon turns out to be an egg, perhaps in reference to these moon easter eggs.

Strangely (though probably unrelated to this theory) Orson Pink also wears the same spacesuit, including the same SB6 badge the 10th Doctor wore. It's unlikely to be an oversight as the badge was already removed previously for the 11th and 12th Doctors.



8 and 9. Human Nature/The Family of Blood
The cycle starts again in the solar phase, represented by the fact that the Doctor is in bed as "John Smith" and meeting Martha with fresh eyes again at the start of the episode just like he did in the first episode of the series. The Doctor gives the antagonists eternal life in the form of eternal torture for their sins.



10. Blink
The entire episode is all about easter eggs in reference to this large series-long easter egg. Larry Nightingale represents obsessive easter egg hunters like us. His surname refers to the moon again whilst the name Larry's etymology is "man from Laurentum" and Laurentum gets its name from Laurus nobilis, a sacred tree probably in reference to 'Forest of the dead' and Doctor Moon. It might seem a stretch as that episode occurred a series later, but Moffat actually intended for the weeping angels to play a part in silence in the library at the point of making Blink. Also the noblis being inspiration for Donna Noble who played a big part in Forest of the dead.

Again the theme is about rebirth with Billy Shipton and other weeping angel victims being given a new life in a different time. When he first arrives in his new life the Doctor tells him he found him with a "timey wimey detector" that can "boil an egg in thirty paces whether you want it to or not", another meta reference to easter eggs.



11. Utopia
The episode is again about rebirth, with "The Master, reborn" (as Derek Jacobi's last words state). On a larger scale, it's also about the rebirth of the universe as it takes place at the end of the universe with the residents seeking to start over again in 'Utopia'.

12 and 13. The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords
We see the Marthavase appear once again in this episode along with a container of more moonstones, before being blown up, representing the end of the story arc. The Master represents the battery in the Marthavase as he has the power (he's the leader of the world), on top of which is the golfball which represents the monsters CGI prop used in Lazarus, in this case the monsters actually being ball-shaped (Coincidence? I think not) Toclafane. The three moonstones represent Martha Jack and the Doctor who stand in the way.

Near the end of the episode we see a ring with the Lazarus arrangement on it whilst hearing the dead Master laugh, implying that like Lazarus he will come back from the dead (which turned out to be true when the same ring is used to resurrect him in The End of Time).



Asylum of the Daleks
Near the beginning of Asylum of the Daleks, a Dalek utters the beginning of the catchphrase "Exterminate", which Rory mishears as "eggs", thinking the dalek means the "eggs" that populate the dalekanium casing of Daleks.

Kill the Moon
The Moon in Kill the Moon is ultimately revealed to be an egg.

Sontaran spaceship
Looks like an egg (TV: The Time Warrior, The Sontaran Experiment)

Other theories
Other theories include:

Martha and/or Tish are modern day witches
As the Doctor explains in The Shakespeare code, witchcraft is simply another form of science that uses words instead of numbers. Martha and Tish definitely practice witchcraft by this definition as Martha heals the sick using science (as she's a trainee Doctor), whilst Tish worked for Lazarus Laboratories, which reversed ageing using science. The series ends with Martha using witchcraft the traditional way using words, as she's able to de-age the Doctor by convincing people around the world to all think and say the word "Doctor" at the same time.

As for the connection to the marthavase, the marthavase contains gemstones (seemingly moonstones), and gemstones are often used for rituals. The marthavase may be just 1 element of a greater ritual shrine she has, as by the vase are candles (also a common element in rituals) and a pack of cards (possibly tarot cards, but even regular playing cards can be used for occult purposes). Martha's sister Tish also has the same moonstone by candles in her room. If both Martha and Tish are witches then it may imply that there is or was a third sister as witches stereotypically come together as three sisters like in Macbeth (and in The Shakespeare Code episode).

The fact that Martha's first Tardis adventure involves witches may also be a reference to this, or it could even be that she somehow influenced the TARDIS unconciously.

The Marthavase is symbolic of the Face of Boe
He plays an important role in the series and like the Marthavase, he looks like a giant golfball surrounded by smaller balls, contained in a giant battery-powered glass vase.

It was a lazy gift from Annalise (the girlfriend of Martha's Father)
Annalise is known to buy cheap presents as she bought Leo Jones a "75p bar of soap" as a birthday present in the first episode. It's possible she threw together some junk she had lying around the house and pretended it was a trendy ornament.

It's simply some random props with no thought put into them
Self explanatory.

Foreshadowing for Mister Blobby's debut
It is possible that the eggs represent a clue towards the 14th Doctor's future appearance.

Mmister Blobby has spots which reasnably approximate eggs all over his pink body, and though they are the wrong clour, the eggs could plausibly have been inserted as a very roundabout clue.

But probably not.

As is hinted to at the end of the series the Marthabong appears in, The Face of Boe may be a future form of Captain Jack. Within S02E01 "New Earth", the cat nurse besides Boe says "I can hear him singing sometimes, in my mind, such ancient songs", and it's very possible that this is what she heard, which would be considered an "ancient song" from her perspective in the year 5,000,000,023.