Martha's bong



Appearing in (TV:The Pounding of Cooms) Martha's Bong or the Marthavase in pre-watershed broadcasts is located on Martha's chest... hnghh - is located on Martha's chest of drawers. It famously led /who/ to a meltdown (despite only appearing briefly) shortly before Asher and company first reared his ugly head - OneThinks.jpg. (CONFIDENTIAL: Karenfag's diary)

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
/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

Get them whilst you can!
Long after the meme had already gone stale, the vase used for the Marthabong was finally discovered in the wild. It's a discontinued Ikea vase, model Rektangel, article number 500.945.86. Now you too can own this fine piece of /who/ history.



But wait there's more! It now comes in a variety of additional colours. Legend says that the one who collects them all will become a god



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 3, 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, in order of appearance:



0. Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways
The connection between life and death and the sun and moon predate the first marthavase appearance, as it is the root of the Bad Wolf plot. Bad Wolf itself is a living cycle, as she left the "Bad Wolf" messages across time and space, to lead her to creating herself.

The Red Riding Hood connections
The Bad Wolf name is a reference to the tale of Red Riding Hood, which some folklorists and cultural anthropologists believe has its roots in solar myth, with the red hood representing the bright sun which is ultimately swallowed by the night (the wolf), and the variations in which she is cut out of the wolf's belly represent the dawn. In this interpretation, there is a connection between the wolf of this tale and Sköll, the wolf in Norse mythology that will swallow the personified Sun at Ragnarök, or Fenrir.

It could also be the case that RTD intentionally chose the name of "Rose" for the companion because of Roses being Red, like Red Riding Hood (Incidentally the first Floribunda rose created was named Rödhätte, which is Danish for Red Riding Hood). Another connection between Red Riding Hood and the Marthavase is that like the Marthavase, the Bad Wolf is filled with stones (and that's what ultimately kills the wolf). If Rose is representative of Red Riding Hood you could see the Doctor as representative of the Woodcutter (AKA a tree surgeon) that saves Rose from the Wolf. It might seem like a stretch but oddly enough RTD did make a reference between the Doctor and the Woodcutter as in "The End of the World" (his first time travel adventure with Rose) he spends much of the time with a living tree named Jabe, who sacrifices her life for him and gifts him a cutting of her.

Power over life and death, sun and moon
In the series finale, Bad Wolf brings death to the Daleks and life to Captain Jack (with his final form incidentally being like a Marthavase as he's a living ball in a vase, named the Face of Boe).

Following that, the connection between life and death and the sun/moon cycle is directly stated through the final dialogue between Bad Wolf and the Doctor: Bad Wolf: I Bring Life.

The Doctor: But this is wrong! You can't control life and death!

Bad Wolf: But I can. The Sun and the moon, the day and night… why do they hurt?

1. Smith and Jones
The episode takes place on the moon and starts with Martha talking to her sister, Tish. Tish has both sun and moon connections in her bedroom, with the moon connection coming from her having an identical moonstone on display as the ones in the Marthavase, and the sun connection comes from the rödhätte rose petals on the wall (rödhätte is Danish for Red Riding Hood - the significance of Red Riding Hood is explained above). Tish says "God" when the moonstone and petals appear, which may be an 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 associated 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.

Within the lab itself are a series of Marthavase variants, containing experimental alternatives with different containers and stones. The central one is presumably the standard that the other variants are compared against, as it contains the same stones as in Martha's own vase:



Whilst no explanation is given for why the stones are being experimented on, it is likely that they have special properties, and may even be sentient. Like a weeping angel, perhaps it moves when nobody else is looking, which is why they're in a sealed container, and why after the container is destroyed (as the Doctor blows up the lab) one of the stones is shown to have moved to outside of the Laboratory (pictured below). Disturbingly there are some abandoned boots by the stone, suggesting that perhaps the stone caused whoever was wearing those boots to disappear (also much like a weeping angel):



In the Doctor Who confidential episode for Lazarus, it's revealed that a golfball on a stick is used as a placeholder for the CGI Lazarus monster, and this explains how the golfball in the Marthavase fits into this Lazarus theory. You can see the golfball in use in the video below:

7. 42
The episode all takes place by the sun, and the Doctor 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. The sun connection comes from the fact that the Doctor instructs Sally to send the TARDIS back to him because if the weeping angels get it "they damage they could do could switch of the sun"

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 their leitmotiv "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)

Torchwood: Small Worlds
This episode shows a woman conducting an occult ritual using the same kind of stone (moonstone) as we see in the Marthavase and in Tish's bedroom (in both cases these are also by candles, perhaps because Tish and Martha also conduct occult rituals with them). Later in the episode Gwen and Jack visit a school where there's what appears to be a painting of a Marthavase on the wall. The Monsters of the episode are Fairies, who cause people to die by coughing up rose petals - this may be a reference to Bad Wolf, as Bad Wolf has its connection to Fairies through being from a Fairytale (Red Riding Hood), and to Rose petals through Rose Tyler. If the Doctor is the equivalent of the woodcutter in Red Riding Hood then that would also explain why there are trees either side of the Marthavase in the school painting.

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, as the Hartnell Doctor uses regular cards for occult purposes in "The Smugglers"). In the Torchwood episode "Small Worlds" we even see Estelle using the exact same type of stone for an occult ritual. 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 unconsciously.

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.

Mister Blobby has spots which reasonably approximate eggs all over his pink body, and though they are the wrong colour, 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.

"The egg has hatched"
"The egg has hatch", "The egg is hatching" and variations thereupon are mantras associated with the trans community and are commonly heard (spammed) on /who/. It is plausible that the eggs in the marthavase represent a dogwhistle for trans doctor who fans to co-ordinate their efforts in "cracking" eggs, that is to faciliate the transition of an individual perceived to be trans but unaware themselves, much to the delight of the likes of Neo.