8. Red/Blue
Pretty much every show on television goes to great lengths in terms of costume and design; Doctor Who, you may think, goes to double that. You might not be wrong, given the insane detail that goes into the symbolism behind such simple things as the colours red and blue. For a start, Matt Smith wore a blue bow tie for a past episode and a red bow tie for future episodes. Why? I don't know, but blue - go with me on this - is a colour associated with coldness. Perhaps reality and truth are blue. And red? That's much more of a capricious colour, perhaps more unimaginable and elaborate? That's one reason to explain the bow tie situation, but a lot of Doctor Who actually relates to those two colours: maybe red and blue suggests more than first thought... Just as a red bow tie indicates the future, and thus a world that's fictional or fantastical, Clara wears a red dress both in the aborted timeline of 'Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS' and in her dream of Oswin in 'Asylum of the Daleks'. The created world in 'The God Complex' is lushly red, a stark contrast to the actual blue of the spaceship, and Amy, who often wore red in Series 5 and 6 seemed to wear an awful lot more blue in Series 7 when she's settled down to reality with Rory. Clara was wearing blue in the
real timeline of 'Journey...' too, and in 'Amy's Choice', Rory interestingly wears blue in the world of his dream home life - implying that's the real world for him - whilst Amy wears both red and blue in both worlds. As a final point, the Doctor blew up two balloons in 'Hide' to demonstrate our universe and a pocket universe. You've guessed it: our universe was signified with a blue balloon and the balloon of the pocket world was red. Maybe all of it's in my head, I mean, surely not every instance of those two colours can mean that, right? And maybe Steven Moffat isn't actually a super-powered alien who does such complicated things with the simplest of primary colours. But next time you're watching a Doctor Who episode with a conflict of two worlds, look out for the colour scheme.