50th Anniversary Special
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Craig 12 years, 11 months ago.
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11 April 2013 at 10:20 #5083
Yes, Smith’s comments about the paintings has bugged me – obviously we have seen the Clara painting in BSJ – but where did it come from? Again I wonder if we are seeing the Dr/Clara interactions out of order.
Smith has signed up to three movies – but, as I understand it, they are American movies, the first of which is directed by Ryan Gosling. Not Dr Who movies.
The problems with the Smith seasons has been simple – the budget was blown early by Moffat and his team and so they had to borrow from following seasons budgets. Which is why the seasons were broken up. As I understand it, this has been a long running issue at the BBC and is part of the reason Caroline Skinner has jumped ship. The BBC wants a run of thirteen episodes next year and, it seems, Clara is signed for that.
I gather there are things we have not been told about yet – one story going the rounds is that on Nov 23, the BBC will replay, probably on BBC2, Tenth Planet, Power of the Daleks, Frontier in Space, Pyramids of Mars, Caves of Androzani, Vengeance on Varos, Curse of Fenric, the Movie, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End and Pandorica Opens/Big Bang. (And yes, you read that list correctly…)
11 April 2013 at 10:50 #508911 April 2013 at 11:20 #5093@htpbdet
The budget thing is interesting. Didn’t I read somewhere that it costs £1m per ep. but that the BBC make £180m from Who. Seems a shame more of that profit couldn’t have gone back into the show.That is interesting news about the 23rd. A bit odd to cram it all into one day though. A bigger build up would have been nice eh @ JimTheFish?
At the start of the year there were 11 months until the 50th anniversary. 11 months, 11 Doctors. Surely someone at the Beeb could have done the math.
11 April 2013 at 12:06 #5097I always read the budget thing as the producers trying to force the Beeb into giving them a realistic budget – and failing.
And while, yes, you could blame Steven Moffat alone, he did have two other Executive Producers on-board at the time. And it was their job to ensure that writers and directors stayed within budget. That’s a producers’ job, not the Head Writer’s (even if the Head Writer does have an Executive Producer credit).
The job of a Head Writer and director is to ask for as much as they possibly can – the job of the producer is to say ‘no, we can’t afford it.’
11 April 2013 at 12:23 #5103Yes, but as I understand it from within the BBC, the high turnover of producers on Doctor Who is because SM won’t listen to them and they continually exceed budget at his insistence. The money BBC Worldwide rakes in from sales and merchandise does not affect the programme budget – that has to be bargained for like any other programme. And its expected to keep to its budget. Which it doesn’t.
I don’t blame SM alone – I think the BBC is insane not to provide an appropriate budget for a flagship programme -but it is, of course, always a question of what that budget should be, Should the money be spent on effects or gadgetry or on plots, characters and sets/locations. Its a balance. A hard one.
Still, RTD managed it…
11 April 2013 at 12:27 #5107Anyway, moving back to 50th Anniversary speculation – or possibly end of 7.2 speculation:
Would anyone else find it funny if they referenced the notorious slight difficulty Romana had in saying her own full name by having the Doctor mispronounce his own name? I always vaguely imagined that Time Lord’s real names were some high-falutin’ High Gallifreyan things that everybody promptly changed to a nickname, or at least shortened.
Probably just my sense of humour, but it might be funny if at a very tense moment it’s
Doctor: My name is written in fire in the stars. It echoes across the aeons. My name is [insertnamehere] oh, damn, no, not quite, uh, [insertnamehere]
River: Shall we go for best two out of three, dear?
11 April 2013 at 12:37 #5111@htpbdet – I keep saying they need to bring his wife in. Seriously, she can obviously keep him to the bloody budget 😀
But yes, I think they are granting their flagship a ridiculously low budget.
11 April 2013 at 12:42 #5113Romana had no difficulty pronouncing her name – it was the Doctor who had the trouble. But, yes, I do think it would be funny if the Doctor had trouble pronouncing his own name – but I wonder if he even remembers it?
I have always not understood how the Doctor’s real name could be such a problem – unless pronouncing it opens the Time Lock or triggers a regeneration or does something momentous like that?
I have always imagined that the 11th Doctor’s fall, when every living creature must answer truthfully, will involve him giving his name and thereby facing up to how he is and what he has done – the Silence wanted to stop him getting to that point? Why? Unless it affected them? If he admits who he is and what he has done and there is some sort of paradoxical reboot, so that his past remains an alternative time-line in which creatures like the Silence are locked, but he can go forth, free from the burdens of knowledge and consequence to continue his travels – well, I can see then both why he would not want to utter his real name and why villains would want to stop him.
It would be funny if his real name was What.
11 April 2013 at 12:51 #5115@htpbdet – I had a similar thought/theory where the Silence were guarding something dangerous for him. They made everyone forget about it if they ever saw it.
Even the Dr’s forgotten it was that dangerous.His name being the password for them to fall and stop guarding it…
and @bluesqueakpip – snap! Though I had it as him revealing his name as…. Gallifreyan symbols with a big “Ta Dah!” and everyone going “huh? wha?”
;¬)
11 April 2013 at 13:12 #5121Oh you wags @bluesqueakpip @htpbdet and @whisht , the Doctor’s name is the “most important secret in the universe” and no laughing matter! 🙂
I did wonder if the script of Ahkaten was gently taking the piss out of itself with the speech about the leaf being the most important leaf in the universe, because Nu Who does have a teensy tendency to make everything “the most important X in the universe” 🙂
@whisht Incidentally, my Scottish granny always used to say “Whisht!” when she wanted us to shut up. (Yes @chickenelly I too have a Scottish granny – well, had, bless her).
I’m not telling you to shut up @whisht btw 🙂 Just that you were talking about the Silence and that reminded me… Anyway, I think you could be right and the Silence could well turn out to be working for “dark Doctor”.
I really really hope we do get to see Matt Smith play a villain version of the Doctor. He would be so great at it – and we’ve seen just little hints of it here and there already, such as him in the anti-Silence eye-patch or him shouting at Colonel Runaway…
11 April 2013 at 21:36 #5169ah @juniperfish, yes….. whisht!
;¬)
Actually, my parents were Irish and not sure but I think it was my dad where “will yer whisht” came from!
Hadn’t thought of the Silence though!!
11 April 2013 at 21:39 #5171btw – has anyone suggested 11 Matt Smiths appearing, each ‘as’ one of the previous Drs?
or (echoing my own Spartacus riff) a whole crowd of Smiths, Malcoviching the whole scene…?
Not Who? but Which…?
11 April 2013 at 22:19 #518311 Matt Smiths….:swoon:
oops! sorry about that!
12 April 2013 at 07:13 #5205(Yes@chickenelly I too have a Scottish granny – well, had, bless her).
Ooh that reminds me, my lovely white-haired, imaginary granny hasn’t made an appearance this series. I can say that she preferred the first half of this series (she also didn’t like those kiddies singing) but is looking forward to the 50th anniversary special.
21 April 2013 at 07:09 #6234Possible dialogue for the 50th:
Tenth Doctor: What’s the last thing you remember?
The Doctor: I was in a junkyard on Earth, it was November 23rd 1963 and I was waiting for my granddaughter to come home.
Tenth Doctor: Yes, well. Quite a lot’s happened since then.
22 April 2013 at 01:47 #6336Interesting last ep title which may lead into the 50th:
The Name of the Doctor is reminiscent of The Name of the Rose.
Just throwing that one out there.
22 April 2013 at 04:42 #6337Hello @whohar. Will we actually find out the name of the Doctor? I am not so sure. Not that we will or won’t find out his name, but that it (the name) will be the big reveal. Moffat has claimed that we will find out the Doctor’s greatest secret and “it will be surprise”. At least, I think he was quoted as saying that. Well, his name has been so heavily set up by Moffat that I do not think it constitutes a surprise. And if it is his name, let’s hope it’s not Endeavour.
No, I still think the surprise is about “who the Doctor is”, rather than “Doctor Who?” And I think it is about his relationship to other characters. We know that River Song will be back for the episode, we know that the Doctor is fixated on “who Clara is”, and we know that no one can do timey-wimey the way Moffat can.
We also know that River has seen all the Doctor’s faces. So I think the surprise is not what the Doctor’s name is, but what the context of River finding out his name was. So….if, for example, there was a child with River, it does not have to be either the 11th, or the 10th. It might have been anytime in the Doctor’s time stream–1 to 11 or 12 on. After all, River travels in time too. And River is good at keeping secrets.
22 April 2013 at 05:13 #6339Hello again @whohar. I realise my post wasn’t actually a response to yours, more of a word association and general ramble.
I blame it all on the free wine in the Club Lounge, where I am, yet again. And about to depart.
22 April 2013 at 05:25 #6341Good to have you back. As you may have gathered I am now in your neck of the woods and therefore working the night shift. It’s been a bit lonely so hoping you can give me some tips on how to adapt 🙂
Good news is that the bath and some other chattels will soon arrive and I’ll be able to wallow and ponder.
My latest bonkers theory (for which I have zero evidence) is that Clara is the Docs sister. This is a bit Luke-Leia I admit, but DW often pays tribute/ rips off other shows. And Smith and Coleman do have that kind of brother-sister dynamic on screen.
22 April 2013 at 07:35 #6345You are ALL brilliant!!
@whisht – Matt Smith acting each of the other Doctors 🙂
@bluesqueakpip – if that dialogue isn’t in the 50th it damn well should be 🙂
@whohar – Agree re Rose ref, good spot. And sister – now there’s an idea that I don’t think has come up before – impressed! Mighty relieved to hear the thinking bath is on its way 😉
@blenkinsopthebrave <waves excitedly> Sorry to disagree slightly for 1st communication(!) but River only knows the Dr from 10 onwards, otherwise Tennant would have remembered her when they met in SitL She remarked that 10 was a younger version of “her” Doctor, which leaves it wide open for her to have relationship with post-11 incarnations. Heck, she might even be 2-timing the Dr with himself (depending who’s in what timestream and when!)
They are certainly pushing us to think that the ultimate question is “Doctor Who?” They’d better not tell us!!!
22 April 2013 at 08:17 #6346Just to reference a detail on the poster for The Name of the Doctor- on the word Doctor, which is presented afm some form of metal, there are slight inscriptions similar to the detail on the fob watch belonging to Ten ain’t he family of blood, and the Master.
Could this reference a hidden timelord?
22 April 2013 at 08:22 #6348Scratch that, it’s the detail from his out which is his name in Gallifreyan.
22 April 2013 at 08:50 #6349Hi @scaryb. But is it true that the 10th would have remembered her? If the Doctor’s timestream is linear, but is it? River met the 11th out of order. We know that the 10th and the 11th will be together on 23 November even though the 10th regenerated (presumably in the “past”). But all this sounds like time (even for the Doctor) runs in a linear way. But does itAt the end of “The Snowmen” the Great Intelligence seems to ring a bell. But if everything was linear then he would remember it clearly, as the 10th would clearly remember meeting River before if they had met before the meeting in the Library…if everything was linear.
But I think Moffat can come up with a timey-wimey alternative.
22 April 2013 at 08:54 #6350I just read my last post, which seems to have gone all timey-wimey itself. As the day Over (in the colonies) it is clearly time to open a bottle.
22 April 2013 at 10:14 #6353I’ll raise a glass of local (Barossa) shiraz to that.
Cheers
Janette
22 April 2013 at 12:17 #6368@scaryb – once the bath is installed I’ll be having a bring your own bottle (of bubble bath) party – all welcome.
ORM (Other Random Musings): For the 50th, I don’t think the Valeyard will make a reappearance. No real evidence, except Moffat has already kiboshed the 13 regen rule, so there seems little urgency in bringing that storyline back.
Moffat tends to set things up in the first ep of the new season / series, then goes off at a tangent for a while before bringing it back to the main thread. It depends on which ep we take as the first show of this series, but the options I see are:
a) The Doc is going to be Dalekised (if AotD is the first show)
b) The GI is going to be involved, possibly mindwiping the Doc (if the Snowmen / BoSJ is the first show)Or possibly both will get a look in. At what point this occurs is beyond me at this time, but my guess is a mahoosive cliffhanger for the end of this series, which segues (get me) into the 50th Anniversary special.
As I’ve already mentioned on the G, I’m genuinely excited to know what’s going to happen next week and I’ve not felt like that about DW for ages. To borrow a fishy expression, I’m giddy as a kipper!
23 April 2013 at 07:48 #6432It occurs to me that – for a Time Lord – your name is the one constant throughout your regenerations, the one assurance that you’re the same person beneath all these different personas. If he loses/has lost his original name, there’s nothing left except the Doctor. All he now has is (tah-dah!) The Name of the Doctor.
And if the Eleventh Doctor HAS now forgotten his real name, might that be why we need Ten in the Fiftieth Anniversary? Ten’s reaction to River suggests he still remembers his name.
23 April 2013 at 08:02 #6436@bluesqueakpip No saying which versions of Ten and Rose will be in the 50th. Tho there may be fan uprisings if it’s “only” 10.5 🙂 I like your thinking tho
23 April 2013 at 08:07 #6437Anonymous @
@ Everyone with good knowledge of the Classic series –
I don’t understand how 10 could be in the same place as 11 – they’re the same person! How was this handled in previous multiple-Doctor episodes?
Awaiting your enlightenment on that point, I’m assuming that David Tennant will be playing 10.5 in the anniversary show . After all, that entity still has all of the Doctor’s memories.
… ooh, speaking of which … if everyone’s theories about the current version of the Doctor losing his memories are correct, then 10.5 is a pretty good person to have around – with Rose who also remembers 9 and what he told her about the Time War …
23 April 2013 at 08:10 #6438Just checking – does anyone know if the last episode of series 7 is the only Moff epi still to come? Although I have to say that Neil Cross seems to be deputising well for him, in scattering a quite ridiculous amount of clues/red-blue herrings. (I chuckle when I imagine the brief he got from Moffatt – the list of items/refs (bow ties, red/blue, rose, Cumbria, doubles, Tardis hissy fit, love), dates/numbers etc to fit in – amazing he had any space for story at all! (yet it felt remarkably integrated)
Anyone notice any random 27s this week? (@chickenelly)
23 April 2013 at 08:14 #6439@scaryb – you have hit the nail squarely on the head (roundly? nails aren’t square 😉 ) when I think about my assimilation to the dark side of bonkers theorising.
The amount of cross-over, allusions, pernickety details, etc which are contained in each of Moffat’s episodes as showrunner are awe-inspiring. A casual viewer can still enjoy very entertaining programmes, which is a testament to the brilliance of the writers; but cramming in all the other arc-based details is amazing. I now love this programme more than I ever did before!
23 April 2013 at 08:14 #6440Final thought before work – maybe all of Eleven’s problems go waaay back to his regeneration. The big bad is Ten, who still doesn’t want to go and won’t let go completely!
23 April 2013 at 08:18 #6442@scaryb – did you see the (Confidential? or other outtake? not sure) multiple takes David Tennant did on that ‘I don’t want to go’ line?
That’s quite interesting, that 10 still cannot let go fully; and that is a wildly wonderful addition to the 50th theories! I’m going to chew on that delicious morsel.
23 April 2013 at 08:22 #6443@Shazzbot re multiple Doctors paradox – in (2) words – Time Lords (interfering)
Welcome to the dark side. Good call on 10.5 being useful re memory back-up.
Hmmm <strokes chin and looks about to see if @chickenelly‘s pipe is around>
23 April 2013 at 08:33 #6444@bluesqueakpip – apologies – you also mentioned 10 as possible back-up
23 April 2013 at 11:08 #6450Which takes me back to the long forgotten theory that Clara is sent by the Time Lords to somehow manipulate the Doctor into unlocking the time lock and letting them out again. (Have we had that one. I am certain is is burried somewhere pages and pages back and I have no ideal who to credit for it so apologies.) Not sure how that fits with her rescuing the dr from being Dalekised or G.l.’d. In the past it was the Time Lords who relaxed the rules of time and space to enable multiple incarnations of the Doctor to ineract. Perhaps Clara is sent by one of the noble Time Lords to save the Dr from G.I or Dalekisation or the Silence or all three somehow tied in together, and to do so she must call on the assistance of Dr 10.5. and Rose.
Cheers
Janette
23 April 2013 at 11:42 #6452Or, Clara is sent by one of the good Time Lords (the Doctor’s mother, or Susan, or both). But it’s not to unlock the Time Lords. They need to be behind a time lock. No, it’s to restore lots of hidden little Time Lord children to their Gallifreyan nature.
Just something that always bugged me about the Time War: given that the Time Lords had the perfect means to hide themselves, why didn’t they at least evacuate the children from Gallifrey? At least The End of Time gave me a partial explanation – they were all as mad as a box of frogs. 🙂
But this bonkers theory would go with ‘Clara is a descendent of the Doctor’. She’s a carefully hidden descendent – but she’s not the only carefully hidden child. Her job is ‘first find the Doctor’ – which is why she’s been scattered through time, to be interesting to him. And ‘then, find the kids’. Which is why she’s so good with children.
23 April 2013 at 12:13 #6454I have said it before and will say it again, Clara is the Doctor’s child. “An Unearthly Child”, which links it to the beginning. Bonkers explanation will follow.
23 April 2013 at 12:25 #6455@blenkinsopthebrave (hopefully imbibing freebies in the Quantas lounge) – entirely possible, but if that is the case I’m looking forward to the moment of comic horror – as they each realise they fancied each other. 😀
23 April 2013 at 12:38 #6456And Moffat is the one person who could pull of such a moment of comic horror!
(am currently surviving outside of the warm harbour of the club lounge)
23 April 2013 at 18:15 #6468@Shazzbot Multiple Doctors? This is how Moffat himself did it for Children in Need a few years ago. Might hold some clues to his thinking…
@ Everyone else, I’ve had a busy few days and I come back and there are novels to read! Must pay more attention. 😀
23 April 2013 at 18:35 #6470@craig – thank you thank you!
‘What? Oh, no beard this time … well, a wife.’
How TF did they get THAT past the Mary Whitehouse contingent?!
Man, now I’m even more in thrall to S Moffat. That was zingy, fan-adoring, programme-history-respectful yet irreverently roller-coastering and galloping in spirit and energy. Plus those eeny teeny details (like looking at the back of one’s own head) which are so human; and as alien as the Doctor is, when he’s human like that, we love him even more. Yeah Moffat!
23 April 2013 at 18:50 #6472@craig — never tire of watching that and it usually brings a manly tear to the eye too. Because Davison was ‘my’ Doctor too. He’s vastly underrated I think because by and large he had the highest ratio of crap companions to deal with and a high ratio of second-rate stories but still managed to make them shine solely with his performance by and large…
24 April 2013 at 21:35 #6614@jimthefish, yeah I love it too, but more just because it’s great fun and a well written, tight two-hander. But the “My Doctor” bit still gets me. I think Moffat’s tidy work for the specials is just as important to him being made show runner as Blink etc.
@Shazzbot Moffat’s done a few of these. Never mind two Doctors, how about two Amys and two Rorys? This two-parter Moffat did a couple of years later is even more risqué than the beard line. I looked for this last night, but only found it tonight.
And if you’ve got 20 mins to spare, Moffat did a Red Nose Day sketch long before Nu Who started. It’s more comedy/farce but features a lot of timey wimey plotting, and several regenerations. And the final one is interesting given some current speculation…
25 April 2013 at 12:52 #6641I think Moffat’s tidy work for the specials is just as important to him being made show runner as Blink etc.
I agree. It proved that he could do the SF stuff but also the bread and butter humour and character stuff to. (Which to my mind might give Neil Cross a slight edge over Mark Gattiss in the new showrunner sweepstake.)
I never really liked the Curse of Fatal Death thing that much. It’s just a bit too silly for my liking. But thanks for posting the Red Nose Day thing. Very funny and nice to see the Ponds again. Rory is to be entirely forgiven for making that mistake I reckon…
28 April 2013 at 23:26 #7103Posted this on JttCotT but should be here really:
Just posted this on the G:
What if it was the 1st Doctor that escaped the Time War and engineered the Time Lock and therefore all subsequent Doctors (up to and including the 8th) are merely constructs designed to throw his enemies off the scent of who / where / when he really is.
Has Moffat got the cajones to do that?
29 April 2013 at 23:19 #7215Was thinking about the resolution of Time Crash, and wondering if – from a plotting point of view – this is why the dr is losing bits of his memory? Presumably SM doesn’t want another resolution along the lines of, I know what to do coz I watched me do it when I was you. So if by the time we get to the 50th anniversary, 11 is having bigger memory problems, the dramatic tension of finding a solution to whatever situation the Dr(s) face will be that bit greater.
29 April 2013 at 23:50 #7217@craig – thank you for the 11/Amy/Rory Red Nose Day re-winds; I actually saw those in real-time. I don’t think they’re as explanatory as the other RND clip you posted, in re multiple versions of the Doctor existing in the same comedy scene.
Which still bothers me for the 50th anniversary; unless we’ve got 10.5 and not real 10 to contend with. (Although, I felt, the 2011 RND clips cocooned the whole timey-wimey ultra-confusing story-arc thingy quite well. And, I’ve only recently branched out into other DW related sites but have learnt that I am not the only person put off by the excessively convoluted, re-arranging, folding-back-on-itself story arc of the Amy/Rory series.)
I saw the Rowan Atkinson clip not too long ago, which is hugely entertaining but again, perhaps not necessarily enlightening with respect to multiple Doctors sharing the same stage in a way that pushes the canon forward, ties up loose ends, and starts a whole new era with the most massive of big bangs.
As otherwise posited by @bluesqueakpip, the progeny issue is looming large in this series. One Doctor begets another, of course; but I doubt the ‘family’ thesis would rest solely on that. Or at least, I hope not; as I’ve argued on the JttCofT episode thread, The Doctor needs companions whose [Earth-bound] families provide narrative tension and a reason for them to survive the latest Tardis-based danger. If the companion was the Doctor’s daughter/granddaughter/mother-in-law/sister etc etc etc, then it just wouldn’t be ultimately as interesting as a tea-time family-oriented show.
2 May 2013 at 02:16 #7529Just watched the Prequel again – some really nice exchanges between the Doc and young Clara.
Someone I know raised an interesting point about it. In the very first few seconds there is a shot of two young children running across screen and then later on Clara’s mum (Ellie) is seen in the background talking to a woman. It was suggested that the two children are a young Rose and Mickey and the other woman is Jackie Tyler. They certainly look similar.
Not sure if there are any implications to this – I was trying to remember if Clara still lived in Lancashire at that point, which would pooh-pooh the whole idea.
2 May 2013 at 03:36 #7538I haven’t seen the clip for a while but maybe the two young children are supposed to be the children she was taking care of in tBoSJ. I don’t know however if the age gap is even vaguely close.
Cheers
Janette
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