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  • #17821
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @Shazzbot: I’d certainly like to come, but the practicalities of nipping up from Bournemouth might cause me problems: it depends on whether or not I can stay with my brother who lives in Stepney. I will keep you posted! 🙂

    (Hopefully, by then I should have completed the project that’s largely kept me away from here recently: my vow to have watched every episode of Doctor Who (with help from Loose Cannon where necessary) before the anniversary. Mostly finished, but I’m saving the Daleks’ Masterplan until last!)

    #17469
    Arkleseizure @replies

    I am indeed disappointed. Ho-hum.

    #17468
    Arkleseizure @replies

    I’ll probably be disappointed, but the continuity announcer just said that something special was coming up after the EastEnders credits… We’ll know in half an hour…

    #17264
    Arkleseizure @replies

    MaybeMaybe this is just my Yeti obsession talking, but the wall Bad Wolf is written on looks to me to be rounded like a Tube station. Anyone else think this is significant?

    #17245
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @wolfweed: If there’s one story I would absolutely love to see, it’s one where the Doctor encounters an elderly Jamie who’s spent his life haunted by dreams about Cybermen, Yetis, Ice Warriors and cute girls from Victorian England and twenty-first century space stations. Where he learns that those were real memories that the Time Lords couldn’t quite delete, and so goes to his grave a happy man. With the Great Intelligence now a major player, perhaps it could be a Yeti story in the Highlands, now feeding off the revolutionary fervour from America and France? If I had any talent, I’d write that story myself.

    #17093
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @arkleseizure: not Big Finish, Loose Canon. Minor brain malfunction there.

    #17089
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @scaryb: agree wholeheartedly about the Massacre: probably the only time I’ve watched a reconstruction without feeling cheated because the story is just that good (although Big Finish did a typically fine job). William Hartnell is superb as the Abbot, and drives home that the famous Hartnell line fluffs were mostly a part of the First Doctor’s character. I could rave about the Massacre all day: it’s a masterpiece.

    #17088
    Arkleseizure @replies

    On the subject of doppelgängers, I was wondering how many people agree with the idea that Chancellor Goth was one of Time Lord tribunal that sentenced the Doctor in the War Games? I have to say I personally like the idea, even though you obviously can’t extend it to any of Bernard Horsfall’s other characters!

    #15331
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @Shazzbot : I think this will make them all the more determined to pull off a surprise regeneration next time. In the meantime, keep feeding lies to Ian Levine so he blabs them over twitter and cries wolf so often that nobody will listen when he finally hears a true story.

    #15250
    Arkleseizure @replies

    I was just thinking:

    The Abbott of Amboise, Salamander, Princess Strella, Ann Talbot.

    Doctor Who used to be able to take random doubles in its stride. What happened?

    #15248
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @ Craig :

    Yes, I called him Doctor Who. I don’t care.

    Yes, you did. Now resign your fandom in disgrace 😉

    #15219
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @bluesqueakpip — you’ve worried me. The Doctor with a face splintered through time. Does this mean the twelfth Doctor will actually be a Jagaroth?

    #15176
    Arkleseizure @replies

    YES!!!!! IT IS!!!!! BRILLIANT CHOICE!!!!!!!

    #14917
    Arkleseizure @replies

    Does anyone else think maybe there’s something significant in the trailers saying “The next Doctor” and not “The twelfth Doctor”? I mean, probably not but… well… possibly…

    #14885
    Arkleseizure @replies

    I’ve just watched a wonderful episode of EastEnders with an almost entirely female cast. Quite superb. And it makes me want a female doctor all the less. There are so many strong female parts, and so many in the offing, that why hijack Doctor Who? What good will it do? I grew up as as a teenage nerd in the nineties, and through the misery, bullied constantly, the Doctor was just about all I had to cling on to. I now know so many boys like I was, and losing the Doctor would be awful, dreadful.

    I’m sure I’ll learn to cope if they unveil a woman on Sunday. But I’ll be gutted for all the boys like me who’ve just been denied their bolt-hole. I’ve moved on and even grown up a bit. But I really worry for them.

    #14785
    Arkleseizure @replies

    There’s two reasons why I rarely look at spoilers. One is because they’re spoilers. The other is that they often turn out to be rumours about announcements about announcements.

    #14589
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @htpbdet and @Shazzbot:

    Yes, “explicitly” was the wrong word. “Thoughtless” would be better. I don’t really mean Rose personally meaning a lot to the Doctor so much as how her presence seemed to make him indifferent or plain nasty to everyone else: admittedly, this is more 9 than 10.

    It starts in World War III, with that dreadful line “I could save the world but lose you”. Save the world, then. That shouldn’t be a difficult choice. Painful, yes. A huge sacrifice, yes. But it’s presented like a genuine moral dilemma. As if it would be a legitimate moral choice not to save the world as long as he saves Rose. And in The Parting of the Ways, that’s exactly what he does. He rallies an army to hold back the Daleks, knowing they’ll all get slaughtered. But that’s a moral choice if he needs to buy time to build the delta wave. Except he doesn’t use the delta wave. This is portrayed as a moral choice, the Doctor unable to use such a weapon, but it follows from World War III: He doesn’t need to because he’s got Rose safely home and that’s the main thing. His army bought him time to do that. As long as she’s safe, the Daleks can do what they want.

    Parenthetically, this selective compassion was typical of 9. In Bad Wolf, he helps Lynda escape but leaves the other bloke to his fate. Sure, the bloke was a jerk, but no previous Doctor would have abandoned him. Even 6 would have helped, even if he insulted him all the way.

    This goes over and above Rose just being special to the Doctor. That would be fair enough. “If the world falls, you’ll fall with it” is a legitimate extra motivation. But that’s not what we get. The world can fall as long as you don’t? Rose just wasn’t that special, but RTD kept telling us she was. And it’s so frustrating because she was a good character. Just not something uniquely wonderful.

    #14583
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @nick,

    You know, that whole 9/10 – Rose thing made me lose a lot of respect for RTD. It was as if he didn’t trust the audience to like Rose, so he felt the need to keep telling us how bloody wonderful she was. It actually backfired with me: I liked her initially because she was a thoroughly ordinary girl in an extraordinary situation, and yet The Parting of the Ways gave the impression that the Doctor and Jack were only interested in saving Rose. The entire population of planet Earth? Nah, they’re nobody special. Actually, no: Rose is nobody special.

    It actually got worse after she left, with poor Martha being explicitly treated like a third-rate replacement, and she was left unable to develop as her own character. When did the Doctor do that sort of thing before? He welcomed Vicki with open arms when she replaced his own Granddaughter! He was openly very fond of Victoria, but did that cause him to belittle Zoe? I found I’d actually grown to loathe Rose for reasons that weren’t her fault at all: I was just reacting to being constantly told she was so fantastic. I’ve been able to mellow back towards her since, but why did RTD need to be so heavy-handed?

    This why I prefer Moffatt: Amy was just allowed to travel with the Doctor. She meant a lot to him, but we were allowed to see that in the performance rather than have it shoved in our faces. And has 11 made Clara feel second-rate? Come to that, he welcomed Rory like a brother, a far cry from the worthless appendage he treated Mickey as.

    Anyway, enough of this rant. Much that RTD did was great, but it’s as if he hadn’t the self-confidence to let us take to Rose in our own way.

    #14452
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @htpbdet, @scaryb — I might be coming across as a naysayer with regards to the Dalek Invasion of Earth, so I’ll be clear: it’s wonderful. And unique. There’s something uniquely frightening in the fact that the Daleks invaded and the Doctor hadn’t been around to stop them. All the later stories (of which I maintain The War Machines was the first ;)) had the Doctor at the start of events, defeating the invasion and preventing the conquest of Earth. That’s reassuring. The Dalek Invasion of Earth isn’t, and when I call it the odd man out I mean it as a complement.

    #14448
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @janetteb — The Mind Robber is actually one of a rare species: a 5-parter! The first episode is almost standalone, and the rest of the story can be told without it (except that the first episode is also utterly wonderful and amputating it would be anathema to me). So I think that would settle it on Tomb.

    Agree, the telesnap reconstruction can indeed be tough. Mission to the Unknown is an example of how Loose Cannon got better at it, learning tricks to hold the viewer’s interest in a static screen. But The Space Pirates has indeed been tough. How I loved episode 2, just for existing!

    #14446
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @htpbdet, @jimthefish, @scaryb, @janetteb

    So far as Troughton goes, I’d favour The Mind Robber or Tomb as the best fully extant stories. I personally prefer Mind Robber, but I think Tomb would perhaps be a better choice, given that it was once thought lost forever itself. Hope springs eternal!

    I don’t at all mind going audio for lost stories, (I’m halfway through the Loose Cannon reconstruction of The Space Pirates right now, as it happens), but I think it’s something we should do in addition to the BG reviews rather than as part of it. Perhaps we could do the Loose Cannon Mission to the Unknown by way of an experiment?

    #14389
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @htpbdet — yes, only Troughton had his regeneration deliberately triggered by someone else, and by the very people who’d be extra careful that they didn’t kill him. Even McCoy can be ruled out as his Doctor survived being shot: it was actually Grace who killed him by not knowing how to operate on a Time Lord!

    The Deadly Assassin also established that Time Lords had the death penalty, and executed by dispersing the condemned’s atoms around the universe. That suggests to me that they wanted to be absolutely sure that somebody they’d executed couldn’t just come back to life!

    🙂

    #14386
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @nick

    I don’t recall seeing a Time Lord actually dying in BG Who although the Master came close quite a few times

    I would suggest The Deadly Assassin as the answer to that one. The President is indeed killed with a staser shot from point-blank range, Runcible is killed with a knife in the back, and Goth dies of… well I’ve never been quite sure what Goth dies of, but I’m confident he does! Although I suppose it’s possible they were all on their last regeneration (as was Azmael in The Twin Dilemma, now I come to think of it).

    #14385
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @htpbdet — Yes, the Invasion introduced the concept of UNIT, which is clearly a big deal, but the The War Machines introduced the idea of the Doctor joining forces with an contemporary Earth forces to defeat a threat to global security. This idea resurfaced periodically throughout the Troughton years before being formalised in UNIT ready for Pertwee.

    The Dalek Invasion of Earth is a story I’ve long considered an odd man out in Doctor Who. It’s actually mistitled: The Dalek Occupation of Earth would describe it better as the invasion itself is over and done with before the Doctor arrives on the scene. His job is to help the resistance. Such fait accompli stories are virtually unheard of on Earth. That’s why I see the War Machines as where the Doctor Saves Earth as a plot really begins.

    #14358
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @phaseshift — thanks. The animation was made by the Viz team themselves and is rudimentary to say the least, but the voices aren’t too bad. It would never fit into canon for one obvious reason, but for anyone with a sense of humour as childish as mine, it’s quite brilliant.

    So: Not Safe For Work (and Not For Sale to Children as Viz always says on its cover….)

    #14356
    Arkleseizure @replies

    Does anyone remember the Doctor Poo strip that once appeared in Viz? And would anyone object if I post an animated version here? It’s full of rude words, like the F one, so I wondered if it would be too adult.

    #14353
    Arkleseizure @replies

    I think I’ll side with Ghost Light, too. It does indeed seem to sow the seeds for AG-Who some years before. Funnily enough, I realised yesterday that Doctor Who seemed to do this surprisingly often. They say The Invasion laid the ground for the Pertwee era. I can see what they mean, but I discovered The War Machines recently and I’d say the idea was seeded then, before Troughton. Anyway, I’m rambling. But I have to say I loved The War Machines. Bill Hartnell staring down a War Machine: brilliant! And no sign of his supposed illness, either.

    Perhaps we could go black and white after Ghost Light and Androzani?

    #13198
    Arkleseizure @replies

    And now, I’m going to do something that I think needs doing here: I’m going to stick up for Anthony Ainley.

    I rewatched Logopolis today, and I was struck by the fact that I really enjoyed Ainley’s performance. I recognised the reason for this when Tom commented that “you’re utterly mad”. He was shocked to realise this: he wasn’t talking to the master he knew after all, but a version unhinged by the mental scars of his decayed period. This, I think, is what Ainley always intended: Delgado with a screw loose. It really could have worked, and I don’t think it’s Ainley’s fault it didn’t.

    Castrovalva might have been a good “strangled at birth” story for Ainley’s Master, but that was never going to happen. Just a pity that it established the Captain Scarlet version of the Master that would test the show’s credibility to bursting point. Time-Flight and The King’s Demons are trash, agreed. The Master in the Five Doctors is relatively underplayed and actually works rather well, genuinely hurt by the Doctor’s refusal to believe him. After that, he goes back to pantomime villain, but lets put the blame where it truly lies, shall we? You know: John Nathan-Turner.

    I think it was The Mark of the Rani, but there’s a story of Ainley giving a subdued intense performance, only to receive orders from above to be “more OTT” in the retake. That’s just what an actor doesn’t need: we’ll keep demanding retakes until you mess it up! Ainley later sounded off in interviews about his frustrations with JN-T and I can’t say I blame him. (JN-T was also to blame for that ludicrous costume Ainley had to wear. He got something better in is last story, and not just the costume).

    Survival was the survival of the Master as Ainley wanted to play him against the weakening dead hand of JN-T. The same unhinged gentleman, albeit complicated by the effects of the Cheetah planet, led to the First good Master story since Castrovalva. Ainley had it in him, but wasn’t allowed to let it out until Survival. Even his costume was good in that one!

    So, that is my defence of Anthony Ainley. His Master would have worked perfectly in another era. I don’t blame him for being in an era when very little worked at all.

    #13197
    Arkleseizure @replies

    Okay. I’ve been struggling to think how to put my thoughts because I was still at primary school in 1989, so what I say I will say from the heart: I love Sylvester McCoy.  I love Sylvester because he was the only alien doctor my generation had. The Doctor needs to be otherworldly. People say alien, but I think “otherworldly” says it better. Differently human, if you will.

    My dad, who grew up with the first four, and loved all but but Pertwee, who he merely liked, was indifferent to Davison and loathed Baker II. I can now see why. (I speak here for him, not for me). Davison was actually vey human, albeit with the occasional flash of otherworldliness. Today, I see his grunt at Tegan’s dress in Enlightenment was a sign of this: watching the VHS as a 14-year-old, I reacted very differently! But usually, he reacted as a human would react, much like Pertwee, so I can see where Dad was coming from. Both had enough elements of otherworldliness to remind you that they were indeed from another world, but my first vivid memory of Doctor Who was Pat in The Five Doctors: now there was something special!

    Dad was excited about Peter’s regeneration: he was bored with five. I remember him excitedly singing about “old uncle Tom Baker and all” in the build-up! But what let-down! This is why I prefer “otherworldly” to “alien”. The sixth doctor was an attempt to create a really alien doctor, but in the process, they showed why such an attempt is doomed. Colin actually presented us with an all-too-human git. “Otherworldly” is recognisably “other”. “Alien” is just detestable person.

    So, to Sylvester. Dad loved him from that wink in the opening credits of Time and the Rani. Never mind that, as I now recognise, Time and the Rani was worthless gibberish: at least it gave us a doctor with that Troughtan/Baker I sense of mischief. Sure, with hindsight, there was massive room for improvement, but never mind: Sylvester improved. Once he was rid of Mel, seven could really begin. This was the Doctor who might have humiliated Ace to defeat Fenric, but begged her to forgive him for it afterwards. Peter wouldn’t have been able to do it. Colin would have walked away after with a smug grin. Sylvester did it and then felt terrible for it. But he knew Ace had ultimately gained from it.

    The seventh doctor was properly alien. He was, as I say, otherworldly. I was gutted that he wasn’t allowed to end his era properly. But he left a foundation for rebuilding on. And I’d even say that Matt Smith is my favourite revival doctor so far, because he is, to me, the first in the tradition of Patrick Troughtan, Tom Baker, and, most of all, of Sylverster McCoy.

    #12969
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @bluesqueakpip: I remember watching Remembrance of the Daleks, and knowing that they’d done it: they’d produced something as good as the best days of Who. By then the BBC was determined to cancel – but it was episodes like Remembrance that meant the fans remembered Who as something worth saving.

    Do you know, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard a good reason for why the story was called Remembrance of the Daleks?

    #12968
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @phaseshift, @jimthefish, @bluesqueakpip and others:

    Please excuse the following “just in from the pub” drivel, which doubtless won’t be helped by the fact that this website’s interface and my iPad seem to have declared mutual enmity. I once commented on Geoffrey Howe on a political history site and my iPad’s spellcheck seems now to be obsessed with him:

    Firstly, I’m glad people like my idea for the introduction of the seventh Doctor. I will come clean and admit that Sylvester is my Doctor. I know very few people who will admit to that, but it’s mostly due to my age. I just wish that he’d had anything other than Time and the Rani to start him off. The way it was done was just awful. I don’t blame Colin for refusing to do a regeneration — he was treated abysmally — but Sylvester deserved a proper start.

    I’d better steer clear of Sylvester until we’re discussing him properly. But to conclude on the guilty men of the Colin Baker era, I think I’ll have to say that Colin Baker, Eric Saward and John Nathan-Turner, for all their faults and their arguments with one another, all wanted Doctor Who to succeed. But the BBC was run by imagination-free toffs like Powell and, worst of all Grade, who saw the BBC as a place to make TV for themselves, and  who realised they’d hit on a perfect formula for killing  Doctor Who and did all they could to make it work. More than anyone, it’s their fault. Because they did it on purpose. Because they wanted it to fail.

    I noticed another documentary on YouTube called Endgame. Another fascinating piece, but I will refrain from discussing that for the time being…

    #12911
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @Shazzbot: The reason I read for the sixth Doctor’s costume is that he was a bit post-regenerative when he put it on and afterwards would be too pig-headed to admit it was an awful choice. Makes sense, I suppose, but still a very bad idea!

    #12910
    Arkleseizure @replies

    That Trials and Tribulations documentary was fascinating. What I’ve often wondered was what Trial would have been like if Robert Holmes had lived and the original writers’ scripts had been accepted. From what I recall reading elsewhere, one of the others was Jack Trevor Storey, a writer with a fair amount of experience elsewhere. All I know of his story is that it involved a man standing in the middle of an empty gas holder playing a saxophone. Which seems a lovely idea to me. More to the point, at the start, all the writers knew where their bits fitted into the whole. Although this means that at least one of Eric Saward and Philip Martin should have known why the Doctor was siding with the Mentors. Colin didn’t, so he didn’t know Howe to play it either.

    Having said that, I do think JNT was right that Trial needed an ending and perhaps Robert Holmes would have been more willing to make the changes while keeping the rest of his script. Poor Pip ‘n’ Jane didn’t stand a chance of pulling it off. In the long run, the cliffhanger ending might have been a good thing if they’d used it. I can imagine he Time Lords having no idea if the Doctor’s survived until he escapes from the Matrix, played by Sylvester McCoy. Now that would have been a good way to start the Seventh Doctor’s era!

    #12779
    Arkleseizure @replies

    Great stuff! Wrong again about the cliffhanger: I’d thought there’d be one when the Doctor was hanging from the  curtain or falling off the lighting gantry. Mr Sin holding a knife at Leela was at least a secondary guess, though!

    The scenes with Leela and Litefoot enjoying supper stuck in the memory very clearly. What a perfect gentleman, letting the lady think she had her etiquette right! Rock of Gibraltar Jago was damned funny, too.

    Anyway, here’s something else I didn’t like about those old VHS releases. I don’t know why, but it really used to creep me out (and I hope this works):

    #12741
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @bluesqueakpip: Indeed, much the same can be said for Jenna Coleman’s home-counties-with-northern-vowels accent. I’ve met quite a few people who just refuse to believe that that’s her normal voice!

    #12740
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @scaryb: Yes, you’re absolutely right that Colin can’t be blamed for what was out in front of him, but he all too often played a bad script straight. Tom Baker was so brilliant in no small part because he could spot a bad script a mile off and disguise it by playing it in a way that was nothing like the way it asked to be played. That’s what made the fourth Doctor so delightfully alien. Colin didn’t seem to have that.

    But yes, I’d put Saward and JNT (and for the reasons above, more Saward than JNT*) more at fault than Colin for the awful moves of that period.

    *Indeed, the superb stuff in Sylvester’s latter two seasons was produced with JNT still around. But not Saward. JNT needed a script editor who could tell him where to get off without hating him, and he had that in Andrew Cartmel. Shame it was already too late.

    #12735
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @jimthefish: Well, not just @ you, but I think something needs saying. I quite agree what the Colin Baker years were the show’s absolute nadir, and I really don’t get the recent revisionist idea that he was a brilliant doctor who was completely let down by circumstances beyond his control. The sixth Doctor was a catastrophic mistake, and Colin’s as much to blame as anyone else. And of course, the anyone else includes JNT. All I’ll say in JNT’s defence is that he knew as well as anyone that he’d burned out on Doctor Who, and he wanted to leave. The BBC told him to either stay or go freelance. He needed his job, so he stayed. It’s another thing that convinces me that the mid-eighties BBC were hell-bent on destroying the show.

    But my main reason for commenting is to put a share of the blame on the third member of the troika that messed up Doctor Who in the 1980s. By name, Eric Saward. A script-editor who agrees with the producer on everything won’t work: creative tension is vital. But Saward absolutely hated JNT. And that won’t work, either. There needs to be some connection. Saward seemed to revel in brutality as much as JNT wanted to turn Doctor Who into a camp pantomime (hello Bonnie!). The sixth Doctor was the result: a violent bully dressed as a court jester in a dayglo-pink universe of horrific acid baths.

    Apologies if I’m rambling, but I can’t stand by and watch Saward getting off the hook!

    #12698
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @craig: Moreover, absolutely none of A Christmas Carol is set on Earth at all!

    #12366
    Arkleseizure @replies

     

    Brilliant! I first saw Talons on the old VHS release where the whole thing was edited together into one very long episode*, so I’m taking the opportunity to see if my guesses about where the cliffhangers were were right. Not this time: I think I was so unimpressed by the giant rat that I’d refused to believe it could be a cliffhanger.

    We’re already getting some terrific characters building up here in Jago, Chaing and Mr Sin (Litefoot has a rather small role in this episode). If I remember rightly, Ali Bongo was the magic advisor on this show, so it’s hardly surprising they cast a white actor as Chaing when his advisor was doing much the same thing in real life!

    Yes, to complain about racism is to miss the point: Victorian Britain was racist, and it would be dishonest to pretends otherwise. Accurate depiction is not approval. Quite the opposite: it’s very clear that Robert Holmes does not approve.

    *By the way, why did they keep doing this? Doctor Who, at least then, was supposed to be episodic. Another sign, I suppose, that when they were making the early home videos, the BBC just didn’t understand Doctor Who.

    #12304
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @htpbdet – Great to see you back – I’ve been loving your autobiographical articles about the past Doctors. I wish I could think of something else to say besides that!

    #12223
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @bluesqueakpip: The next Doctor will be a kangaroo. I think I suggested that at the Guardian, mind. Damn this speciesist casting!

    #12221
    Arkleseizure @replies

    Oh, and there was me hoping it was just me and some fine young woman has a thing for small green aliens. <Sulk, sulk, sulk>

    #12077
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @bluesqueakpip: I have to say this, and please don’t be offended, but I really hope you’re wrong about JLC. Don’t get me wrong: I think she’s great, but I really want a new face to be the twelfth. Male or female, just as long as it’s someone who’s had no part in Doctor Who before (or a minor one at most). This is purely irrational, I admit, but the memory of my childhood being ruined by Maxil being promoted to Doctor still haunts me. I really don’t want it happen to Clara too, not least because I don’t want to be able to blame her if it goes wrong. I’d rather Strax.

    #12010
    Arkleseizure @replies

    I imagine somebody’s already said this, but I haven’t had time to read all the posts, but the thought just hit me: The Doctor was revived in Let’s Kill Hitler by River giving him her regenerative ability. If he has his regenerative  ability from River, then his next incarnation being female would make sense. Otherwise, eleven male Doctors, five male Masters, four male Borusas and two female Romanas? No. A sudden sex change could be nonsense.

    Even River had three female regenerations, which makes me think a random regenerative sex-change is even more silly than I had before. But if he’s using River’s remaining regenerations, then it would make sense: her next incarnations would be female, so now they’re his, they still are. So if the next Doctor is female, then I would accept it, provided they use an explanation like that, and not just “because it is”.

    To conclude: if the next Doctor is a woman, then I want a good in-universe reason to justify it. The few throwaway lines we’ve had so far are not good reasons. River would be.

    I still don’t want Sue Perkins, mind.

    #11735
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @whohar: I remember seeing the Blue Peter episode where the Abzorbaloff was announced and thinking it a gloriously horrible idea: a gigantic brute lumbering through the streets, picking people up and letting his flesh creep over them (a bit like the chair in Terror of the Autons). That’s how I envisaged it and I believe more or less how William Gratham envisaged it. Unfortunately, Russell T. Davies envisaged it as a tubby northern bloke who sucked people into his body in a totally silly way that didn’t make sense. What a wasted opportunity.

    #11716
    Arkleseizure @replies

    If Ian Levine has indeed ruined a shock regeneration, then he’s an even bigger tosspot than I thought. (He was also responsible for the utterly shite boy band Upside Down among other things). Anyway, about the next Doctor:

    I’m so sick of feminists demanding a female Doctor for reasons completely unrelated to the interests of the show that I sincerely hope they never get their wish. Sorry, but that’s my thinking on the subject, even though I can can think of a few women who’d be really good.

    As far as black doctors go, that’s another matter. I’ve heard a few suggestions that sound good, although I think  Adrian Lester would also be a good choice. A Doctor with a bit of the Mickey Bricks about him could be a lot of fun: the Doctor as a time-travelling con-artist with a heart of gold.

    Anyway, that was just a name I felt like throwing into the mix!

    #10078
    Arkleseizure @replies

    I saw a book about oxbow lakes today that got me thinking: maybe the Hurt Doctor is a sort of temporal oxbow lake. Just as an oxbow lake was once part of the river before the meander doubled back on itself and the river short-circuited (so to speak), so the Hurt Doctor was part of the Doctor’s timeline, but is now separate, cut off from the main flow. Hence 11 really is 11. The Hurt Doctor used to be 9, but Eccleston is now 9, not 10.

    The further thought occurs that maybe the Time War itself is an oxbow lake to the history of the universe. Cosmological history now runs direct from the day before it started to the day after it ended.

    #9847
    Arkleseizure @replies

    @topperofgallifrey – My guess is that Sontarans are clones. There’s no such thing as a female Sontaran (although it probably doesn’t strictly make sense to call the male either), so he has some difficulty with the concept. As I remember, Linx thought the idea do a two-sex reproductive system was a stupid way of creating new cadets.

    #9738
    Arkleseizure @replies

    Random thought that just came into my head: Clara wasn’t very complimentary about the TARDIS when she recommended it to the first Doctor. Perhaps the TARDIS remembers that resentfully and that’s why it doesn’t like her.

    #9676
    Arkleseizure @replies

    “So that’s who….”

    If Clara now remembers her previous adventure inside the TARDIS, she can remember what she saw in the History of the Time War book. So what was it? Does she already know who the John Hurt Doctor is?

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