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19 June 2013 at 14:17 #12557
The one in the desert with David Tennant as Ten and Michelle Ryan as temporary Companion Lady Christina de Souza, international jewel thief.
Another one I thought was okay (and well liked by the general audience – appreciation index was 83).
I quite liked UNIT’s shock at bullets working on aliens. š
19 June 2013 at 13:43 #12547Apparently Mattās going to need a wig if heās in that, not sure his hair can grow back that fast.
@Shazzbot – yeah, interesting that they let him cut his hair. Though maybe he’s playing Anthony Brian Williams (the baby boy adopted by Amy and Rory) and there was another reason they didn’t film that coda to Angels in Manhattan.
Because the boy the Ponds brought up and legally adopted as their son was really their grandson.
š
19 June 2013 at 13:34 #12542@Shazzbot – oh, I quite liked Love and Monsters. It was only the Absorbaloff at the end which ruined it; up to then it was fine. It was the first of the ‘Doctor Lite’ experiments; if you see it that wayĀ then,Ā y’know, it’s an experimental episode where bits worked and bits didn’t – paving the way for later and better ‘Doctor Lite’ episodes such as Blink.Ā
And also, having a ‘Doctor Lite/Companion Lite’ episode where much of the action is carried by non-regular characters probably saved the sanity of the production team and leading actors, because it gave them catch-up filming time.
Moffat later solved the problem by increasing Team Tardis to three regulars, plus one recurring and splitting up companions and Doctor much more; Crimson Horror is probably the closest to an official ‘Doctor Lite’ – and that comes in a part of the series where we’re back to one Companion. Fourteen minutes of filming that didn’t need either Matt Smith or Jenna Coleman.
Whereas, from the beginning of the episode, Fear Her never worked for me – though in mitigation, I believe it was one of those episodes that had to be written quickly to replace something else. That worked with Midnight, didn’t work with Fear Her.Ā
19 June 2013 at 12:58 #12525Oh, lord. Can we keep speculation about the next Doctor strictly in ‘The Next Doctor?’ thread? Please? Including links to news stories about possible next Doctors?
It has, quite frankly, reached the stage where it’s driving me nuts and I’d rather talk about anything else. The Twin Dilemma. Fear Her. Anything. š And if it’s kept to one thread, I only have to avoid that thread.
Pretty please?
17 June 2013 at 23:18 #12452@htpbdet – joys of dyslexia, I’m afraid. Strings of initials are a bit of a bane.
I also have a complete inability to remember dates (strings of numbers) – which made my A level History exam, many years ago, a particularly delightful experience. The examiners seemed to have a particular fascination for questions like ‘Discuss the relevance of the events of August 1789 to the French Revolution’ and ‘Why was the autumn of 1811 a turning point in the Peninsula War?’
Like the Eleventh Doctor would later say in ‘Hide’, I was going “Some help. Context. Cheat sheet. Something?”
š
17 June 2013 at 22:51 #12447@craig – indeed. And there are some of the Moffat two-parters where you should leave a gap between watching. The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang is the classic example.
I was thinking we’d start off with an easy schedule, but then people (I’m looking at you, @brynwe and @Shazzbot) came on and said they’d watched both parts, so I thought ‘oh, okay. We needed to do a couple in one go anyways’. š
But next week it’s only ‘Girl in the Fireplace’, and the week after that is ‘Blink’.
17 June 2013 at 22:43 #12446@chickenelly – the hokey typewriter writing on its own isn’t really Moffat’s fault.
According to the DVD commentary, he got to Australia for a much needed family holiday to find a series of e-mails saying ‘The episode is two minute short! Can you write another scene! Oh, and you can’t use any of the regular cast. Or any of the regular props. Just Nancy. And the kids. And only two of them can speak.”
So then it was like: ‘err, can I have someone in a gas mask?’ ‘No.’ ‘Record-player.’ ‘No’. ‘Typewriter?’ ‘Oh, we’ve got a forties typewriter in the props store’.Ā
Moffat: “Quite why the Chula equip their alien warrior race with the ability to operate old Remingtons is unclear” š
17 June 2013 at 17:13 #12433@brynwe – welcome to the dyslexics club in our little forum. :waves:
I’m pretty dyslexic, to the extent that I sometimes have to use text-to-speech for ‘heavyweight’ texts. You can imagine me peering at your name and rechecking it as I type – and as for HTPBDET, I sit here muttering ‘Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee, Baker, Davison and he doesn’t like Baker or McCoy, Eccleston, Tennant.’
š
17 June 2013 at 17:07 #12432@shazzbot – there were a great many rumours; the only thing that seems certain is that it was, for some reason, a miserable experience for him.Ā He deserves a great deal of credit – as @phaseshift says, he gave the reboot a ‘serious’ edge. Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor; Billie Piper as Rose – it was very obvious that this production was damn well going to go for it with everything they’d Ā got.
And ‘Rose’ was a brilliant re-introduction; so successful the BBC booked a second series within the week.
I’d agree the initial series doesn’t quite know what’s going to work. They tried horror, they tried family drama, they tried farting aliens (twice). You want a ghost story? We have a ghost story. And they were aided and abetted by a Who’s who of heavyweight British actors.
How did they get actors of that quality? Well, possibly one clue is: when Steven Moffat’s name came up in the pre-episode Ā credits he says “I’ve waited all my life for this.” Possibly a number of those actors were thinking the same thing. They’d waited all their life to achieve a childhood ambition – to be on Doctor Who.
17 June 2013 at 14:01 #12409@htpbdet – and then it’s Moffat who introduces Clara. Who gets the whole ‘don’t wander off’ thing.
@brynwe – no, it’s not naivete to like all the Doctors you’ve seen – the whole point of casting ‘The Doctor’ is to find someone that we can believe is the same person – but in a different body and with a different persona. Ā It’s just that Eccleston – fine actor though he is – never really worked for me. And yet, when I heard he was to play the Ninth, I thought he’d be great. š
So, is Eleven’s difference of opinion over the phone another sign of the Great Continuity Battle? Moffat, after all, wrote both scripts.
@Shazzbot – I think Moffat said in the commentary on this episode that there was a real undercurrent of all the possible types of sexual repression. The guy having an affair with the butcher, the unmarried mother who has to say her son is her little brother, the Doctor and dancing š – contrasted with the much more open cultures Jack and Rose come from.
17 June 2013 at 12:36 #12401@miapatrick – congratulations! A nice, comfortable ‘good’ pass, which is outstanding if you mis-answered one of the questions. You must have got excellent marks on all the rest.
Any plans for next year? I recall you mentioned possibly doing A215 at some point.
16 June 2013 at 20:54 #12383@phaseshift – we’re starting with one a week – though we will probably need to do two of the two-parters over one weekend to fit the Christmas Specials in. That said, I’ve watched both.
Okay, thoughts. I agree with @brynwe that parts were good – and other parts were okay. I never really quite got Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor and this is definitely a story where I sat there thinking ‘you know, David Tennant would have played this so much better’.
Moffat-y themes: kids. A little boy whose need (and love) for his mummy is so strong it survives his death.
The character of the Doctor being revealed by the other people around him. Doctor Constantine, who was a father and a grandfather before the war – but is still a Doctor. Nancy, who responds to losing her own child by trying to look after the other kids.
The Doctor and sex: not just the fact that the Doctor has been a father and a grandfather, but the knotty question of ‘are you a virgin’ discussed using the euphemism of ‘dancing’. I was once told that Moffat couldn’t see a strong independent woman without marrying her off. My reply was that Moffat can’t see a strong independent male (the Doctor) without going ‘this man needs to get married’. š
Even Doctor Constantine almost certainly ends up with Nancy and Jamie as his new daughter/grandson.
Nanogenes, and people being true to themselves whatever has happened to them. Whether facing death by nanogenes, living to death by angels, or imminent death, Moffat’s real heroes are the ones who carry on living by their own standards. Death may be the end, but it’s not necessarily a defeat.
Anyone spot any other themes, or are we all busy on Talons?
14 June 2013 at 14:05 #12266@htpbdet – welcome back!
13 June 2013 at 23:21 #12245@craig – sounds like there’s currently interest in both. And because BG Who is only 25 minutes, we’re really only talking just over an hour of telly. As you say – not too taxing.
13 June 2013 at 20:30 #12238@craig – ah, but when we analysed the episodes in extreme detail, we didn’t know anything about the later episodes, owing to the way that they hadn’t been written yet. You see? There is more analysis to come! š
Anyway, yes, by episode. The first Moffat episode is The Empty Child, AG 1.9. It’s a two-parter with The Doctor Dances, AG 1.10.
What might happen is that one set of discussions (Moffat or Before Gap) naturally gathers all the conversation – in which case we can proceed happily in that direction. š
13 June 2013 at 19:59 #12235Okay, it sounds like a number of people are up for a Grand Moffat Rewatch, and there may be a way to also do a Pre Gap Who rewatch. @craig, could we have a forum for the Moff rewatch? One forum only, I think – we can go on to part two if by any chance we hit over 1000 posts.
Then maybe another forum for the Classic eps? What do people think?
So what’s being suggested is one Moffat ep per week (generally 42-45 minutes) and one Pre Gap episode per week (generally 22-25 minutes). I’m actually away this weekend (in a place with a duck pond AND ducks, but very dodgy wi-fi), but if people want me to start things off, I have time to watch ‘The Empty Child’ tonight and make a short post.
Looking over the list @scaryb made, the two-parters areĀ āThe Empty Childā/Ā Ā āThe Doctor Dancesā (2005),Ā Ā āSilence in the Libraryā/Ā Ā āForest of the Deadā (2008), “Time of Angels” / “Flesh and Stone” (2010),Ā Ā āThe Pandorica Opensā /Ā Ā Ā Ā āThe Big Bangā (2010).
If we pick two of those to watch as double episodes, we can then fit the Christmas Specials in. Any suggestions? For example, I think Pandorica/Big Bang works better with a gap. I agree with @phaseshift that normally we should go for the weekends as ‘broadcast’ nights.
13 June 2013 at 19:30 #12230@arkleseizure – when I was typing ‘white male’, it very nearly came out as
- The next Doctor will be a whale …
13 June 2013 at 14:21 #12210Okay, lemme see…
Current theories on the identity of the next Doctor are (in no particular order of insanity):
- The next Doctor will be a white male Brit in his mid-thirties.
- The next Doctor will be male, British, but not white.
- The next Doctor will be a baby. That’s why Clara’s a nanny.
- The next Doctor will be Rory Kinnear.
- The next Doctor will be anybody (m or f) except Rory Kinnear.
- The next Doctor will be Jenna Coleman.
- The next Doctor willĀ be a woman who isn’t Jenna Coleman.
- The next Doctor will be John Hurt.
- The next Doctor will be Welsh.
- There is no next Doctor. Series 8 will consist entirely of Clara and the TARDIS trying to find the Doctor.
- There is going to be a plethora of next Doctors. Series 8 will have a sequence of rapid-fire regenerations, with a new Doctor every episode.
So, what have I missed out?
13 June 2013 at 14:09 #12209@whisht – the problem I can forsee with the BeforeGap episodes is simply that people might not have them to hand. With the Post Gap episodes there’s a much higher chance that people will already have recordings/DVD’s.
Besides, I’m kind of hoping that the BBC, drat it, will start showing some of the BeforeGap stories. For BeforeGap, I’d rather wait and see if they are – and then we can discuss the ones broadcast (and demand to know why they didn’t repeat others).
13 June 2013 at 12:56 #12202Well, we don’t have to start with Moffat. We’ve got twenty-two weeks until November 23rd – a grand re-watch of ALL of post gap Who would need us to be watching five episodes a week. š
Starting from Moffat gives us two episodes a week.
Gosh, it’s a lot of episodes, isn’t it? Over 100 Post Gap episodes.
13 June 2013 at 11:59 #12199BTW folks (and yes, I got the spam message as well) – I vaguely mentioned the possibility of doing a rewatch from the start of the Smith/Moffat era. Would anyone be interested? The Eleventh Hour is already done as a blog post.
For those who don’t have the DVD’s, you can pick up the plain vanilla installments of S5 for around Ā£3 a time in the UK and in the US legal streamed downloads are available at $3. It’s slightly cheaper (and you get more extras) if you buy the whole series.
This suggestion is coming to you because there is only so much ‘who is the next Doctor’ discussion that I can take. š
12 June 2013 at 23:07 #12187@scaryb – agreed. With one exception: I still think it might be a female Doctor. If the BBC want to avoid six months of ‘CAN A WOMAN PLAY THE DOCTOR?’ click-throughs, they need a decoy. They need someone, for example, who makes it explicable that the production team aren’t calling in the appropriate male actors. Or indeed, makes it explicable that the production team aren’t calling anyone in, because the damn role is cast already. š
And @tennantmarsters2013 (are you a Buffy fan, btw?) is making the point that – if you haven’t really seen Rory Kinnear – then he’s a typical Doctor-candidate. White, male, mid-thirties, sufficient leading roles under his belt to be plausible, but not a huge star. If the 50th is supposed to be about looking forward, Rory Kinnear’s about looking back. It’s like someone’s gone ‘who do we know who might be an old-style Doctor?’
And yes, total disaster for the theorising. Can’t we set up a viewing schedule of old Matt Smith episodes or something, and see where we think the entire arc is going?
12 June 2013 at 22:06 #12179To cut a long story short, I think that Rory Kinnear is the new Doctor.
@chickenelly – I will give him a go if he is; but I hope he isn’t. If I were casting Rory Kinnear for Team Tardis, I’d never think of him for the Doctor. He’d be a really superb Brigadier type, or he could play the ‘Rory’ – the only sane man in the TARDIS. He could, as I’ve said above, do a very nice ‘sliding into evil’ Doctor and could have also taken the ‘Dream Lord’ role. He’s a bloody good actor.
But as the Doctor: my brain just keeps going ‘huh’? I’ve seen him in quite a few things; he doesn’t quite fit, somehow. @htpbdet summed it up for me when he said ‘he would not be my first choice’. That’s exactly what I feel.
By the way, his Bolingbroke is available on DVD; one of the best filmed productions of Richard II I’ve seen.
12 June 2013 at 21:24 #12169@chickenelly – what, you mean that they’re bluffing that he isn’t the Doctor by not confirming it when in fact he is?
I think he’s the decoy. As you say – it’s stopped the intense speculation. It’s increasing his public profile. Broadly, it’s a win-win situation – providing he is the decoy. If he is the next Doctor he’s probably wondering what the hell he’s just got himself into, because right now it looks as if the production team can’t fart without someone leaking it.
The one thing I could see Rory Kinnear genuinely doing is a ‘one-off’ or ‘alternate’ Doctor; playing the possible futureĀ [insert ominous name here]Ā Doctor. He did a cracking Bolingbroke to Ben Whishaw’s Richard II- all moral integrity up to the moment where he suddenly realises ‘hey, you know what? I could be king.’ Didn’t see his Iago, but I heard that was really good, as well.Ā
The one thing I do NOT believe is that they’re actually looking for the actor who’s playing the Doctor throughout Series 8. Whoever that actor is, they’ve been signed, sealed and under contract for weeks, possibly months.
12 June 2013 at 15:18 #12157@tennantmarsters2013 – uh, debunking someone’s bonkers theory based on a spoiler photograph is bad form. Admittedly that particular photo has been so widely reproduced it’s a bit difficult to avoid it – but I think it is still, technically, a spoiler photo.
In the interests of bonkers theorists everywhere, I’d point out that the Eleventh’s TARDIS has occasionally reverted to the Tenth’s TARDIS exterior form and occasionally used the Tenth’s control room – Ol’ Sexy has all her desktops neatly filed, after all.
That may be Ten’s TARDIS in the photo. Or it may be Eleven’s TARDIS, going backwards in time as the Doctor’s timeline slowly collapses in on itself. Tennant may be playing Ten in the photo. Or he might be Zygon!Doctor. Rose might be travelling with Ten – or arrive with 10.5.Ā There’s absolutely nothing to stop David Tennant playing two or more parts – he’s done it before.
Actually, Eleven’s TARDIS going backwards in time and/or otherwise having a size/time leak would be fun, because it would give us a problem – which would also allow us to recap every historical exterior, and every historical console.
12 June 2013 at 12:39 #12153Ā I definitely donāt buy that Mattās departure took the team by surprise (although I think the leak did)
@scaryb – I think all of this has been planned. When Karen Gillan was leaving, did you notice how okay Arthur Darvill was with it? That wasn’t an actor who’s just lost a high paying, high profile TV job because his on-screen partner had decided to try Hollywood (and it now looks like she might be successful there – yay!). Arthur Darvill was behaving like someone who’d always known the date his contract finished.
Similarly, if Matt’s departure took the team by surprise, how come S7.2 included a careful explanation of regeneration for the younger viewers? Why does the finale include a visit to the Doctor’s grave?
I could kick Ian Levine all round the houses, though. Leaking Matt Smith’s departure early has not just killed all the bonkers theorising, it’s put the producers under scrutiny that’s more intense than normal, at a point when they’ve probably got other secrets they need to keep.
11 June 2013 at 20:35 #12141@htpbdet – I think you’ve hit it on the head with Rory Kinnear. I was thinking about itĀ yesterday, and ended with the conclusion that he’s the decoy for exactly that reason. He’s an excellent actor – and I’d give his Doctor a try – but I’ve seen a lot of his work, and he would never be my first choice for the Doctor.
Nicola Walker would be good – and she’s worked with Steven Moffat before. David Oyelowo would also be good – but isn’t he living in Los Angeles right now? Andrew Scott is more the Master; Andrew Buchan – dunno. He strikes me as a bit too ‘solid’, somehow.
I agree that the most likely obstacle to a black or female Doctor is the BBC upper management.
Re: John Hurt – you’ve missed out – he’s the Thirteenth Doctor, the Doctor all those ominous prophecies are about. The Beast/Valeyard/Storm/insert_ominous_name_here.
Take it slow and steady with your return to the land of the living – it’s always tempting to rush things, and it’s almost never a good idea. Hope all goes well.
11 June 2013 at 14:42 #12131Plymouth – well, I wouldn’t mind seeing Tom Daley dive into the TARDIS swimming pool š
10 June 2013 at 12:46 #12115@everyone – yes, it’s either Rory Kinnear – or, the fact that he’s worked with Mark Gattiss means he’s okay with his name being put out as a decoy. Which is what he said back in April.
But if it is Rory Kinnear, then what on earth is going on at the BBC? They managed to keep the casting of Matt Smith secret for several weeks; this time the blu-ray was sent out early, Matt’s departure was leaked, and now the identity of the new Doctor is leaked before he’s even had a chance to accept or decline?Ā If he has been offered the role, he is now under intense pressure to accept. Ā If RK decides not to take it, he’s going to be forever known as ‘the actor who turned down the Twelfth Doctor’ and whatever actor takes the role will be known as ‘the second choice’.Ā
Seriously, is there nobody there who can keep their mouths shut, or do they all simply hate Steven Moffat? Because if Rory Kinnear has genuinely been offered the role, and his name’s been leaked before his decision was made, that’s just appalling. Appalling, and utterly unprofessional. All these leaks: if this is genuine, there are people at the BBC who need to get fired.
So I hope his name was put out there as a decoy, with his permission. That would be better than thinking that the BBC is now so slipshod, employees are happy to leak confidential negotiations to the daily papers.
9 June 2013 at 14:15 #12083I really rate Rory Kinnear as an actor – but he doesn’t read ‘the Doctor’ to me. Now John Hurt – he was an immediate ‘oh, yes, definitely’ reaction.
Of course, other possibilities include the reporter making it up or the start of a BBC disinformation campaign.
9 June 2013 at 09:35 #12078@arkleseizure – nothing wrong with wanting the next Doctor to be someone new and exciting. I will be fine with anyone who isn’t a white male with floppy brown hair. If the next Doctor is a white male with floppy brown hair, he’s going to need to be bloody good – that said, Matt Smith convinced me the second he stuck his head out of that crashed TARDIS. Ā š
On the bright side – if my bonkers theory did turn out to be a case of ‘even a stopped clock is right twice a day’: Commander Maxil’s job was to shoot and arrest the Doctor. Clara was born to save the Doctor. š It’s a much better omen.
I’m not sure it’d be a ‘promoted Companion’, though. Going off into bonkers theoryland: the story arc would be that, this time, the Doctor has unwittingly become their own Companion. If you think about it: adventurous, wants to travel, willing to leave everything behind to go off on possibly dangerous adventures – the Doctor does have exactly the kind of character that you’d look for in a Companion. All you need is some kind of weird circumstance where neither their past or future self knows that ‘future-me’ is the Doctor.
Or, the Companion taken on board is a mirror image of the Doctor – Clara-from-Blackpool is a Claricle and Clara-Prime is and always was a future Doctor.
From the point of view of JLC’s casting – if she did turn out to be the next Doctor then, given that this arc is clearly part of a regeneration sequence, it’s been planned since she stepped onto set. So in that case, one of two things happened.
One: they were looking for a female Doctor and hid it by officially casting for the new Companion.
Two: they were genuinely looking for the next Companion – and when JLC walked in they said ‘she’s not the Companion. She’s the bloody Doctor’.
8 June 2013 at 23:17 #12074Full of Who alumni as well.Ā
@jimthefish Not just the actors – I spotted that they’d brought in Who and Torchwood directors Euros Lynn and James Strong.
8 June 2013 at 22:57 #12071I finally got to watchĀ BroadchurchĀ – yes, I know. But sometimes my life is such that I can only squeeze one TV programme into it, and for the past couple of months it’s been that one with a blue box. But this weekend I had two days off where I actually didn’t have any work to do – so I sat down and ended up watching the entire series over the two days.
Um… wow. Really, really wow. I was very impressed with Chris Chibnall’sĀ United, but that was better – and fully sustained over what, 330 minutes?Ā (Though probably best to avoid spoilers on the identity of the murderer, lest we feel the wrath of @blenkinsopthebrave).Ā
Amazing work, both the writing and the acting; really, genuinely painful to watch in parts. Ā But in a way that felt like it was painful because this is how it would be; this is how such a murder would impact on a small, close community. And in the midst of all the pain, some people discovering that they were stronger than they knew – and could show others a way forward.
I think the DVD has now gone on my Christmas list.
8 June 2013 at 15:29 #12062Ā this year is Doctor Who!
@phaseshift – put it this way: if Jenna Coleman isn’t the new Doctor, then I really hope her agent is on the phone getting some extra money out of the BBC. Because the poor woman’s just found herself ‘the face of Doctor Who’ until the new Doctor’s announced. And the leak means that the gap between ‘previous Doctor retiring’ and ‘new Doctor announced’ is going to be several months longer than they hoped.
She is going to be doing a lot of interviews.
8 June 2013 at 15:19 #12061@miapatrick – horrible people indeed.
There is nothing wrong with a tannoy announcement saying ‘can the owner of car xyz please return to your car to check your pets as they appear to be becoming distressed.’ I’d certainly like someone to tell me.
It’s not as if you can’t leave your half-finished shopping with one of the Morrison’s people while you check them out.
8 June 2013 at 13:56 #12058@miapatrick – you were quite right; people genuinely don’t realise just how hot it can get in a car – especially if there’s no breeze to go through those open windows. It’s not just the dogs; small children have also died.
My suggestion for the people in the next door would be to lock them in their car for two hours, from midday, with a small cup of water. And then see how they felt. š
8 June 2013 at 13:37 #12057once the cameras start rolling in August
I’m more interested in the point that they’ve allowed Matt Smith to have that very drastic haircut. Either they’re thinking a wig, or – bonkers theorising point here – is his Christmas Special appearance signalling a drastic change? Either in the Eleventh, or that he’s not playing the Eleventh? So that they saw the haircut as part of a ‘character-based costume change’?
Hmmm… bonkers theory coming up. That buzz cut could be easily adapted to an American style crew cut. Did Rory and Amy adopt their grandson?
Matt Smith’s been consistent in stating that he’s booked for the Christmas Special, so one thing we will see in August is if he’s in any of the location filming. Or if he was doing a Rule One by meaning that he appears in the regeneration sequence at the beginning. š
8 June 2013 at 13:21 #12056
A majority of Britons and half of women@phaseshift – I’m not British! I’m just a woman!
You really can’t make it up, can you? š
7 June 2013 at 20:27 #12014@Shazzbot – to be an actor is to be a professional liar. As the old acting joke goes:
Sincerity is the key. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
And truthfully, JLC’s interview technique might apply equally if someone else has already been cast. So long as she keeps firmly in mind that Matt is now the previous Doctor, the actor (m or f) under contract is the current Doctor, and that she has no idea who the next Doctor is, her conscience is serene. š
@arkleseizure
Another good reason for a female Doctor (in-story). The Doctor has been constantly informed that his future is ‘dark and terrible’. The Storm, the Valeyard, the Beast. And that future has been consistently described as ‘he’ or ‘his’.With the appearance of John Hurt’s Doctor, there’s now the suspicion that this future is as close as his next regeneration. When the Eleventh Doctor regenerates, it would be his twelfth regeneration – exactly the time when, it was said, he would become the ‘Valeyard’.
In Journey ttCotTARDIS the Doctor realises that they need to disrupt the timeline to stop everyone dying; he needs to make sure he doesn’t put his hand to his face. Possibly he might realise that, to make sure that the ‘dark and terrible’ future doesn’t happen, he needsĀ to disrupt the timeline again –Ā to make sure his future is not ‘he’ and ‘him, but ‘she’ and ‘her’.
7 June 2013 at 19:41 #12004@Shazzbot – well, by the rules of our bonkers theorising:
- No, they have no idea who the next Doctor is. The next Doctor after her, that is, because JLC’s already under contract and working on the show.
- Honestly, itās going to be a long, long search. Hopefully, it’ll be about four years long. Maybe five.
š
7 June 2013 at 19:14 #11998suggests to me that a female Doc may actually indeed be potentially in the works.
@juniperfish – interestingly, I was out last night with a group of friends who aren’t forum haunting Whovians Ā (who, me?)- two of whom watch with their kids, most of whom don’t watch now but did when they were kids – and there was, without me suggesting it, a unanimous ‘it’s going to be a woman this time’. That’s their perception of the way the publicity is working. There’s been so much discussion in the media about the possibility of a female Doctor, it’s got to be because that’s what the BBC are planning.
They were all, male and female alike, fine with the idea of a woman. So yes, your notion that the objections may be coming from people who strongly identify with the Doctor might well be right. The general audience, it seems, may not have a problem.
@scaryb – agreed. If they say the Next Doctor will be officially announced after the 50th Anniversary Special, I’m going to get very suspicious indeed. Ā š
7 June 2013 at 18:16 #11995@curvedspace – yes, it is, isn’t it? Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell is a most peculiar book – I once described it to someone as a book that’s all depth and no surface. I do now tend to warn people to keep struggling on – it really is worthwhile!
7 June 2013 at 15:37 #11990it needs to be someone already experienced in the genre, so that sheās not totally demoralised when her script is torn to shreds in the forums afterwards. Classic Catch 22 ā how do they get the experience?
Quite. The BBC have been busily developing a set of playgrounds for their baby writers – namely, BBC3 for comedy and SF, daytime drama for modern and period drama. There’ve been some successful SF series that started on BBC3.
I dunno; I often get the impression the forums really don’t understand the differences between a commissioned script and the un-commissioned, speculative stuff that many of them do write. If you’re writing a spec script, you have all the time in the world. If your work is commissioned – they want it by Tuesday. And they want it by Tuesday much more than they want ‘brilliant’, because the read-through is Thursday. š
Then you get the people who don’t understand the difference between a special effects failure and a writing failure. And blame the writer for the special effects failure.
Plus there’s a kind of whirlpool effect, where a lot of people will be thinking ‘not the best story ever, but okay’. Ā Then someone posts up their reasons why that story was terrible. People agree and post up their reasons why the story was terrible. Then someone else posts up their reasons…Ā and before you know where you are, a perfectly okay-but-not-brilliant story has: ‘The top twenty reasons why this is the worst story in the fifty year history of Doctor Who.’ Ā š
Add to this mixture some reason to be ‘above the parapet’ (you’re either new to Who, or you’re a woman) and you might as well paint a big target on your chest. I’m consistently unsurprised that most of the established women writers are discovering other engagements when they’re asked to write for Who – I note that the newer writers on the team do tend to also be fans. They’d consider being able to achieve one of their writing dreams worth the risks.
6 June 2013 at 23:53 #11958Did you just imply what I think you didĀ Ā
Ā Ā or do I just have a filthy imagination?@Shazzbot – oh, come on. You know that the king of the ‘did you just imply what I think you just did in a programme watched by three year olds?’ is Steven Moffat. š
That was a direct quote from The Curse of Fatal Death. I’ve never been able to look at a Sonic Screwdriver in quite the same way since. šÆ
6 June 2013 at 13:23 #11933@phaseshift – I haven’t read the Naomi Walderman article, though I did read Dan’s. Just the blurb about the article turned me off.
And it would be fun if we can try out a female Doctor in the same way a writer called Steven Moffat did in The Curse of Fatal Death – one regeneration in a number of high speed regenerations. Though,Ā if we did get a regeneration into a woman, I can’t help wondering whether they’d rework the Sonic Screwdriver a bit (three settings!).
Any woman who takes on the role of the first official woman Doctor is going to have one very Doctorial quality – courage in buckets. Because she will be picked to pieces by the armchair commentators – not just the male ones, but also that unfortunate variety of feminist who seems to think that ‘feminism’ consists of running other women down for not living up to an imagined ideal.
6 June 2013 at 11:30 #11928@shazzbot and @mtgradwell – I’m uncertain that Victorian Clara is Clara-Prime, simply because she repeats Blackpool Clara’s last line – and calls the TARDIS ‘smaller on the outside’, as if she’s already done the ‘bigger on the inside’ thing. I’d wonder if the-Doctor-with-the-appearance-of-Clara is the actual ‘Clara-Prime’.
Ā even though we know JLC has been confirmed for series 8, whoās to say thatās as a companion?
JLC’s statement on the announcement of Matt Smith’s leaving certainly took a wee bit of time to appear – itĀ did make me wonder if they were delaying it because they were waiting to find out if the identity of the next Doctor had also leaked.Ā Whether it’s her or not (and she is my personal top candidate, which is why I haven’t really speculated on any others), I’m fairly certain the next Doctor is already cast.
5 June 2013 at 22:38 #11907bolstered by the moment in āHideā when the Tardis showed her herself as the āperson she most trustsā.
@Shazzbot and @tennantmarsters2013 – not just the TARDIS using her image (and it’s the first time that the TARDIS has used someone other than the current Doctor as its default), but also in Hide the TARDIS refuses to let Clara inside her when the Doctor is trapped in the bubble universe.
Clara stays outside, with the doors firmly locked, until the portal is reopened and a rescue becomes possible. The suspicion is that – if the Eleventh Doctor died in the bubble universe – Clara would somehow become a paradox; in the Big Bang it was River’s existence becoming a paradox that blew up the TARDIS and so destroyed the universe.
So Clara-from-Blackpool is a product of the Doctor’s future. She’s either a Claricle herself, rather than Clara-Prime (and so would cease to exist if the Doctor never reached Trenzalore) or she’s a future Doctor.
5 June 2013 at 21:02 #11902@tennantmarsters2013 – Welcome! Yup, a few people have suggested JLC might be the next (or a future) Doctor. Since I’ve probably bored everyone to death on the subject, I’d be really interested to hear your ideas. š
5 June 2013 at 12:51 #11878I really donāt think that after 50yrs of established actors playing the role that a female doctor would work.
@budinacup – fair enough. But have you asked yourself the following questions?
- Have there been male as well as female companions? Yes.
- Are there female Time Lords? Yes
- Have there been female Time Lords as long running Companions? Yes – Romana was so successful, she went through her own regeneration. If they’d figured out regeneration before Susan left, the Doctor might have travelled with his granddaughter through the Troughton era.
- Is it established that a Time Lord can switch sexes during regeneration? Yes. Established twice, both during Steven Moffat’s run. When Ten regenerated into Eleven, Eleven had a moment of thinking he’d turned female, and in TD’s Wife, we found that The Corsair seemed to have switched more than once.
- Has it been tried? No.
To me, the most important point is the last one. I can blather on about role models and so forth, but – the essential point, to me, is that we don’t know whether a female Doctor would work or not – because it hasn’t been tried. Until we try it, everything is just – opinion. This isn’t the role of Hamlet; the Doctor is a body-changing alien. ‘His’ gender is only fixed in our heads.
If it’s tried with two different female actors and it doesn’t work both times, then you’d be entitled to say that the role of The Doctor is definitely a male part. If it doesn’t work the first time, there’ll probably be a gap of at least a decade before they try it again. And if they have cast a female actor, or are planning to cast a female actor to replace Matt Smith, then almost certainly they have a planned arc for Series Eight which could finish up with that actor regenerating. In case it doesn’t work.
Because I, personally, might think it will work – but until we’ve tried it, I don’t know either. š
5 June 2013 at 11:51 #11876Iāve never understood the hate for MGās music.
@Shazzbot – Truthfully, having battled this out on the G-blog a couple of times, I think at least some of it is people refusing to admit to themselves that they’re getting just a little hard of hearing. š
Being unable to understand what people are saying when there are competing sounds (such as full orchestral and choral accompaniment) is one of the first signs. But it’s easier to blame Murray Gold than admit that maybe you spent a bit too much of your youth with the volume on your Walkman turned up to max.
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