Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
26 November 2013 at 18:08 #21689
@scaryb But, but isn’t Brian Cox a good actor?
Lexx, I knew the guys who did it actually, small world eh. The first two seasons were brilliant, the third season was flawed, the fourth was a matter of too little time, too little money, way too much to do.
26 November 2013 at 13:54 #21668ScaryB On the subject of ‘good’ Scottish actors…. Ewan McGregor, and his performances in Star Wars. I’m sorry I had to do that to you, but you asked for it. Reminds me of the time someone started talking about great Canadian music, and finally I had to mention “Brian Adams.” But they wouldn’t give up so eventually I had to say “Celine Dion!” I still visit them in the institution.
In terms of Doctor Who extending its casting hunt… well, you see, the Doctor is an alien. And let’s face it, to the English sensibility, you can’t get more alien than Scotland or Wales or even (shudder) Ireland.
Honestly though, it feels weird taking rim shots at the mother country. I’m much more used to poking at Canada.
As for Lexx, their métier was surrealism, not sci fi. At their best, they had more in common with Bunuel or Jodorosky than Lucas or Roddenberry.
26 November 2013 at 05:47 #21624@badwolfie I think you are correct. The War Doctor’s memory would fuzz, but he should still remember the interface. It might explain why he decided to take Rose Tyler along with him, rather than just keep going it alone.
26 November 2013 at 05:37 #21623JanetteB The reference to Australian ranches comes from an old interview with Art Linklater, a radio host who had a show called ‘Kid’s Say the Darndest Things’, this was after his retirement, so I’m not totally ancient. Anyway, in the interview, he talked about his Ranch in Australia, and its immense acreage. So that’s where it stuck in my head.
Gentle ribbing aside, England does produce a vast crop of brilliant actors, far too numerous to name. As an ironic point, there’s a show on AMC called the Walking Dead, set in the American south in the Zombie apocalypse. Two of the principal leads in this quintessentially American, ‘southern gothic horror’, Andrew Lincoln, and David Morrisey, are British actors. Amazing when you think about it. There’s a lot of British actors in Hollywood. Who knew a country so tiny that everyone has to sleep on a north to south axis to fit could have so many terrific actors.
As for explanations, as to Capaldi’s ‘roman’ role. I don’t think that Moffet needs to bother giving one. Capaldi’s role in ‘Fires of Pompei’ was as an ensemble guest star in a single episode three seasons ago. Big deal It hardly ranks.
To give you some examples from the old series, in the Armageddon Factor, the last adventure in Tom Baker’s ‘Key to Time’ series in the 16th season, Lalla Ward guest starred as Princess Astra. At the end of that episode, Romana, played by Mary Tamm, decides to regenerate. In the next season episode, Destiny of the Daleks, the regenerated Romana is played by…. Lalla Ward! It was such an obvious thing that the script had to acknowledge it, with Baker’s Doctor complaining, and the new Romana saying ‘Get over it.’ And then, as I’ve said (and actually got wrong) Colin Baker played the part of Commander Maxill of Gallifrey (got that part right), in the Arc of Infinity in season 20 (I remembered it as Invasion of Time, got that wrong), where he shoots the Peter Davison Doctor (I remembered it as Tom), and then takes over as the next Doctor in Season 21.
I think that what it might actually be is comfort levels. Generally, in my experience of film and television productions, if you find an actor that you work well with, that has a good ethic, the right kind of vibe or gestalt, good chemistry, then you will tend to want to work with him or her again. A series that I had some affiliation with, Lexx, tended to bring back people they liked, one way or the other.
26 November 2013 at 00:35 #21617@scoobasteve Capaldi also appeared in the Tennant episode the ‘Fires of Pompeii’ as some roman guy or other.
England, you see, is a relatively small place. I’m told that you can drive across it in an afternoon. I believe that there was an Australian once who owned a ranch that was bigger. It’s a good thing that the English people are so short or it would be quite crowded. Anyway, being a small place, there aren’t that many actors and creative people, and so they often have to double up. For instance, in the Day of the Doctor, David Tenant also played a zygon in background roles, operated a dalek, did catering, and through the use of splitscreen doubled for queen bess. Matt Smith could also be found in the background of a number of scenes as a hatrack. In any production, you’ll see as few as three or four actors playing up to 35 parts. Where it gets really confusing is due to inbreeding and isolation, everyone looks alike. To avoid confusion, they all take the same names. There are actually six actresses known as Helen Mirren, and four Rowan Atkinson’s (there used to be eight, but several died on the set of Blackadder).
Okay, that was tongue in cheek. But the reality is that the pool of English actors really isn’t that vast, and you do see faces coming back. Colin Baker, for instance, appeared as the Time Lord guard, Maxell, in the Tom Baker serial Invasion of Time (I think). Although they tried to guard against stuff like that, David Tenant did have a voice role in Scream of the Shalka.
I think the decision was probably a question of whether the role was brief enough (a supporting part over a few episodes) and far back enough, that you could overlook it. If it’s not a sufficiently prominent recurring role… Capaldi is probably safe.
25 November 2013 at 20:59 #21597@jimthefish Remind me to tell you my theory sometime that the Great Intelligence is actually a disembodied schism of the Doctor, or perhaps of the Valeyard.
25 November 2013 at 19:09 #21554And it might be interesting for the Doctor to go into the future, uncertain of how many regenerations he has left, or whether he’s at the end.
I’m not sure. For Dramatic Story Possibilities, the Doctor has faced genuine death many times, and quite often, it’s the prospect of a true death, with no regenerating past this. But it adds a bit more uncertainty. The Doctor can no longer count on regenerating in the right circumstances.
25 November 2013 at 19:07 #21553I have two problems with the ‘regeneration limit’ crisis.
First, at the end of the Day of the Doctor, the Capaldi Doctor showed up, announcing himself as the Thirteenth. So…. the Smith Doctor should know that someone comes after him. It’s not like he could have missed it.
Second, at the epilogue of the Day of the Doctor, the Smith Doctor meets the Baker Xteenth Doctor, who seems to represent a further regeneration beyond the Capaldi Doctor, so anywhere from 14th to 49th, who knows.
So… that’s sort of a problem if you’re going all ‘woe is me, I really am done for this time.’
Mind you, the Matt Smith Doctor has always been focused on his mortality, that’s the whole point of ‘Name of the Doctor’, as well as the ‘Impossible Astronaut’ and ‘Exploding Tardis’ storylines. So it’s a fitting Coda, even if it’s sort of undone by the events of the Day of the Doctor.
There’s any number of possible McGuffins to get him out of the regeneration limit, ranging from ‘Oh, that doesn’t apply any more, that was just a time lord rule’ to ‘Got River Songs unused regenerations, thank’s sweety’ etc. It’s notable that the Master kept on going and going and going. It’s also notable that the Time Lords in various episodes played with regenerations like they were poker chips. The Time Lords promised the Master a new set of regenerations, then at other times the Valeyard was going to get all the Doctor’s regenerations, then the Master was going to steal them.
I’m sure it will be milked for all its dramatic worth though.
25 November 2013 at 04:37 #21480@IAmNotAFishIAmAFreeMan
Blimey. Who’da thunk it. I refer to the question I asked earlier.
Oh geez. You mean about ‘stasis’. I wasn’t going to answer it. I didn’t see any point to answering it. I didn’t see any point to catering to your passive aggressive trolling and sniping. What was that going to get either of us? I mean let’s face it, you were a dick the first time you addressed me, you were a dick the second time, and here you are being a dick now. I should engage in a conversation with you? To what end? Maybe in eight or fifteen posts you won’t be a dick? I don’t think that’s going to happen. What’s the point of engaging you? So that you can keep on sniping? Somehow, that doesn’t thrill me. So that I can snipe back at you? That’s also unappealing to me. Who is this supposed to entertain? Nobody. bluepipsqueek and I can disagree, but at least, despite frustration on her part, she’s civil about the conversation. You can’t be bothered. To what end? To satisfy some childish need on your part to engage in some sort of vicarious confrontation? I’m sorry, I just don’t care. I don’t care what your personal issues are, really, I don’t. If you want to have some flame war or internet fight, well, that’s terrific for you, you go out and do it. But leave me out! I know this seems harsh right now, but I don’t want to be trading insults with you through a dozen posts, I have no investment, I don’t want to get involved. Your issues are your issues, not mine. On three posts, you’ve pretty much shown yourself incapable of civility, I don’t see things getting better between us, and I don’t trust you to engage in a civil way. So this is my single real response to you on this thread, there won’t be any more. It’s just not worth it.
Now, it’s possible that I’m wrong about you. I’ve been wrong about people before, I’ll be wrong about people again. No big deal. You want to communicate, then you can email me privately. That’s fine. If I’m convinced I misjudged you, I’ll come back here and say so. But if you want to flame away out here, then basically, you’ve shown me you’re exactly what I’ve judged you to be, at which point, as I’ve said: As I’ve said, I don’t care, and I won’t invest.
24 November 2013 at 23:43 #21467Moffat is a very good writer and has written some brilliant episodes. He’s also written not so brilliant ones. If he writes crap, he can be called on it, just like everyone else. The rules of storytelling are not like the rules of physics. Its more like the rules of a bank. You can break em, the trick is getting away with it.
24 November 2013 at 22:52 #21455I don’t know how false the reality of the Doctor is. The Daleks really did get genocided. So that’s that. He does feel guilty about stuff like that. And for practical purposes, tossing Gallifrey out of the Universe in a Frozen Moment of Time in some ways is only hypothetically better than wiping it out. This is something the War Council recognized.
As for the undestruction of Gallifrey. Well, due to the temporal dislocation, neither the Hurt nor the Tenant Doctors will remember that in the end they tried to save Gallifrey. So what they know is what they know, that includes the Ecclestone Doctor. Even the Smith Doctor only knows they tried, he doesn’t know whether or not they succeeded, until the Xteenth Doctor comes along, whaps him upside the head and tells him they succeeded.
I don’t see that this invalidates any of the angst and withering of the previous seasons of the new Doctor. It just lifts a certain amount of weight off, and may provide some new motivations, for the future Doctor.
24 November 2013 at 22:46 #21452In regards to Colin Baker, his comments might seem a little churlish. But then again, he was probably the worst treated Doctor of the old series. He had to endure an 18 month hiatus between his first and second seasons, his second season serial – Trial of a Time Lord, was gutted. He was saddled with a costume that he disliked and actively hurt him. He got no respect at all.
And yet, by all accounts, from fans, he seems to have been a very nice person who was always gracious and worked well with people.
Like it or not, there’s no way not to feel its something of a slap in the face that Tom gets a role and not any of the others. In a lot of these things, like the unlamented Lost in Space remake, often the old stars are invited back for cameos.
Having said that, I can understand why Tom Baker was chosen. He played the Doctor longer, in terms of years and in terms of number of stories, than any Doctor before or after. He was the Doctor who broke through in North America, and in England probably the most wildly popular Doctor of his time. If there was a single Iconic Doctor…. it’s Tom Baker. And he’s the oldest surviving Doctor, – Troughton, Hartnell and Pertwee are dead. For what Moffat wanted to do with that last scene, really, it could only have been Tom.
24 November 2013 at 22:38 #21450tenantmarsters2013 It’s already established that the Tardis can materialize inside itself, in those minisodes in the new series. In that case, it was trouble because the Tardis had materialized inside itself at the same moment. It had to drift out of synch a few seconds. In this case, it could well be the Xteenth Doctor’s Tardis they’ve materialized inside, it would be centuries out of synch with the other three. It’s an interesting idea, and I can’t say whether it’s the case or not, but it does hold up.
24 November 2013 at 22:35 #21448@bluepipsqueak
Granted. But, that said, there’s also a difference between something that makes sense to you, and makes sense to a character. There’s also a difference between making sensible objections and idiotic ones – how the hell could the Elizabethans bury anything in concrete? Their concrete was only useful for cementing bricks together – they had crap concrete until 1793. And why on earth would the Elizabethans bury a highly suspicious and possibly magical object in their drinking water supply? Their drinking water supply was wretched as it was, without deliberately poisoning it.
Acknowledging that concrete or cement actually existed during this period, it would have been available to help seal away the paintings. Burying them at the bottom of a well might or might not work. Sticking them under a hundred tons of masonry. There are all sorts of ways to lock up ‘indestructible’ paintings, short of putting them on a wall in a gallery.
Their instinct would be to put the dangerous ‘paintings’ in a dungeon in the strongest fortress they have. Which is what Queen Elizabeth did.
Not exactly. And in any event, the logic fails. You have something potentially dangerous, whose application theoretically you understand… and then you situate it in a form which makes it easy to break out of?
As far as I can work out, your other complaint about the Zygon invasion is that – having an entirely secure method of time-travel-via-hibernation – the Zygons chose to invade somewhere with running water, basic sanitation, central heating and factories. Fine. That’s your problem. Me, I know quite a bit about Elizabethan England – from the point of view of somebody from the 21st Century, it’s a nice place to visit, but not somewhere to stay. I have no problem thinking that the Zygons would be going ‘actually live in this midden heap? Are you kidding me, Commander? Time travel – yeah, that sounds cool.‘
No, my complaint about the Zygon invasion is that there’s no way the Zygons could predict the future and know when or how to break out. As I’ve said, the paintings could have ended up in the bottom of a collapsed mineshaft, or in the mud at the bottom of the sea. In either case, poor Zygons. The world could have seen thermonuclear war, the collapse of civilization, various sorts of alien invasions and detonations. Any of these variables would have simply butterflied away the Zygons plans. The Zygons whole plot to invade the future was contingent on everything going perfectly for them in their absence for several hundred years. Come on.
The story is ‘sold’ to the audience not by telling them the details of exactly how Gallifrey will be blown to smithereens or imploded into a teeny black hole or whatever – but by showing the children who are going to die if that button is pressed.
Again, I beg to differ. Consider the Eastwood film, Dirty Harry. That film also showed children at risk. But consider in that same film, Eastwood’s “This is a 44 magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world…” speech, which has clear dramatic effect.
I’ll credit you with going in swinging real hard on the Zygon Shenanigans. But since the Moment has access to all time and space, it doesn’t especially need to pick a spot where the Matt Smith Doctor gets to deal with the long delayed and utterly inept plans of the Zygons. It could have picked any spot. There’s no thematic connection, and no ‘in story’ connection between the Zygons and the Moment that is articulated.
Maybe if the Moment was saying that it had used the paintings as a locus to locate or zero in on the Doctor at different points in his life. Maybe that would work. Maybe if the Zygons had some chronal beacon they were using that the Moment could home in on. But no…
Now, Moffat has made dramatic choices through his script. Whether you like it or not, it is entirely legitimate to question the effectiveness of his dramatic choices. Like it or not, my views and opinions are at least as legitimate as your own, and you are obliged to live with them.
You can like Day of the Doctor all you want and for any reason you want and I respect that. I like it too. But I also dislike things in it, and I’ll ask you to respect that. My disliking some aspects of the Day of the Doctor is not a personal attack on you and should not be taken in that way.
24 November 2013 at 22:02 #21439@hudsey I don’t call them by numbers. Simpler to call them by name. The Hartnell Doctor, the Troughton Doctor, etc. I think it works better, since the names have a visual association.
24 November 2013 at 20:10 #21423The notion that Osgood might be Clara Oswald’s sister is an interesting one. But I’m not sure how well grounded it is. It’s just two letters of a last name in common, and a throwaway reference to a sister.
I checked the IMDB and Wikipedia, and Osgood is the only name listed for the character.
24 November 2013 at 20:06 #21421@IamnotafishIamafreeman Let’s keep it civil. It’s one thing to have legitimate disagreements about a work of art or storytelling. It’s another to slip in a snide personal insult. It doesn’t do you any good. It doesn’t do me any good. No one else enjoys it. And you go down that road… you might not appreciate where it leads.
24 November 2013 at 18:32 #21400My biggest question is: how was Four there, looking old? Don’t we see Four regenerate into Five (I haven’t seen that ep; I don’t know)? If so, when and how does Four get old? And are we meant to believe that the National Gallery is in a TARDIS? Or just that Curator likes those round things?
Smith says: “I never forget a face.”
Baker responds: “I know you don’t, but if you live long enough, you may end up revisiting some of those faces, particularly old favourites.”
The Doctor has never been in control of his regenerations. But that’s not necessarily typical. Romana had complete control of her regeneration. This scene implies that in the far future, the Doctor will control his regenerations, retire, and become the Curator. It’s not the 4th talking to the Smith Doctor, it’s the Xteenth. The existence of the Xteenth may well have an impact on Trenzalore in some way.
24 November 2013 at 18:26 #21398Does Hurt regenerate into Eccleston? I sure thought I saw Eccleston’s face bleeding through but it wasn’t clear, and I can’t check it just now. If Hurt doesn’t verifiably regenerate into Eccleston, then we might have another gap in which to insert another hidden regeneration. It would be pretty cheesy to do so, IMO, but Moffat does like to leave loopholes. (Certainly Hurt into Eccleston is implied with the comment about the ears sticking out.)
For obvious reasons – Ecclestone not participating – it would be difficult to show that. I think that there was a half second of Ecclestone’s face appearing. But I do think it was a deliberate choice not to leave more than a hint.
Moffat has left himself a bit of room for intermediate Doctors, although he may have to work a bit to explain how or where these intermediate Doctors get unremembered. But then again, this wouldn’t be the first time that gaps in the Doctor’s history emerge… consider season 6B.
24 November 2013 at 18:20 #21396@bluepipsqueak
Invade a more sophisticated Earth with a tech base and a more comfortable living standard. This was explicitly stated by Queen Elizabeth. Ruling Elizabethan England, to a spacefaring race like the Zygons, would be the equivalent of having the biggest mud hut in the village. The Elizabethans were people who thought water mills were advanced technology.
Look, there’s a difference between stating a reason for purposes of plot, and having something make sense. It’s like all those slasher movies, where the character goes “Hmm, I think I’ll go alone into this dark scary basement.” Well, the fact that they said it doesn’t make it sensible. Dimensions in Time came up with some notion of the Rani creating a time tunnel thingy… still didn’t make senses on examination.
So let’s take a look at the Zygons. Okay, yes, that’s stated. I find myself wondering how Queen Elizabeth knows or finds all this out in such a very short time. Or how she was faking her way among Zygons. Presumably, they’d be wondering why she seemed to be asking so many questions about things she ought to know. “Hmmm can you repeat the Grand Plan that we discussed this morning?” And presumably, wouldn’t they be wondering where the real Queen Elizabeth was? Because they need the real one alive to maintain the image?
The notion that they want to rule a more sophisticated Earth doesn’t really hold up. So they’re all going to… what, spend the next two or three centuries playing bridge with each other until its time to get on with the invasion? Or they’re going to conceal themselves in paintings…. for an indefinite period of time… until when, what? How would they know when its time to get out of the painting? How do they decide that?
And wouldn’t a more sophisticated technically competent Earth be a lot harder to conquer and rule? They’re risking spending their existence in all those paintings, in order to get their butts kicked when they get out. And what if Earth destroys itself or is destroyed in the meantime? Tough luck then. Unless they could accurately predict or pinpoint the future, their plan has so many and such massive variables that it’s just insane. They might as well have just spent two hundred years buying scratch and win lottery tickets, they’d have much better chances.
And why bother storing the paintings at all. Even if they’re indestructible, there’s nothing to stop them from being buried in concrete, or at the bottom of a well, with the location marked. Let the Zygons invade through 1000 tons of granite. There’s another one of those variables, where the Zygon’s need amazing foresight as to the future in order for the plan to work.
There’s a movie called Zombie 3, made in the Phillipines, by Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei. Fulci got sick, so Mattei took over. But that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, there’s a scene where a character goes into a room, opens a cupboard and a zombie jumps out and attacks him. That sort of thing gets widely criticized. Why is the zombie in the cupboard? How long has it been waiting quietly in the cupboard on the off chance that someone, someday may come into the room and open the cupboard? It’s an example of something that makes an impact when you watch it, but as you examine it, the less sense it makes.
You have forgotten what is established for the Zygon back-story; their home planet has been destroyed in the Time War. Think ‘crash-landed on a primitive island’ rather than ‘planned invasion’. Which is probably why the Doctor is relatively sympathetic; certainly enough to suggest a treaty. These are desperate shipwrecked sailors rather than invading career pirates.
They don’t seem to be the same group from Terror of the Zygons, hanging about in Loch Ness.
How? The time portal is carefully chosen by The Moment – who knows enough about the Doctor to pick a form that will become deeply important to him. So she also knows enough about the Doctor to pick a point in his future which has important parallels with his present crisis.
Both points where the Zygons just happen to be futtering about? How exactly does that work? I’ll acknowledge the point that the three doctors figure out how to use their gaps in time to disintegrate a door, and that this becomes the inspiration for the resolution at the end, and I’ll respect that bit of work.
But what’s the important parallel – is marrying Queen Lizzy an important parallel to the present crisis?
Is a run of the mill Zygon invasion an important parallel to the last day of the Time War? Arguably, the scene in the Tower, where the two Stuarts are waiting for a nuclear weapon to detonate might parallel the last day of the Time War… But only superficially. In the tower, the two sides face annihilation because they can’t and won’t trust and won’t compromise. In the Time War, the two sides face annihilation because the Doctor’s going to end it. The resolution in the Tower, the Doctor just wipes everyone’s memory and tells them to come together, is completely unrelated to the resolution of the last day – that solution comes from the throwaway door bit mentioned – not from the Doctor finding a way to tell the Daleks and Time Lords to call off Doomsday and talk it out. Bottom line, is the Zygon plot threads fail to mesh effectively with each other, or with the main plot.
There was probably very little money for Epic Scope.
>>Same thing with the ‘Moment’. Okay, it’s an ultimate weapon…. But what does it do?
I neither know nor care beyond ‘it will make Gallifrey burn’. We’ve had nine years of being told the Doctor destroys Gallifrey. How? He presses a Big Red Button and the machine will do the rest. Dramatically, that’s all you need to know. How it does it has no dramatic impact whatsoever; what it will do, however, is kill 2.7 billion children.
Uh uh uh! Nope. First rule of storytelling is show, don’t tell. Second rule of storytelling is that if you can’t show, then tell. Don’t show, don’t tell? That’s storytelling failure 101. You always have to be selling your story to the audience. Otherwise, there’s no reason to care. Dramatically, this fails. The Moment never achieves any kind of identity or presence.
No, you don’t (and they probably couldn’t afford it anyway). You had all you needed to know in the Zygon story – the one you think was shenanigans because you spent too much time thinking you wanted more Time War and not enough time paying attention to the story you were being told.
Nope, it really was shenanigans. I paid attention to the story that was being told. The whole story, the overarching story, the theme, how the subplots worked and how they related to the main story. I was not distracted by impressive speeches to rabbits, or the chemistry between Tenant and Smith, the cool banter. I paid attention to all that stuff, enjoyed the hell out of it…. but that didn’t distract me from the fact that the story broke down.
Basic storytelling – if you’re going to tell an epic story about a climactic moment in the Doctors life, then tell that story. If you can show it, fine. If you don’t have the budget to show it… fine, tell it another way, but don’t just go ‘it’s epic, really’ and then try and distract with empty shenanigans.
Look, it’s not the worst Doctor Who story ever told. Far from it. And there’s a lot of individual little bits to like or even love. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts. And given that this story has been hyped to the wazoo, its disappointing. It failed to live up to its hype. Compare this to ; Last of the Time Lords; Journey’s End; End of Time; The Big Bang; ‘Wedding of River Song’; ‘ Name of the Doctor.’ Better stories told better.
24 November 2013 at 17:18 #21379@ardarath OH !!! What if the Silence, as a religious order, are about making sure the Doctor never finds Gallifrey, in order to keep the Time Lords (who had committed such atrocities) out of the universe forever? What if Elevens final act is finding Gallifrey? hmmmm
I would say that would waste a lot of storytelling opportunities for the Capaldi Doctor.
24 November 2013 at 17:16 #21378No, I watched the whole thing twice. It’s not explained. The Zygons are in Queen Lizzy’s time and in the 21st century because Moffat wants them there for his story, no better reason. That thought they had a Zygon queen doesn’t answer the question – how did they know or expect that it would be useful in several hundred years, or how did they know how or when to get out of the painting. It’s just goofy poorly thought out nonsense.
Like it or not, it’s lousy storytelling. Moffat left holes you could drive a truck through, failed to answer questions that he raised, and it doesn’t hold up. This isn’t over focusing on plot devices. This is failures of the plot.
24 November 2013 at 16:39 #21369By the way, I don’t know if it’s been mentioned. But the Hurt Doctor is not an aged McGann Doctor. In the Minisode, Night of the Doctor, the McGann Doctor dies, regenerating into a much younger Hurt Doctor. The Hurt Doctor was around for a very very long time.
24 November 2013 at 16:38 #21368Of course, that begs the question as to how the Doctor knows the High Council’s plans, when the War Council has no idea.
24 November 2013 at 16:16 #21365I confess to disappointment. Ultimately, I don’t think that the Day of the Doctor stands as a successful work, and certainly not as an epic work. Perhaps no story could have borne up under the weight of expectation, but Day of the Doctor feels scattered and oddly insubstantial.
There is much to like, I will acknowledge that. Tenant and Smith are terrific together, they have chemistry, they bounce off each other effectively. It was a joy to see them working together, and it’s kind of heartbreaking that this is going to be the only Tenant/Smith crossover story.John Hurt is a terrific counterpoint to them, grizzled, war torn, jaded, but still with some humour and compassion. I kind of expected him to be a monster given Smith’s description. But instead, he just seems full of battered posh gravity.
It was nice to see Billy Piper back as a kind of avatar of herself.
And it’s interesting to see Kate Lethridge-Stuart move so decisively into Canon. Kate Lethridge-Stuart, the Brigadier’s daughter first appeared in Downtime, a Reeltime productions video, 1995, that also starred Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, Elizabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane, Deborah Watling as the Troughton companion Victoria Waterfield, Jack Watling as Troughton companion Professor Traverse, and the Great Intelligence and its Yeti. She returned in Reeltime’s Daemos Rising, from 2004. Both times played by Beverly Cressman. The actress has changed, but still visibly the same character.
It’s terrific to see Tom Baker doing a turn as the Xteenth Doctor, retired.
And of course, the 3D paintings you can step in and out of were seen in Nightmare of Eden, another Tom Baker serial.
Lots of wonderful moments, but do they add up?
Now to the downside –
Two big problems. First, the three subplots or plots don’t really mesh up well at all. Subplot one seems to be the Doctor’s Romance with Queen Elizabeth and the Zygon invasion in Elizabethan times… That’s two subplots I suppose, but we’ll call them one for purposes of economy. The Elizabethan one is played for comedy, the Zygon one fails to amount to anything. Subplot two would be the Zygon invasion/takeover in the modern era, which at least goes to some sort of resolution. The final plot is of course the arc of the War Doctor.
Well, let me ask some questions about the Zygons. Are they the most lacksadaisical alien invaders ever? I mean… come on, they’ve had their invasion plot going on for two or three centuries? Jesus, talk about low impact, or low energy. They’re slackers.
And part of their plot is to stick agents in three dimensional paintings so that at the appropriate point they can jump out centuries later and…. Do what exactly? Just hope that the paintings will be stored in some secret archive which will give them indirect access to super-weapons? Or on the off chance that there might be something useful at some point? And how do they even predict? What kind of a plan is that?
It would make sense if it was established that the Zygons were precognitive, or had some kind of time manipulation or sensing abilities, or had some window into a place in the future so that they could have some expectation. But none of this is established for Zygons either in their original appearance or in this episode.So what the hell?
And for that matter, if the Zygons or their technology have no particular time sense, or function as a time anchor…. then we have to take their appearance and proximity in both eras, where the time portal opens up for both Tenant and Smith to be complete utter coincidence. Whaaaaaaaaat?
Now, I could forgive all this, if it wasn’t for the failure of the main plot.
Look, how many year have we been waiting to see the Time War, how many years have there been all these hints and implications, entire species and worlds unmade, wiped from existence, the Degradation of Skaro, the Nightmare Child, the Probability Army, all these amazing, evocative references. The hints of immense, universe reshaping scope.
Maybe when you build it up that much, there’s just no way to meet those expectations. Anything you try to show will come across as trite.
Still, it would have been nice to have seen the attempt made. But there seems very little effort at Epic Scope.Okay, yeah, this is the last day, there’s billions of Dalek spaceships surround Gallifrey, Arcadia is falling, and in a boardroom on Gallifrey people are having a meeting. Okay, sure, maybe this is satisfactory for a standard interplanetary war. This is a Universe Reshaping Catastrophe. Maybe talk it up a bit???
Same thing with the ‘Moment’. Okay, it’s an ultimate weapon…. But what does it do? How does it do it? Does it rewind the Big Bang? Implode a galactic cluster? Does it unmake reality? For an utterly feared sentient weapon with the power to end the greatest time war ever and destroy Gallifrey…. Maybe a little more detail, a little more build up???
In the end though, I think the problem is the focus on the last day, not even the entire last day, this is the last moments. In a sense, its too close to the dramatic focus, and that drains tension. A predicted dramatic focus. We need to see more of the War Doctor, we need to see or at least hear about the awful things he did in the war, how he finally came to the end. Hard to do in one episode.But they didn’t even try. They just kind of wasted most of their time with comic relief queens and zygon shenanigans that make no sense.
Disappointment.22 November 2013 at 02:00 #21134Here’s a hint. The Doctor once faced another hostile entity which had no physical body, and told it:
DOCTOR: Drop it. Drop all of it. I know who you are.
….. Course you don’t.
DOCTOR: Course I do. No idea how you can be here, but there’s only one person in the universe who hates me as much as you doIt’s that guy.
21 November 2013 at 21:20 #21100@whisht Oh, I’ve got a very fantastic answer to the plot hole/question, one that will knock your socks off and mail them to Greenland and give them to the eskimos to use them as fish pockets. 😉
20 November 2013 at 05:54 #20977Poking around online, I ran across Downtime. Has anyone seen it? Basically, I was getting my ex-wife, a huge Doctor Who fan, all five seasons of the Sarah Jane adventures, so I was poking around online for Elizabeth Sladen stuff and ran across this.
It’s not an official BBC production, rather, it comes from Reeltime Pictures, which started out making fan documentaries about Doctor Who, notably the mythmakers series.
It stars Nicholas Courtney, playing the role of the Brigadier Lethridge-Stewart, Elizabeth Sladen playing Sarah Jane, Deborah Watling playing Victoria Waterfield (a Troughton companion), and Jack Watling, reprising his Professor Travers role from Troughton’s Web of Feat.
Also featuring in the story are the Great Intelligence (Abominable Snowman, Web of Fear in the old series, Snowmen, Name of the Doctor and Bells of St. John ), and the Yeti (Abominable Snowman, Web of Fear and Five Doctors).
It’s written by Marc Platt, who also wrote the McCoy serial Ghostlight, and directed by Christopher Barry, who had directed Doctor Who serials starting with the Daleks in 1963 and Brain of Morbius and Creature From the Pit in 1976 and 1979.
This is one of only two non-BBC productions to be Novelized by Virgin Books as part of their Doctor Who, Missing Adventures series.
Finally, it introduced the character of Kate Lethridge-Stuart, who was the main protagonist in a follow up Reeltime Video – Deamos Rising, and who, astonishingly, has been adopted into the new Doctor Who series, in the episode Power of Three.
I’m trying to decide whether to see if I can track down a DVD to add to the Sarah Jane Christmas. So if anyone has any recommendations or ideas, let me know.
In the meantime, I’m struck by the inclusion of the Brigadiers daughter Kate, in the new series canon. What’s that? Retro-Canon? They went out, grabbed something that was unofficial, and have made it official now? Does this have the effect of incorporating Downtime Retroactively as part of the Doctor Who Canon/Continuity?
I’ve been wondering a bit about this stuff because its also come up in Night of the Doctor. The McGann Doctor names all of his companions from his audio adventures. Is that retro-continuity too? Does the explicit reference to the Audio Companions mean that the 8th Doctor’s Audio Adventures are now part of the canon?
If so, then it means that the question of what is and is not “Doctor Who” canon/continuity has certainly become more interesting.
18 November 2013 at 22:33 #20916@whisht I have one or two. But let me pose a riddle… In ‘Name of the Doctor’ we have the Great Intelligence, who says:
GI: Tell that to the leader of the Sycorax, or Solomon the trader, or the Cybermen, or the Daleks. The Doctor lives his life in darker hues, day upon day, and he will have other names before the end. The Storm, the Beast, the Valeyard.”
Here’s the question. How does he know?
The Great Intelligence is aware of recent actions of the Doctor that it simply was not present for and shouldn’t and couldn’t possibly know – the death of Solomon at the ‘hands’ of the Doctor in ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’ and the Sycorax in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ etc.
Now, the Sycorax… I can understand that, after all, that was pretty public stuff.
On the other hand, what went on in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship…. not even the Doctor’s companions got the full skinny on that one, and its not like there were a lot of other witnesses.
Okay, so maybe the Great Intelligence was just paying attention to the Doctor. But how about this: The Great Intelligence knows about the Valeyard.
That’s many incarnations down the road. How does the Great Intelligence know the Doctor’s future? How does he know about the Valeyard? Was the Great Intelligence present at the Trial of a Timelord? Did it raid the Matrix or go galoophing on Gallifrey? Because right now, Gallifrey is toast, as is everyone else who should or could have known about the Valeyard…. So how does the Great Intelligence know?
It’s the Great Intelligence that sends the Doctor to Trenzalore, the one place he must never go, his tomb. How does the Great Intelligence know about Trenzalore? How does it know what’s there? How does it know the key to opening the Doctor’s Tomb is the true name of the Doctor? How could it possibly have this information?
Madame Kovarian would have given her ovaries to have that information. The Silence would have shouted for joy to get it. The Companions certainly don’t know it, never heard it. How? Or Who? 😉
15 November 2013 at 04:57 #20744Hello all! Anyone remember me? The guy with wacky theories to incorporate the Cushing Doctor into continuity? Sorry, I’ve been really busy with work, been wanting to get back here with more wacky theories about Cushing, Curse of Fatal Death, Scream of the Shalka and the nature of the Great Intelligence. Hmmm. And I should go back and really fix up my Cushing article…. and submit it in some proper place.
Looking forward like crazy to the Day of the Doctor. Seriously enjoyed the Night of the Doctor. Anyway, looking forward to getting involved in discussions. 😀
26 May 2013 at 18:22 #11050@wolfweed Very cool. Time to reappraise Peter Cushing’s Doctor.
PS: Island of Terror, the man who did the musical score also did the musical score for Doctor and the Daleks from Amicus. The effects in Island of Terror are frequently compared to Dr. Who.
25 May 2013 at 20:43 #10953@whisht Fair enough. Matt Smith actually encounters a caste of Daleks with names whose job is to be creative and to do innovative things.
25 May 2013 at 20:14 #10949You know, around the time of the Amicus Doctor Who movies, Peter Cushing starred in several other productions, which were distinctly Doctor Who-ish, and where he played a “Doctor” –
* 1966’s “Island of Terror” from Planet films, he played Doctor Stanley, dealing with the menace of a new artificial life form. Released between the two Doctor Who films.
* 1967’s “Island of the Burning Doomed” also Planet films where he played Doctor Stone, about an alien invasion. As a bonus written by Pip and Jane Baker. Also starring Christopher Lee.
*1972’s “Horror Express” where he plays Doctor Wells, about a body jumping alien cave man. Also starring Christopher Lee.
In a lot of his movies, Cushing played Doctors, or professors or scientists. But these stand out as being very friendly to a Cushing-Doctor pseudo canon.
25 May 2013 at 17:28 #10925Regarding the “unreality” of a simulated doctor, based on imperfect knowledge of The Timelord, I suppose I was influenced by the Star Trek: Voyager EMH doctor – he is a simulation, but has become self-aware and has all the behaviours of a sentient entity. I still feel that a simulated Doctor based on the knowledge that the Daleks had after their earliest encounters addresses the key differences between CushingDoctor and TimelordDoctor quite parsimoniously
So you are thinking an autonomous real world simulation (as opposed to a computer simulation sitting in a Dalek hard drive), wandering through history in its own functional mock up of a Tardis? That seems to contradict the notion of the Doctor as a human on any level. But again, this would share the trait with my own theory that the Doctor only ‘appears’ and ‘believes’ himself human.
Actually, there is some precedent for that in the series – In the Hartnell Doctor episode, ‘The Chase’ time travelling Daleks construct a Hartnell Doctor simulation, who dukes it out with the original. In the Smith Doctor episode, ‘Victory of the Daleks’ the Daleks construct ‘Professor Bracewell’ as both a cover story and a bomb. So there is some precedent for the Daleks constructing a simulant, even a simulant Doctor.
Why is CushingDoctor human? – Because the twice that the Daleks have encountered the TimelordDoctor he has been accompanied by humans, and on one of those occasions it was on the home planet of humanity. Also, he looks like a human. If it looks like a human, quacks like a human – a fair assumption is that it is *human*!
Ahh, but between the encounters in the first adventure and the encounters in ‘Invasion Earth’ the Daleks have several times encountered the Doctor. Tom Baker in Genesis of the Daleks, John Pertwee in Planet of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks, etc. By the time the Daleks clearly have the technology and ability to create a simulant Doctor and send it through time in a reproduction of the Tardis, they would clearly know that the Doctor is a time lord, has multiple incarnations, and almost certainly know what the interior of a Tardis looks like.
Finally – Why would the Daleks run training simulations? Well, because they are living beings, simply programming them with battle tactics might not be as effective as allowing them to experience it.
Except that the battle tactics of these encounters would be irrelevant to the super-advanced Daleks who would be the only ones capable of building and running a Cushing Doctor simulant. Remember in the first Dalek encounter by Hartnell, these original Daleks are dependent on external power sources and can barely operate. They’re tin cans by the standards of the later Daleks.
25 May 2013 at 05:25 #10846I always imagined that the Cushing Doctor was a construct of the Daleks early in their history, using information that they had actually gleaned from their two early interactions with the Hartnell Doctor, and that they were training simulations for the Daleks to:
(A) Train new Daleks in combat against their most dangerous enemy
(B) Explore “what-if” scenarios to see if these interactions could possibly have been won by the Daleks.
This would explain the differences between the *real* events (as chronicled in the TV series), the glamorisation of the Daleks appearances, and the gaps in the Daleks’ knowledge of this adversary.
Okay, been thinking of this. Some reflections.
* Wouldn’t have been early in their history. In their early history, the Daleks hadn’t mastered time travel. It’s tough to generalize because Daleks history doesn’t seem to line up with Doctor History. For instance, in some Dalek adventures, they’re so feeble that they can be disabled by throwing a coat over their sensors, rely on an external power grid, or power broadcasts, and can easily be destroyed or defeated by stairs. On other adventures, they’re hard core time travellers and unstoppable killing machines. The Daleks that Hartnell has his first encounter with are definitely early Daleks, they’re still fighting the Thals on their own homeworld, which is a radioactive ruin. The Daleks from Invasion Earth on the other hand are a quantum leap up – interstellar terrorists. The ones from the Chase are actually able to hunt a Tardis through time and space.
* The two interactions with the Cushing/Hartnell Doctor, are vastly far apart in Dalek history, and are punctuated by intermediate encounters with the Troughton, Baker and Pertwee Doctors. It’s not clear why the Daleks would single out these two encounters (of course, within the actual real life history of the show, there had only been two or three Dalek adventures by that time) (but within the logic of the series… different thing).
* So the ‘early Daleks’ just wouldn’t possess the mojo to pull this off. At best you’d be looking at the late period Daleks, the ones who had mastered time travel and interstellar travel on a massive scale. Time War Daleks perhaps.
* No question that the late period Daleks had enough control over time and space to manage a simulation of this nature. But why would they? Daleks are nothing if not ruthless. Running simulations of an early period adventure when they were rather less capable and competent wouldn’t teach them anything. It’s possible that this was not a simulation, but a Dalek driven ‘groundhog day’ scenario, but if so, what’s the motivation?
* More problematically, if its a Dalek driven simulation or ‘groundhog day’ event, why use a terrestrial human being? As opposed to the trillions of aliens that the Time Lords and Daleks would have had access too, many of whom look human. Why start things off on Earth, why encumber the fake Doctor with a family, etc. etc. The Daleks seem to like to cut to the chase, I think that they’d just decant a simulation Doctor with memories – and in fact they decanted or built a simulation Professor with memories. They wouldn’t set him down in London in the 1960’s to putter around until he got around to starting his time machine… or had his grandaughters boyfriend set it in motion. We just see far too much of the Doctor on his own time.
* I’m not sure I buy the notion of simulation to train new Daleks. I’ve not seen any evidence that they use simulations or work that way. Rather, they seem to be deep into converting and programming. And I don’t see the merit of late period Daleks training in inferior early period situations and chassis.
* The notion of the Daleks running simulations as a means of combatting or trying out techniques against the Doctor is kind of interesting, and does seem to be Dalek like. But again, the format of these simulations doesn’t seem like it would produce useful information. Again, late period super-daleks just don’t have much to learn running simulations with early or midle period ‘stone age’ daleks – what worked or didn’t work back then wouldn’t have any bearing on the modern situation.
* Finally, a big problem is that I don’t see anywhere in the canon which suggests that the Daleks were running stuff like this. There’s no precedent to support that they might be doing this here.
* By way of analogy, I can point to at several instances where the Time Lords actually sent the Doctor, willingly or unwillingly, on missions, some of which were explained to him, some of which were not, including two or three occasions where they pointed him at Daleks. So my notion that the Cushing Doctor’s ‘Groundhog Day’ adventures might be another Time Lord plot using the Doctor as a pawn has some foundation – I can’t prove that they’re doing it here, but I can show that they’ve done this sort of thing a few times before, and that at least improves the probability that this might be what’s going on here.
* I can’t seem to point to anything that the Daleks have done which would amount to the same sort of precedent or prior conduct, to give a foundation which would improve the probability – ‘ie, they’ve done this kind of thing before, so there’s a good chance they’re doing it here.’
Ultimately of course, there’s no way to prove one theory or another. What it comes down to is trying to assemble enough of a case or theory from information provided by the Canon series to assign probability. It’s not an off/on or yes/no or true/false dichotomy. It’s how well and how comprehensively we can fit the data, what’s most likely, or less likely. I can’t reject your theory, but I think that I would assign it a much lower probability than my own.
I also think that my own theory is…. for want of better words, more elegant and satisfying. It incorporates the Cushing Doctor as an actual Doctor, implies a hidden history, has an emotional resonance and fits neatly in the context of the Time Wars, and is based on multiple references and precedents in multiple episodes.
Your theory amounts to a Dalek video game, which is certainly a genuine potential that I can’t dismiss. But it just doesn’t seem as grand or satisfying to me. Of course, that’s a matter of subjective prejudice and it might be very satisfying and more satisfying to you.
It reminds me of the various theories which suggest that the Cushing Doctor’s adventures are ‘just a couple of movies based on rumours or stories received, in the real Doctor Who universe’, or which are ‘simulations or diversions of some sort’ by the Doctor or some other party. My problem with these theories is that the bottom line is that they make the Cushing Doctor unreal. In whatever variation, the Cushing Doctor becomes a fictional Doctor in a landscape of real Doctors. For some reason, I find that very unsatisfying, perhaps it’s just too ‘meta’ for me.
Personally, I like the notion of the Cushing Doctor as a real rather than fictional entity in the Doctor Who universe.Ergo, for these reasons, I think that my theory of the Cushing Doctor as a ‘suppressed Time Lord, under the thumb of Gallifrey and put into a Groundhog Day’ situation works better.
This means no disrespect to you personally, or your ideas. It’s just my take. I hope that I have not offended.
24 May 2013 at 19:23 #1074024 May 2013 at 18:37 #10731@lula Revelation of the Daleks, last adventure of the 1st season of Colin Baker.
24 May 2013 at 18:05 #10722What about this as another option – the Cushing Doctor is human but the TL’s are using him in place of the actual Doctor for some reason eg maybe they don’t want to get caught interfering.
Possible, but difficult.
Here’s the thing. The Time Lords are very very rarely in front of the camera. At times, they are shown talking to the Doctor or among themselves and coming to decisions or deciding on actions. These are the best times to explain their actions and motivations, but these are usually specific explanations for specific situations. We can use these to generalize to or speculate about broad motivations and strategies, but this is inferential.
Most of the time, we see their actions, often from a remote vantage point. ie, they seize the Tardis and stick the Doctor somewhere. From this, we can only really infer their tactical perspective and their strategies. The tactical perspective is often fairly straightforward, but not necessarily so. If they stick the Doctor in front of Morbius, well, its obviously to wax Morbius. But in other situations, the outcome and objectives are not so clear. They want something to happen, but is that something what actually happens? And how does it fit into overall strategies? Again, we’re stuck with making inferences.
Inferences by nature are speculative. It’s a maybe thing. They’re hard to test. One effective way to test an inference, is to see if multiple inferences line up. Another effective test is to see if an inference is consistent with proven data. ie, if the arrows keep pointing to the same direction, then you’ve got something. So in this case, supposing we’ve got two or more clear cases which show the Time Lords pointing the Doctor at the Daleks as a sort of weapon – then we can probably validate the inference that this is what they are doing in a third case.
So let’s test out this hypothesis: “The Cushing Doctor is actually a human that is being used as a kind of placeholder for the Doctor in a ‘groundhog day’ sort of sortie against the Daleks.”
Okay – before or after? If this comes before the Hartnell adventure, this speaks to a vaster amount of power and control than we’ve previously expected from the Time Lords. Hartnell was supposedly running free. This would imply that he was a pawn every step of the way. This doesn’t seem consistent with what we know. This is also unlikely, though not impossible, because in the chronology of the series, the Hartnell adventures seem to come first. So let’s dismiss that possibility.
So then assume it comes after. The Time Lords are reproducing a Hartnell adventure, with a human catspaw in the Hartnell role. Why? Well, obviously to screw with the Daleks. But how? Why aren’t they using Troughton, or a regeneration of the Doctor? Is the real Doctor too uncontrollable? Possible. So if the Cushing Doctor is a genuine human, this would imply that they’re using extremely fine control. ie, more overt and more detailed control than they could achieve with a real timelord. This is heavy duty puppeteering.
Plausible deniability wouldn’t be an issue – we’d be looking at an extreme level of puppeteering, and a basically ignorant and highly manipulated dupe running around with de facto time lord tech? Nope, this isn’t on the down low. They’ll be leaving big fingerprints.
I would assume that the ultimate objective is the same, to create an altered reality more suitable to the Time Lords, and it had enough success that they tried it again.
So, how do we test this hypothesis. Let me try and work it out. Any theory has consequences – you test a theory by following the consequences. Under this Hypothesis, does the Cushing Doctor need Susan and Barbara and Ian? Possibly, if the Time Lords are trying to reproduce absolute fidelity. But that doesn’t hold up, since there’s a great number of variations – why fidelity in some ways, and not in others. The choices don’t seem to follow.
Even assuming fidelity… But that’s fidelity to the events, not the underlying emotions. A fully human Cushing Doctor doesn’t need Susan the same way that a suppressed time-lord/human Cushing Doctor does. He wouldn’t necessarily come to the same trauma of losing Susan at the end of Invasion Earth.
So if we were trying to determine whether the Cushing Doctor was an actual human, or a Time Lord in disguise, the events immediately following Invasion Earth, offscreen would be our key. A Human Doctor would keep on going, a suppressed Time Lord Doctor would have his break. Within the logic of the universe, we don’t see this either way, so the only thing that might help us decide is that there was no further movie, this was the apparent end of the Cushing Doctors adventures. This implies that there might have been a breakdown, which would put us in ‘suppressed time lord’ territory. Of course, it may be that the adventures are simply unchronicled, or that the Time Lords gave up the experiment as not productive enough.
On this line of inquiry, I’d be inclined to choose the suppressed Time Lord as the better option to a fully Human Pawn as a case of Time Lord meddling. Both theories seem workable, its just that the first seems more efficient, accounts for more data effectively, and leaves fewer loose ends, it bears out the consequences better.
How else can we test? Is there precedent? We have a lot of record of the Time Lords manipulating the Doctor in various ways. We can reliably assume that if they did it a lot in other instances, they might be doing it again in this instance.
Not so many instances of the Time Lords playing this kind of game or this sort of manipulation with humans. On the whole, most of the Time Lord society seems to have relatively little interest in humans. There’s the Master and the Monk of course, but they’re renegades. The Time Lords seemed to view the Doctor’s affection for humans to be a quirk. I have no sense that humans were their ‘go to’ species. Again, a fully human Doctor Pawn seems less likely.
Finally, it’s clear that the Time Lords would be in control of the original Tardis, and therefore in control of the Doctor. So the decision would be a choice for a ‘groundhog day scenario’ – use a suppressed Time Lord Doctor (ie, the one they have on the shelf), or use a human pawn to fill the Doctor’s role? Which would they choose? Why? What’s the tangible advantage of a human pawn? Why wouldn’t they use a suppressed Doctor?
It’s speculative, and I’m unwilling to rule it out completely. But I don’t think that there’s sufficient support for the Cushing Doctor/Human Pawn hypothesis versus the Cushing Doctor/Suppressed Time Lord.
24 May 2013 at 05:42 #10648Yeah. I’ll do that.
Hmmm. Interesting. So they just grab up a fully human stooge or cipher and stick him into the Doctor’s role? Interesting. But then, why bother with granddaughters Susan and Barbara? Let me think about it for a while.
24 May 2013 at 05:11 #1064311) Send not-quite-Gallifreyan-Doctor to mess with Daleks – hmm? erm.. oookaaaayy….
This is the the key to the Cushing Doctor, the big question. Why do his two recorded adventures parallel two of the adventures of the Hartnell Doctor? It’s not a reproduction, each time, there are a number of differences, but overall the experience runs along similar tracks. So its not the same, its different, but the same in its differentness.
It’s almost reminiscent of Groundhog Day. The Doctor is reliving the same day or adventure, with differences. But the big difference is that the Doctor himself is different. So that begs the issue – who is doing this to the Doctor? He’s not doing it to himself, there’s no indication of it, and although we recognize the similarity with previous adventures, he has no memory of it.
I believe that Cushing himself conjectured that the movies were the Celestial Toymaker manipulating the Doctor, changing his identity and forcing him to re-experience certain adventures. It’s possible. The Toymaker only had one appearance, and his powers and limits are not clearly spelled out. But it would take more godlike power than the Toymaker seems to possess. And it seems quite arbitrary. The Toymaker is established as having it in for the Doctor, and the Doctor alludes that they’ve tangled before. But the motive or plan seems lacking.
Now, after that, through the series canon, there’s a very limited number of candidates who might have the power to screw with the Doctor in this way. The Black or White Guardian, possibly Omega or Rassilon, maybe Sutekh, a small handful of uber-villains, and of course the Time Lords themselves. These are mostly hypothetical candidates.
The ability or injury here can be defined as: 1) Forced regeneration of the Doctor; 2) Devolution to human; 3) Memory blocking; 4) Re-experiencing previous adventures in time. In terms of actual performance, the list of entities that can do that to the Doctor is pretty short. The Time Lords are at the top of the list.
I keep coming back to ‘why is he reliving past adventures.’ He’s not reliving all his entire series of past adventures – his first time voyage doesn’t take him to the Parallel Unearthly Child, but straight to the Daleks. From the Daleks, he doesn’t go to a parallel series of adventures – no Parallel Edge of Destruction, Marco Polo, Keys to Marinus, etc. He ends up with Romans with doesn’t seem to be in the Hartnell continuity, and seems to be his own adventure.
The two adventures that he specifically relives are isolated from each other, with multiple adventures between and plucked out of the Hartnell continuity. And they both involve Daleks, specifically, screwing with Daleks.
Well, who out there has a mad on for the Daleks? That would be the Time Lords again.
So this begs the question: Why would the Time Lords have the Cushing Doctor relive two of the Hartnell Doctor’s adventures with the Daleks. The weren’t around for those encounters, the Hartnell Doctor was on the run. So are they strip mining his memories? Nope. He’d still be Hartnell if that was all they were doing, and if it was just a memory search, they would be interested in fidelity of reproduction, not the numerous divergences and variations that we see.
So the point must be, if they’re having him do the whole thing over again, with slight differences…. the point must be those differences. Which means that the Time Lords are up to something, they’re playing some kind of game. And its probably not to help out the Daleks. So that suggests the whole thing is some sort of diabolical game or strategy that the Time Lords are trying to run on the Daleks. What exactly, we don’t know. But we can make some rough guesses.
Repeating an adventure is essentially a groundhog day strategy. If they’re trying to do a groundhog day, then two things are apparent. They’re trying to avoid a paradox, and they’re also trying to make things turn out a little differently.
Now, do we have evidence of them trying this crap before. Sure – they explicitly sent Tom Baker to the beginnings of Dalek history do Davros, to try and pull the plug on the race. They also sent John Pertwee to an early period when the Thals were still fighting it out with the early Daleks. So yeah, they’ve got a record of trying this shtick.
The question is, whatever they pulled, did it work?
Yes. Yes it did.
How do we know?
Because whoever ran the first Groundhog Day scenario on the Cushing Doctor, for whatever purpose… they came back and did it again! Which means that whatever they did on the first one worked well enough to justify the second attempt.
Of course, that was probably a mistake. Assuming this whole scenario, and putting myself in the shoes of the Cushing Doctor after Invasion Earth 2150, when the false memories are breaking down, and he realizes what’s been done to him, what’s been done to his memories and his family… I visualize a towering, terrifying, unstoppable rage – a being fully willing to tear down the whole of Gallifrey, utter condemnation, unstoppable vengeance. He must have terrified his handlers, the whole Time Lord command structure must have been shaking. No wonder they purged what they could and then trapped him on Earth.
24 May 2013 at 01:13 #10637@whisht The Cushing Doctor’s intermediate adventures are a lock.
1) The end of the first movie shows the Tardis ending up on a Roman battlefield. That doesn’t match up any known Hartnell or Troughton adventure, or subsequent. This would have to be Cushings own adventure (which admittedly might not have been any more extensive than the Doctor going “Romans! I’m getting outta here.”
2) Between the first and second movie, the companions have changed. Susan is still around, but the ‘granddaughter’ Barbara and her boyfriend Ian are gone. And there’s a new companion, a ‘niece’ Louise. Now, maybe Barbara and Ian got lost in the Roman era, or went off on their own or something. But he couldn’t get Louise from the Roman era, which means that he would have had to have returned to our time. And it also implies that a certain amount of time must have passed to allow for departure and enlistment. And it implies that ‘things’ must have happened for Barbara and Ian to want to leave, or for Louise to show up and become accepted.
3) The Tardis control room is significantly different between the two movies. The second movies control room is much more bolted down and advanced, with view screens and everything, and sufficient (occasional) fine control to land within minutes of a previous set down. And the Doctor and his companions are now very polished in their use. Again, it implies a period of time has passed.
The almost unavoidable implication is that there was at least one, possibly a handful of intermediate adventures between the two movies.
I kind of like the poignance of this interpretation of the Cushing Doctor. Imagine: “Nothing is quite right, you’re the pilot of a time machine that can explore the limits of space, but somehow, your body never quite seems to do what you think it ought to, one heart beats where you think sometimes there ought to be two, the cold affects you, you’re not as strong as you keep thinking you should be… all ghost impressions, obviously, you’re fit as a fiddle for a man your age. Then there are the dreams, the half memories, the strange notions that slip in ‘a world of time travellers called Gallifrey’ other friends, other companions. You’re a haunted man, haunted by a shadow world that you can never quite come to grips with. Thank god for Susan, because when you look at your beloved granddaughter, you know that love is true not a shadow, that when you reach back for memories of Susan, they aren’t shadows, they’re so real and vivid that you can taste them, touch them. Susan is the anchor of your reality, and you want to hold her and hug her and never let go. And Barbara and Louise, to a lesser extent though. But… there’s a shadow over Susan, half memories of an older Susan, a darker age, a desperate period of flight and hiding, and even … loss. With desperate intensity you push those shadows away, hug and hold the granddaughter you love so dearly the only one you were able to save (where did that come from?) as long as you have Susan, as long as you have your love, you cling to it and hold tight. Time and space are open to you, adventure awaits… just never turn around to confront the shadow behind you.”
24 May 2013 at 00:48 #10634There might be a couple of additional alternate explanation for the ‘half human comment.’
2nd Theory: See, n the “Doctor’s Wife,” Idris the human manifestation of the Tardis, or the human repository of the Tardis soul several times seems to remark that time is simultaneous, not linear for her, or that she experiences it differently. In one remark, for instance, Idris says she has the plans for all 40 Tardis control rooms, but Smith says there haven’t been 40 rooms, and she says ‘not yet.’ Something like that.
Okay, but follow through that implication.
The Master is inside the Tardis, mucking about with the settings and trying to get it to activate by fudging with the Doctor’s signature. Lo and behold, he discovers he can’t. Why? Because there’s a human signature mixed in there with the Doctor’s Time Lord signature.
“Oh ho!” says the Master, “this obviously proves that the Doctor is half human and his mother was a chick!”
Ahh but is he reading the signal properly? If the Tardis ‘line’ exists forwards as well as backwards, if the whole of the timeline is simultaneous to the Tardis, then maybe the master is actually picking up echoes of future developments. Now, DNA, and likely the underlyling Time Lord DNA, don’t change much over a lifetime. So normally, if the Master is looking at it, it shouldn’t matter if there’s a wiggle in the past or future, it should be the same.
But wait. The Doctor’s future, in the Tenant era, contains a coupl of very big wiggles where he goes ‘Human’. There’s the ‘Human Spell’ of the Chameleon Arch in “Human Nature” and “Family of Blood.” There’s also that whole bit with the partial regeneration, which affects Donna Noble (the Doctor Donna) and causes the hand to grow into a mostly human 2nd Tenant Doctor. That’s got to throw a wiffle into the readings? If in fact the Tardis readings are simultaneous, the Master will get some very strange things showing up, and he’ll reach for the easiest, most obvious, but wrong answer!
3rd Theory: Possibly the very best theory. “In the Name of the Doctor”, Matt Smith’s most recent wonderfest, we discover that Clara Oswald has jumped into the Doctor’s Timestream, along with the Great Intelligence, and is now fractured into a zillion replicas of herself, linked to the Doctor and existing through every point in the Doctor’s life, and linked to his signature. This is what the Master picks up, and of course… he just guesses wrong!
Why is this the very best theory? Because it might explain something else: In the David Tenant, fourth series, six episode, “The Doctor’s Daughter” , the Tenant Doctor is forced to stick his hand in a ‘Progenation machine’ which pops out a … GURL! Derived from the Doctor, she’s a sort of clone or descendant, or something such. But why a GURL! ? Possibly because his line is linked to Clara Oswald. The female side of Oswald, linked to the Doctor’s timeline at every moment, is what selects the sex of the Doctor’s … daughter.
23 May 2013 at 22:22 #10609@whisht Thanks. Love to hear your thoughts on the other ideas running wild in there. Cushing did have two movies, that’s one more than McGann. And McGann only had a TV movie, while Cushing had a theatrical release both times.
23 May 2013 at 21:38 #10604Oh. Thanks. So I should just repeat.
23 May 2013 at 20:58 #10598@scaryb I lack the social intuition to take things personally. Is all cool.
23 May 2013 at 19:43 #10588@Shazzbot No offense taken.
@scaryb There’s a wide range of products and production even within the series. Some of it is genuinely crap which doesn’t come up to the level of the Cushing films, some of it is absolutely sublime. I think that we have to take things as a whole. The idea I put forward explains why the Cushing Doctor is apparently human and sets him in an interesting context regarding the series. I’m not sure about your Great Intelligence notion, but if you’d like to work it up into a full fledged argument, I would be happy to look at it. I fing myself doubting that you would pursue it. Your consistent underlying thesis is that the movies suck and you don’t care about them. Maybe its my lack of social grace, but if you’re indifferent and contemptuous of the very subject…. why are we even talking? How exactly am I pissing in your cornflakes?
@craig – Regarding what Shazzbot said, what do you think? Is this worth it?
You know, I’ve said my first sight of Doctor Who was Tom Baker. I’m not wholly sure though. I remember the first time I watched the Peter Cushing Doctor Who, I was struck with a recurrent sense of powerful deja vu, scene after scene. The strange wasteland on Skaros, the scary robots, the thals. I think I might have seen it originally as a young boy. Down at the local theatre there were saturday matinees, I’d go down with my brother and we’d watch whatever was playing. This would have been late 60’s, early 70’s. It would have been around the right time for the movies to make the 2nd run theatre circuit, and saturday matinees. It’s quite possible that I saw it, forgot it, and was kindly disposed when I finally came across the Tom Baker series, and began to watch other Doctors, including digging up Cushing. Maybe that’s why I’m disposed to be sympathetic to the Cushing Doctor.
23 May 2013 at 19:09 #10583You did get the part about having no social skills whatsoever? I came up with a nifty theory, went looking for a place to put it. Ended up here. Not more complicated than that.
23 May 2013 at 18:43 #10580I was born in the year Unearthly Child came out, so you’ll forgive me for missing a detail or two. I got into Doctor Who in my university days. Came across Unearthly Child a few years later, was broadly unimpressed with Hartnell, so its been a while. Not that I think it matters. I can probably track it down and watch it again. If I had to comment, I’d say that the presentation of the Doctor’s ‘alien’ nature in Unearthly Child wasn’t terribly significant to me when I watched it. I don’t think it really affects anything I’ve said in a significant way.
23 May 2013 at 18:38 #10578The Chameleon Circuit is responsible for the Tardis’ ability (or other peoples Tardis’ ability) to disguise itself to blend in with the environment.
The Chameleon Arch was a macguffin introduced in Paul Cornell’s episode ‘Human Nature’ and ‘Family of Blood’, to tell a vary poignant story. This was episode 8 and 9 of the third season of the new series under David Tenant.
This Chameleon Arch was later used (possibly its use for this purpose was planned, or possibly once established it was a handy plot device to solve that particular problem) to bring back the Master in the third new season episode ‘Utopia’ – after it had previously been established that the Doctor was the last time lord and ‘he could tell.’ Given that ‘Utopia’ is the eleventh episode of this season, almost certainly they had it in mind as their multi-purpose mcguffin.
Interestingly, as a plot device, the ‘Chameleon Arch’ (not its name then) was used as a Plot McGuffin to turn the Doctor Human in the 1995 Paul Cornell ‘Doctor Who’ novel, “Human Nature” which was adapted and incorporated into the series. So as a plot device, it was semi canonical in 1995, and officially canonical in 2007.
But here’s the point with McGuffins, once they’re introduced, you can pick them up and play with them all sorts of ways. It’s ironic and kind of fun, but continuity in Doctor Who is retroactive. Stuff that is added in later series doesn’t become valid only after that point, but essentially applies to the whole of the series. Take ‘regeneration’ – originally, not even in there at all. Introduced but not named for Hartnell and Troughton, since then a major plot point.
So I’m pretty sure that it didn’t occur to Cornell in 1995 to use it to reconcile the stupid reference in the McGann movie (not possible, the movie came out in 1996), or the Cushing Doctor. It was just a fun bit of business to tell the story. I’m also pretty sure that the producers and writers in 2007 didn’t contemplate the ‘Chameleon Arch’ being used for any other purpose. But once they’d brought it out, it becomes a part of the canon, and hypothetically available to be used in future stories, if needed.
Well, all I’m doing is using an established plot device retroactively, to explain the ‘Human’ attributes primarily of the Cushing Doctor, but also of the McGann Doctor. I’m spackling up a few disconnects and holes is all. perfectly legitimate.
Personally, I like to nose about in all the tiny forgotten corners of Doctor Whovia.
23 May 2013 at 18:08 #10573But this is my point. The big problem with the Cushing Doctor has always been the fact that he was apparently human. The invention of the Chameleon Arch as a plot device allows us to reconcile the Cushing Doctor with the rest of the series, and in a way that is aesthetically satisfying. This is the fun idea that engages me.
Sadly, a reply that ‘well, the Cushing Doctor sucks and I hate him’ while a perfectly valid statement of an emotional framework… doesn’t really engage me or add or subtract from the idea. I go “Uhmmm yeah… whatever.” I can discuss clinically the merits and handicaps of the Cushing Doctor. But really, I just don’t have any useful social skills in this context.
-
AuthorPosts
