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29 June 2013 at 17:18 #12995
@phaseshift and @jimthefish and @jamesunderscore
Great posts. Thank you.
Its such an interesting time the period of the Seventh Doctor – curiously, many people blame McCoy for the cancellation when he was not the real reason at all. Not in my view anyway.
Grade had no interest in the programme and, for the first time really, the BBC was starting to face serious competition in terms of serials and drama from ITV and, perhaps more importantly, American television drama was getting a real roll on.
The fundamental problem for Doctor Who was that no one wanted to produce it, to take responsibility for it, to shake it back to life. Every one seemed to think it was the kiss of death, because of the stain that JNT had brought to the role.
I once heard that Verity Lambert had approached Grade after the cancellation and offered to do two seasons if he would sign off on an appropriate budget – but he was uninterested. I would love to know if that was true.
I am not sure, though, that it was because of the McCoy seasons that the programme was ultimately considered redeemable. Cycles turn in television as they do elsewhere. By 2005, the cycle had moved back to a place where a prime time Science-fiction serial was possible again. And we probably have Buffy to thank for that.
What Doctor Who needed to get a 27th season it finally got when RTD signed up – a champion. Someone who believed in the programme and was determined to make it work.
JNT was not a champion for the programme: he was a champion for his own ambition, lusts and intentions. He fundamentally misunderstood what made Doctor Who appealing to the general public.
And you are right @whisht – that is a great piece. McCoy is open and optimistic – and he refuses to bear the burden of some one else’s crime. Quite right too.
23 June 2013 at 23:13 #12859I prefer to think that the Zygons are copying the Doctor but getting it wrong…
Or that it is a trick…
Your 1 does not enlighten me; your 2 does not explain why Tennant is wearing Eccelston’s outfit; your 3 makes me physically ill….
Sorry!
23 June 2013 at 23:06 #12858@chickenkelly
McLeela and I were convinced Weng-Chiang was the Master by the end of this episode.
After Deadly Assassin which Robert Holmes also wrote…
23 June 2013 at 22:01 #12852Not excited – truly!
But both are not as young as when they first wore those costumes…so it may or may not be something…
23 June 2013 at 21:46 #12849have you seen the cover of this month’s Doctor Who Monthly???
Tennant is wearing a costume which throws every theory into doubt…possibly…
23 June 2013 at 18:36 #12842Thanks again for time codes – we found Tennant. We had thought that was Rory!
And we found the possible McGann – we had thought that was the GI…
Cheers
23 June 2013 at 18:10 #12841WENG: Chang, I have given you mental powers undreamt of in this century. You are thousands of years ahead of your time. What can you fear from these primitives?
CHANG: True, Lord, I read their minds with ease, but tonight there was a stranger, a man whose thoughts were hidden. A man different from all others.
WENG: Describe him.
CHANG: He is a doctor. Tall with wide pale eyes and hair that curls like the ram. He ask many questions.
WENG: A time agent would not ask questions. A time agent would know.This is Holmes at his very best. Episode one sets the scene, establishes the mystery; Episode two runs with the mystery, solidifies the characters and ups the stakes.
The balance between comic delight and genuine tension is almost impossibly perfect in this episode.
Litefoot and Jago emerge from this episode perfectly formed; what they both do here makes even more clear the work they did in episode 1. I can remember wishing that they both would travel with the Doctor and Leela : the prospect of that dynamic, so carefully set up here, was almost irresistible. Still is.
The trio of Leela, Litefoot and Jago is clearly the progenitor of the Paternoster Gang which is one of the reasons I like them so very much. In a number of ways – tonally, thematically and narratively – Crimson Hide strikes me as a kind of sequel to Talons of Weng-Chiang. But I join with the others who would like to see Jago and Litefoot working with the Paternoster Gang: that could be a fabulous Doctor-light episode.
I was excited by the concept of “Time Agents” as introduced here – the small tantalising discussions promised a lot. It took til The Empty Child for that promise to be fulfilled – but it was worth the wait.
And I am with @scaryb – the cliff-hanger with Mr Sin’s surprise reveal as an autonomous murderous thing is still chilling.
I spent the week wondering what Leela would do…
23 June 2013 at 13:24 #12812Wise words…
The assassination attempts are pretty specific. The one at Lake Silencio ‘kills’ the Doctor, then shoots him again in the middle of his regeneration – preventing it from completing. The poison used in Let’s Kill Hitler will specifically prevent a regeneration. In both cases the plots are rather convoluted – there must be other ways to kill Time Lords.
But if the people planning this fear a regeneration more than they fear the Doctor escaping, then you can see that both methods are chosen because they’ll specifically prevent a regeneration.
To kill a Time Lord you must stop him/her regenerating, otherwise it is just the incarnation that dies. So every attempt to kill a Time Lord must, necessarily, involve stopping a regeneration or the Time Lord is not killed.
That is my starting point.
I just do not see that anything Kovarian/Silence et al did or said indicated that they were trying to prevent the arrival of a future evil incarnation of the Doctor. They just wanted to kill him – to stop the endless bitter war (whatever that was). So it seemed they were after him for things that he had done , not things that he might do.
I quite see that it could well be as you put it, and, indeed, I rather like your way of looking at it, I just can’t see any evidence that your way is the way. But I may well be missing something.
Thanks for the timecodes – we will look! 🙂
If you assume the Valeyard was a Cho-Je like projection, then he could look like the 13th incarnation or, perhaps, depending on which incarnation you are dealing with interacting with him, his appearance could be different – that is, he looks unformed to Tom Baker because there is not much of him accumulated from the first three Doctors, but if Davison had seen him he would have looked different and when Colin Baker sees him he looks different again – so that when Smith sees him he will look different again.
I’ll come back to you about River and the rest…
Cheers22 June 2013 at 17:32 #12770I think @bluesqueakpip has the view that the Silence/Kovarian forces wanted to kill the Eleventh Doctor to prevent him from regenerating into a future Doctor.
It just seemed to me they wanted to kill him – for what he was and had been, not particularly for what he might become.
To kill the Doctor necessarily means preventing him from regeneration. Well, in my view anyway.
The nuance is about intent/motivation. Revenge or Pre-emption?
Having the intent to kill based on how you are is different from an intent to kill based on who you might be – and I think that is the point we are discussing.
But I may have mis-read @bluesqueakpip‘s views and I may have entirely missed a nuance in AG Season 6.
22 June 2013 at 13:40 #12764I keep forgetting to mention this from Asylum of the Daleks:
First: there were the Daleks. And then there was a man who fought them. And then, in time, he died. There are a few, of course, who believe this man somehow survived, and that one day he will return. For both our sakes, dearest Hannah, we hope these stories are true.
What has always interested me about that is the notion that the Daleks came first.
They came before the Time Lords?22 June 2013 at 13:36 #12763@bluesqueakpip
Apologies – yesterday was a not-good day. Happily though, today is Talons Part 2 day!The novelisation describes him as the penultimate reincarnation, the one between regenerations twelve and thirteen.
Possibly it does. But I only ever take the televised episodes as having anything to say on any given topic. (Sorry!) The Valeyard was not an incarnation as Ultimate Foe was televised – he was some mid-regeneration projection/amalgamation.
I never liked the idea of the Valeyard much, but it was my wife, McLeela, who thought that perhaps the Valeyard was the Doctor’s way of avoiding the fate of Time Lords who regenerated more than they ought. Because we came across a number of Time Lords who were evil or amoral, her theory was that every Time Lord would eventually become that sort of Time Lord. Her idea was that a Time Lord started with one nature and over the course of the regeneration cycle would largely adhere to that nature but that one regeneration, perhaps the 12th, would be the opposite of that nature. I think the way Borusa changed natures so completely was the keystone of her theory. We always liked it because it meant a lot of things: there might be a good Master one day and, of course, the “nature” did not have to be confined to moral code, it could encompass gender. Anyway, to avoid that reversal, the Doctor created the Valeyard so that there would be one place for all of his bad possibilities and he would never regenerate into a true villain. Made sense to me – still does.
The AG Moffat-helmed series has consistently had a succession of people absolutely terrified of the Doctor.
Indeed. But – evil people or misguided or ignorant people will always resent the person who levels the playing field, opposes injustice or unfairness or stops evil or tyrannical regimes and prevents slaughter of innocents. And I don’t think it was ever suggested that a good race or planet or civilisation ever was distrustful of the Doctor – was it?
So before the Time War, the Valeyard is a figure like the Watcher. After the Time War?
Why would the resolution of the Time War affect the nature of the Valeyard? Sealing the Time War would, surely, be exactly what the Valeyard would do?
Smith’s Doctor is dangerous; Smith’s Doctor is scary, Smith’s Doctor is a bloomin’ psychopath. But he’s not half as genocidal as Ten was.
I don’t see how Smith is any more or less scary or dangerous than either Tennant or Eccelston. The emphasis in the writing is different, sure, but to me both 9 and 10 have a harmony with the post-Time War aspects of Smith.
What do both Madame Kovarian and the Silence try to do? They try to kill the Eleventh Doctor. Kill him in a way that will stop him regenerating.
Do they? When do they reveal that?
They’re not fighting a war against the Doctor’s present. They’re fighting a war against the Doctor’s future.
Really? Kovarian’s hatred seems clearly rooted in past deeds of the Doctor:
It seemed to me that they were disgruntled by the Doctor’s interventions in their plans and wanted to train up a psychopath to kill him – it was a convoluted ( frankly ridiculous ) plot but it is what it is:
Doctor: Why even do it? Even if you could get your hands on a brand new Time Lord, what for?
Vastra: A weapon.
Doctor: Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?
Vastra: Well…they have seen you…
Doctor: Me?And
River: You make them so afraid. When you began, all those years ago, sailing off to see the Universe, did you ever think you’d become this? The man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name? Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what MIT that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma forests, the word “Doctor” means “mighty warrior”. How far you have come. And now they’ve taken a child, the child of your best friends. And they are going to turn her into a weapon just to bring you down. And all this, my love, in fear of you.
None of that seems to me to support the notion that the Silence were trying to stop Smith regenerating. They just want to kill the Doctor. I can’t see anything that suggests they are trying to avoid his future.
What do you mean by ‘inside the track of tears’? Clara enters that track – and she certainly sees Tennant and McGann. And McCoy and Pertwee and Troughton.
Does she? I will go and look again, but neither myself nor my eagle-eyed nephews saw either McGann or Tennant either inside the “track of tears” or on an occasion when Clara was “saving” a Doctor. I don’t think it particularly means anything re Tennant – but it might mean something re McGann. If you can be bothered to give me the time codes of when they are sighted, that would be greatly appreciated. J
So the tomb must be the tomb of a later Doctor or Smith later in his time…Only if we presume that the Doctor never repairs that crack in the window of the TARDIS. The one he got when he forced the TARDIS to fall onto Trenzalore. The one he’s only just created, in fact…Did she return to Trenzalore before finally shutting down? In the forlorn hope that maybe, just maybe, the Doctor and Clara had managed to escape the time-track?
That’s an excellent point and one I had not considered. Yes, that is quite possible and suits Moffat’s pre-occupation with paradoxes and aborted timelines.
I took the GI’s explanation of ‘minor skirmish’ to mean ‘the Doctor shouldn’t have died’.
Fair enough. It seemed to me to indicate surprise that the Doctor had been defeated or died there. And that led me to think about what that might mean. Such off-hand remarks often lead somewhere unexpected.
It can be argued that River alone is healed by his regeneration energy because she alone is the one person in the entire history of Doctor Who that he’s loved enough to marry.
I have to say he does not look to me like he is much interested in marrying her, but he does so to gain an advantage over her, so she will accede to his wishes. I still don’t detect any real sign of “true love” between the Doctor and River. She loves him passionately, sure, but he is more equivocal – at least until The Name of The Doctor when he talks about the pain her death has caused him. Talking about being in love and showing it are quite different – and there has been a lot of talk it seems to me. (Sorry!)
But in that case, why on earth is River so angry?…What does it mean to her that he’s just wasted his regeneration energy on a broken wrist?
Does it have to mean anything? Mind you, in a lot of ways it is utterly ridiculous given that River used all of her regeneration energy on him. (Which, of course, may, in itself, be the end of the difficulties posed by the 12 regeneration rule.)Yes, River knows what will happen. She knows, for example, that Clara isn’t dead. She quite possibly knows that the Eleventh Doctor is going to regenerate.
I don’t think River knew what was going to happen at Trenzalore. She knew Clara was alive because she was linked to her. She knows Smith will regenerate in her timeline because she has interacted with different AG Doctors – but that timeline might become aborted from the Doctor’s point of view.
Suppose the story he wants to tell is how the Doctor got round the 12 regeneration rule? Suppose the story he wants to tell is how the Doctor didn’t become the Valeyard?
I am with @phaseshift. I don’t think Moffat will tell a story about those things, but he might tell his story and deal with them incidentally. But, equally, it is very strange that the first mention of the Valeyard occurs in The Name of The Doctor.
Whatever – I have no doubt that the result here will be a regeneration where subsequently the Doctor is untrammelled by past canon – whether that is specifically referenced or not. Whatever is going to happen is about the future.
The only question is how we get to the future.
20 June 2013 at 22:24 #12684I am fortunate that there is a lovely Nurse here (Jennifer) and she lets me split up my hour across the day – and she lets me stay logged on for long periods so that my visitors can have a peek for me.
Debating these topics is the highlight of my day – so thanks!
And you made me laugh out loud with your wallpaper comments…
🙂
20 June 2013 at 19:05 #12674Smith can get off at any time (just as Clara can/ did) – he hasn’t met 10 until he goes into the scar and travels along it to visit 10.
I wonder…
The versions of Clara we saw in Asylum and Snowmen were not “whole” in the sense that her memories of her experiences since meeting the Doctor and how she came to be where she was were gone.
So, why would we think the Doctor could easily leave the track of tears?
Sorry – have too much idle time on my hands…
🙂
20 June 2013 at 17:47 #12673I have to say I rather suspect that your wild theory will not be too far from the actual mark.
It won’t happen like that I suspect – but I will not be surprised at all if there is an aborted timeline and a fusion of versions of the Doctor to create a new whole with a new future.
20 June 2013 at 16:47 #12672Broadchurch is just divine. I have just finished it myself.
Therapy you know….very recuperative.
Cheers
20 June 2013 at 16:41 #12671(Thanks for this – its fun!)
If Hurt isn’t a ‘hidden’ past Doctor, how can he be the Thirteenth? Firstly, we’ve not yet had Twelve – so it’s going to confuse the heck out of the audience. We’re trying to avert the Thirteenth incarnation, but we’re not at the thirteenth incarnation, the thirteenth incarnation won’t be a problem until the next Doctor regenerates – unless Twelve has a major part in the 50th Anniversary Special.
Plus, we may well have already seen Thirteen’s appearance, and John Hurt isn’t Michael Jayston. Michael Jayston, in fact, was probably available.
I don’t follow. If the audience can understand an unexpected former Doctor, why could they not understand an unexpected future Doctor?
Why are we “trying to avert the Thirteenth incarnation”? Do you seriously think Moffat cares about the 12 regeneration rule? I don’t.
The Valeyard is not the Twelfth or Thirteenth Doctor – he is something in between. In Ultimate Foe, the Master said:
The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation. And I may say, you do not improve with age….the distillation of all that’s evil in you, untainted by virtue, a composite of your every dark thought
So, the Valeyard was akin to the Watcher from Logopolis and Cho-Je from Planet of the Spiders – a projection of the Doctor’s darker sides. But, what he was not, was either the 12th or 13th regeneration.
Hurt is there, in the track of tears. He can be either from the Doctor’s past or his future: if he is the Valeyard he can be both. There is no reason why the Valeyard could not change form either.
If he doesn’t deal with it, he’s leaving it as a big problem for the next producer; firstly that the regenerations are known to go up to twelve or thirteen only
I do not think that Moffat considers himself bound by the 12 regeneration rule. If time can be re-written, rules can be broken. We have already seen the Master receive a new cycle of regenerations. All it takes is a good idea.
So in answer to your ‘should he resist the chance’, I’d say ‘No. He shouldn’t’. If he does, he’s leaving the next producer a giant albatross. Whatever ideas that producer may have, first of all they’ll have to clear the decks for the regeneration, secondly they’ll need to tackle the Thirteen problem. Only then will they be able to do the stories they want to do.
Sorry, that is, with respect, nonsense. The actual makers of the programme don’t give a toss about Canon or Continuity. Right now, I can’t think of an instance in AG Doctor Who where the 12 regeneration limit has been embraced. We know about it – but does the ordinary viewer who started with or after Rose? And, in any event, I prefer, and always have, Troughton’s “live forever, barring accidents” approach.
But make Hurt a ‘hidden’ Doctor, the real Ninth – and then you’ve got a story arc about averting the future. Matt Smith’s Doctor (now Twelve) has two choices. Become this terrifying Doctor, the person so terrible that wars have been fought against him – or change his time-stream by refusing to regenerate.
Hold on – Smith’s Doctor is that “terrifying Doctor” – Kovarian and the Silence waged their war against him. The Daleks pursued the Hartnell Doctor in The Chase – that was a war.
We have two big clues from Trenzalore that his decision has already been made. Firstly, the Doctor’s time-track is firmly described as his past and his future. Yet, when we get inside it, the only people we see are his eleven known incarnations, John Hurt’s Doctor, and Clara.
I do not see anything at all which supports the notion that Smith’s Doctor has decided not to regenerate.
Actually, when you get inside the track of tears do you see McGann or Tennant? There is a very brief Eccleston, but I do not remember seeing Tennant.
But the real question here is this – which Doctor’s tomb is this? Because it is not likely to be Smith’s.
The Doctor has died and he is “buried” at Trenzalore. That is the premise of The Name of the Doctor. So the tomb must be the tomb of a later Doctor or Smith later in his time.
Why shouldn’t the tomb be the tomb of the final incarnation? The tomb of the Doctor who just gives up, the one who has had enough? Isn’t that the most likely explanation?
You say “Doctors don’t die from minor skirmishes, they regenerate”, but is that right? River dies for the 10th because she says he would not regenerate if he was in her place. Pertwee may never have regenerated without the help of Cho-Je’s “little push”. Davison is unsure that he will regenerate after the harrowing experience he endured in Caves of Androzani. Other Time Lords have died permanently – see Deadly Assassin. Regeneration may not be a certainty – and especially if the TARDIS is dying.
Oh, and another little clue, this one from Time of Angels. The Doctor uses some of his regeneration energy to heal River’s wrist – and she yells at him for wasting it. But if he’s already decided he’s not going to regenerate – then of course he can use that energy for a minor injury. He’s not going to need it. And of course River yells at him – she knows what it means that he is willing to ‘waste’ it.That’s Angels Take Manhattan, but I don’t think that shows that the Doctor has decided not to regenerate. It just shows he cares for River. Surely?
And, speaking of River, when she meets Tennant she makes it clear she has seen more than one other regeneration and the implication is that they are AG Doctors – so, Doctors beyond Smith.
Sorry – but I don’t see the 12 regeneration rule as being any impediment to Moffat and whatever story he wants to tell. 🙂
Agree, agree, agree. Are we twins?
20 June 2013 at 09:29 #12660The impression that I received when Clara read the book and said “that’s who” was that the experience got erased due to temporal paradox.
Sorry @FishComBomBulated – do you mean it was erased as she read it? or erased when the Doctor reset things at the end of Journey?
What does she remember in the finale that causes the Doctor some fear?
I thought as they approached the dying TARDIS tomb some leaking energy revived her memories or re-instated them, but only partially. It did not seem to me that all of her memories were restored. Do you think they were?
I am probably wrong and in the minority, but I am not at all sure that the Anniversary Special will deal with the Time War. It just seems to obvious to me – and too prone to disaster.
20 June 2013 at 09:25 #12659Of course, if the [insert ominous sounding name here] incarnation of the Doctor is number Thirteen, it’s very important. Because if the Eleventh Doctor is really the twelfth body of the Person Generally Called The Doctor, Incarnation Number Thirteen has just become the next Doctor. The one after Matt Smith.
Yes @bluesqueakpip
And it is this, more than perhaps anything else, that inclines me to the view that Hurt is the 13th – the thing that he did in the name of peace and sanity might be his appearance at the Doctor’s trial? It certainly wasn’t in the name of the Doctor…
Having Hurt as the 13th allows Moffat a chance to lay to rest all canon issues with regeneration – the trinity of past, present and future Doctors can combine to forge a new future, or at least establish a new platform for the future.
I just wonder if that is a chance he can resist? Or should?
20 June 2013 at 00:44 #12654@FishComBobBulated
Try here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/governance/regulatory_framework/charter_agreement.html
20 June 2013 at 00:39 #12652the idea of the doctor suppressing his memories is heavily featured in NIS. But once the Doctor is dead? Who could do it then?
I think the question is more why would the Doctor’s memories need to be suppressed when he was dead?
I still think the “that’s who” comment from Clara while she leafed through the History of the Time War refers to River but that all she saw was a photo with the caption “River” – and she was recognising the woman from the shop who gave her the Doctor’s telephone number in Bells.
This ties in with her not knowing that Professor Song was a woman.
20 June 2013 at 00:31 #12650@FishComBomBulated
@scaryb is right.
The BBC is a unique institution. Its funding is completely separate from its editorial charter. They are given the money and can spend it as they choose.
There are “Suits” but not like “Suits” in American networks.
Truly – the American experience is the same experience in the other English channels, but not at the BBC.
The BBC is unique.
Unfortunately, this can mean that meglomaniacs sometimes get control of the product. But that is a different issue from the intervention or grand plan of “Suits”.
Cheers
20 June 2013 at 00:04 #12644@FishComBombulated
For the Eccleston year, it was always Sauvignon Blanc; Tennant started with that but around School Reunion champagne became the tipple of choice. For Smith, it has been Double G&T since Beast Below, with Champagne re-emerging for and after Cold War.
19 June 2013 at 23:30 #12640It was a minor skirmish, by the Doctor’s blood-soaked standards. Not exactly the Time War, but enough to finish him. In the end, it was too much for the old man.
It is ambiguous – as ever with Moffat.
And, honestly, given that the location of his tomb was meant to be a secret to the Universe, isn’t it unlikely that he died on Trenzalore after a skirmish? More likely that he gets finished off, can’t regenerate because his cycle is over, and so gets in the TARDIS to find a place to die in the shadows.
No?
19 June 2013 at 22:57 #12633Hmmm…
There aren’t any other Time Lord tombs are there? There is the Tomb of Rassilon and the Matrix – but that’s it (as far as we know anyway – I think).
The scar, surely, only occurs after the Doctor has died?
I assumed, probably wrongly, that the Doctor, mortally wounded, fled to Trenzalore to die in the TARDIS, knowing it would become his tomb. When he died, the time tunnel creates itself because there is no Matrix now into which his memories can be uploaded. The TARDIS protects it for a long time, but eventually the TARDIS itself dies and there we are.
I can’t see how Smith could know about the tomb before the events in Name of the Doctor. I don’t see how it could be something he was hiding from the Cybercontroller.
The scar is sealed unless you know the Doctor’s real name – so it is pretty safe. Except for River…
19 June 2013 at 22:45 #12629Really?
It just seemed to me that the Doctor was taking control of his mind – he didn’t want the Cybercontroller anywhere in his mind except where he was prepared to allow him.
I never thought it was especially about Clara.
Mainly, I suppose, because the Doctor was so unsure what or who she was.
19 June 2013 at 22:28 #12627I loathe Ian Levine. He single-handedly gives Doctor Who fans a bad name.
His association with JNT was repellent, in every sense, and contributed to the damage caused to the programme.
The very best thing about the return of these episodes (if true) is that he has had to eat humble pie in public.
19 June 2013 at 22:12 #12624The reason I wanted to differentiate between memories and ‘physical’ tunnels and physical echoes, is that its easy to conflate the block the Cybercontroller found in Smith’s memories (Smith knows of HurtDoc but blocks off that memory through disgust/disappointment), with the ‘physicality’ of HurtDoc simply being in the “scar” (for whatever reason).
If he was hidden in the scar, it was more like he was hidden in a maze, rather than blocked off in a mind.
@whisht @scaryb
The block the Cybercontroller encountered was placed there by the Doctor to stop the Cybercontroller from getting too far into the Doctor’s mind.
The Cybercontroller had already discovered the existence of Clara and then the Doctor erected the mindblock, only allowing the Cybercontroller to the memories he chose.
Isn’t that correct?
Do you think the block in Nightmare in Silver was about Hurt?19 June 2013 at 22:05 #12623Tennant being there is no issue in this timey-wimey world.
It was never a consideration in any of Three, Five or Two Doctors.
I have always regarded it as an anomaly: the event happens to the latest Doctor and, as it does, and the earlier Doctors cross their timelines, time is rewritten. And when they go back, the earlier Doctors have their memories erased.
Mind you, in those days, each encounter involved the Time Lords.
These days, I think we will just have to assume that whatever happens with Tennant now (if he is appearing as the Tenth Doctor and not the alternative Universe Mr Rose) will result in an aborted timeline – the real timeline will continue with Smith’s Dr.
I think….
🙂
19 June 2013 at 21:56 #12619@scaryb Doctor 2.5? You mean between Troughton regenerating and Pertwee landing on Earth?
19 June 2013 at 21:14 #12611For heaven’s sake! Never be afraid to disagree with me!
This is what the Doctor says:
Time travel is damage. It’s like a tear in the fabric of reality. That is the scar tissue of my journey through the universe. My path through time and space from Gallifrey to Trenzalore *…My own personal time tunnel. All the days…even the ones I haven’t lived yet…which is why I shouldn’t be here. The paradoxes. It’s very bad.
Where I have marked *, there are memories – or at least snatches of conversations from various points in the Doctor’s life.
Later he describes his own time tunnel as his timeline.
I just can’t see how his timeline does not contain memories – whether they are Smith’s memories, the final Doctor’s memories or the actual actions of each incarnation – those things are all the same, really, in the timeline. Aren’t they? I agree they are not subjective memories – they are memories of what actually happened; or, put the other way, they are the actual events coming across as echoes, ghosts or memories. But either way, they represent the totality of all of the good and bad days the Doctor has lived.
I don’t think it changes my musings above though
Could another regeneration of the Doctor have condemned him to the scar to live forever – regretting his actions as he looks across the desolation?
They could do this by travelling in the Tardis to the scar and making him walk in, then sealing the scar using the Doctors birthname.
This is inspired. Truly inspired.
I hope you are right about this actually – I was thrilled just reading it – seeing it turn out that way would be utterly fabulous.
And entirely possible.
And if you are right, then Hurt is definitely either old 8 or the real 9 as @phaseshift and @jimthefish have speculated.19 June 2013 at 19:59 #12607@coffeemonster No theory is too bonkers for words. Not here anyway!
19 June 2013 at 19:58 #12606@phaseshift
Viewing his physical existence and sharing his memories are very different things, and memories would have discounted the idea to a certain extent.
I guess this the issue between us. I can’t see how the “track of tears” cannot contain memories and my view is re-inforced by the way various snatches of speech from the past – which can only be memories, can’t they? – which are heard by the Doctor and Clara from inside the “track of tears”.
No – what I’m suggesting is that if you take the Doctors timeline, his actual physical existence and split it up into incarnations, periods composed of the years of his life, then some of those years took place in the Timewar. Everything about that period is timelocked, according to Journeys end. Presumably even those years of the Doctors life that existed in it.
But, if that is right, and clearly it could be, probably is, how does it make Hurt the one who sealed the Time War? All of his actions would be in the seal, but he is in the “track of tears”, so why wouldn’t Clara have encountered him? And if he is there, doing something he shouldn’t (from the Doctor’s point of view), why wouldn’t the Impossible Girl stop him from sealing the Time War?
(I have to say I thought that might be what happened as the episode played out – that she would stop the Doctor from sealing the Time War, thereby saving him – but it would turn out to be a save that was crucially wrong, unleashing the Time Lords and everything else. When it didn’t happen, I assumed that that was a moment where the GI did not seek to intervene, because it suited the GI for the Time War to be sealed)
And, more importantly, if sealing the Time War was an act the Doctor disapproves of in such a fundamental way as to disown his own self because of it, why has he not taken a single step to unseal it?
The Time War is An event that has been largely ignored in SMs run until the book turned up in JttCotT.
Yes, true enough. But then, just before the “track of tears” was introduced, something else was mentioned in passing that Moffat has not given any focus to either: The Valeyard.
I go back to my starting point: it just seems to me we are meant to think Hurt is the version of the Doctor involved in sealing the Time War. But I think that is too obvious for Moffat.
I guess I am just expecting it to be more timey-wimey, paradoxical and alternate time-line in nature: because that sort of stuff is Moffat’s trade-mark.
On the other hand, I am also expecting it to make sense – and maybe it just won’t.
On the other other hand, nothing they do will ever live up to every viewer’s individual expectations about the Time War, unless they dedicate an entire season to exploring the issues and the consequences. And it seems unlikely they would do that with a new Doctor – if Smith had stayed a further year, I could see that a full series devoted to the Time War could be something.19 June 2013 at 16:11 #12591Welcome @Coffemonster
Your notion about the Hurt Doctor being created from the holes left by the Doctor is interesting – and, indeed, one I considered myself, given the specific mention in Nightmare in Silver.
But, I think the problem is that Hurt is found in the Doctor’s “track of tears” – if he was created by someone else using the holes vacated by the Doctor, it did not seem to me that he would be part of the real Doctor’s timeline.
What do you think?
I do not think that the Doctor-erased-too-much theory could work though – because all the Doctor is doing is wiping out knowledge about him and his journey – and I don’t see how covering one’s tracks would or could create the Silence.
But you may well be right…
🙂
19 June 2013 at 16:04 #12589@pufferfish I have been meaning to ask. Where did you see Jonjo O’Neill’s name on the cast list for the 50th?
He is an interesting actor – but not, I think, a Doctor…
19 June 2013 at 15:48 #12587@Shazzbot The BBC is quite a different beast from any other broadcaster or production house in the world, mainly because of the license fee. More than anything else, Doctor Who has to work in the UK otherwise the BBC can’t justify using the licence fee on it – this is what truly killed the BG version.
But…Moffat has been unashamedly chasing the USA market in recent years – and that, I think, may be more of an issue about the next incarnation.
Doctor Who both has rules and no rules. But variety…that is the one imperative. At least in my view.
I think a “sort-of-the-same” Doctor will be a fundamental error now – which may partly be why Moffat has thrown Hurt into the mix. He can use Hurt to establish the notion of an entirely different Doctor for AG viewers.
I guess we will see.
🙂
19 June 2013 at 15:33 #1258419 June 2013 at 15:26 #12581@Shazzbot Okay….can we stop with the Jeff now please…
I don’t think the BBC suits have that much power.
I don’t have the confidence you do in Moffat, but I think the show will suffer dramatically unless there is a completely new Doctor.
19 June 2013 at 15:21 #12579Hello all – but especially @phaseshift.
I have just realised that yesterday (the 18th) was the 40th Anniversary of the death of the wonderful Roger Delgado.
Did we mention that here anywhere and I just missed it?
Such a great performance.
One of my favourite moments occurred in Sea Devils:
Trenchard: What are you watching?
Master: It seems to be a rather interesting extra-terrestial form of life.
Tranchard: Only puppets, you know. For children.
Master: Oh…Vale Roger Delgado!
19 June 2013 at 15:00 #12574Well, the Doctor would have to take him/her with his/her travels. And Clara would have someone to be governness to.
And I think I would probably vomit…
19 June 2013 at 14:53 #12572Well, I think either we encounter Tennant and Rose in their travels prior to Doomsday or it is the alternate world Tennant and Rose. If the latter, I would not be surprised, at all, if Rose is killed off.
19 June 2013 at 14:48 #12570Oh, I don’t know.
A small story about who he is does not discount big set-pieces where the Doctor recounts a cinematic adventure…
19 June 2013 at 14:45 #12569@Shazzbot and @tennantmarsters2013
You fill me with terror.
Please, by the great TARDIS in the sky, can we be done with the Ponds and their impossible family.
Sorry!
P.S. @Shazzbot Maybe that errant J is my subconscious…Jeff rather than Geoff…. 🙂
19 June 2013 at 14:41 #12566@Shazzbot At the risk of incurring the wrath of everyone here, one of the disappointments for me about Smith’s tenure has been that his characterization did contain such an emphasis on “fast-talking, quirkily strange, sudden great yelps of recognition / understanding” – all clear aspects of Tennant’s 10th.
As I have said, I much much prefer Smith post Angels Take Manhattan – I think with Clara he has found a way to ground his characterization, to truly make the Eleventh different from his predecessor.
The differences between incarnations should be profound – as they always were. Well, that’s how I would prefer it (not that it is up to me!).
The shock of the new Doctor should be something that both scares and excites – as it has so many times before.
Just having a new actor to play the same sort of Doctor Smith has been playing would, in my view, be a terrible mistake.
19 June 2013 at 14:24 #12561@phaseshift
I’m not sure what memories have to do with this really, unless you spotted some reference to it in “Name of the Doctor”.
I didn’t mean there was any specific reference to memories, because, like you, I don’t think there were in Name of the Doctor. My thinking was that if the “tracks of tears” showed the “ghosts” of the Eleventh (as he describes the earlier Doctors) it was effectively showing his memories and his future. So, I wondered why Clara did not come across Hurt.
Sure, the Doctor will remember everything about it, but Clara jumps into his personal twisty “time tunnel” From Gallifrey to Trenzalore. She’d have access to most, but the parts of his life that exist in the Time War? I think his existence and actions in it would be subject to the Time Lock. I don’t think there is any reference to her having his memories.
But if that is the case, how then could Hurt be the Doctor involved in the Time War? I thought your earlier argument was:
whatever aspects of the Doctors Timeline that fought in the war are still there.
I am not arguing – just trying to understand. I think we should be able to work out the most likely explanation for Hurt and I am genuinely interested on what everyone here thinks, given how much of the debate I have missed.
If Clara can see him now, are you saying that is because the Doctor is there with her and opening up access to his suppressed memory? That makes sense I think.
I think if anyone wants to look for holes, you can argue that this is left ambiguous, but in conjunction with Clara’s “So that’s who” as she reads the Time War book, she learns the name from the book. The Doctor warns her not to go looking for his name. I think NotD gives us the reason for this.I am not looking for holes. I just think it is ambiguous.
Certainly, my instant reaction was that she had learnt his name by reading the book. But, whatever else you might say about the History it was not tiny, especially not in comparison to Clara, and she did say:
You have a name. I have seen it. In one corner of that tiny…If she read it in the History, why didn’t she just say she saw it in the book? It does seem like she is referring to something else. Why would she refer to the History as tiny?
And I get that I am thick, but what is it about Name of the Doctor that gives the reason for Clara not to go looking for his name? Why is it okay for River to know it but no one else?
The person who wears this name isn’t “The Doctor” to his mind.
Yes, which was made me think that Hurt was Doctor Zero and we were heading for a complete re-set.
But it still seems to me to work best of all if Smith entering the “track of tear” exposes him to his future and he knows what Hurt has done in his future. And in the 50th he changes it, no matter at what cost to himself. This makes the 50th all about the future of the Doctor and it lets Moffat use timey-wimey to provide a solution – a paradox and a change of timeline: all signature Moffat devices.
There is a part of me which hopes, sincerely, that you and @jimthefish are correct and that Hurt is either the aged 8th or the real 9th – but I am just not sure that it fits properly with what we have been told. Not that that would be a barrier, of course. And nor am I sure that Moffat will be that obvious.
I hope the 50th is a “small” story about the nature of the Doctor, why he travels and interferes, what he stands for. Who he is.
Also, another argument in favour of the Hurt Doctor being a future Doctor – past, present and future all together.
Brilliant! And given all those religious readings recently…
19 June 2013 at 14:17 #12558@bluesqueakpip and @phaseshift
Apologies for the wrong posting earlier. I confess to not looking at what thread I was on.
My bad!
19 June 2013 at 14:10 #12554@Shazzbot Yes, that’s the thing. I have seen Andrew Scott on stage and he can be deliciously wicked and very funny, as well as brooding, intense and serious. He is an “actor’s actor”.
But I don’t think the next Doctor will be especially mad-cap. I think they will find a different way to express the eccentricity – otherwise the actor will suffer.
Just as, in BG Doctor Who, each of the first five Doctors found their own way, so, too, must the 12th Doctor find his own way. And to be fair to Smith and the programme, it should not be similar to Smith.
A wise-cracking, petulant, scholarly pedant who collects odd things, carries a telescope and a magnifying glass – something quirky and fresh, male or female. The part can go anywhere – and hopefully it will.
19 June 2013 at 11:36 #12519@chickenkelly
Julian Rhind-Tutt might be okay. I rather suspected they would go for a blonde actually.
He seems a good actor – and as long as the writing and the new characterization works, I think he might pull it off.
Certainly he would be a better choice, in my humble opinion, than either Mangan or Gorman, both of whom have limited ranges and whose Doctor I am quite sure we can all see clearly in our heads now.
They can risk a virtual unknown if the virtual unknown can act and has good chemistry with Clara.
But, really, each AG Doctor has hardly been a virtual unknown…which is why the longer the silence continues, Rory Kinnear seems more likely.
I confess to still hoping for Andrew Scott… or Nicola Walker!
🙂
19 June 2013 at 11:25 #12518I think it’s possible that Hurt is an excised Doctor and that Eleven merely calls himself that — but is in fact Twelve (with Eccleston and Tennant also having to shift up a number.)..Of course, Hurt could just be an aged and war-torn version of McGann’s Doc..
Just asking – has Smith actually ever referred to himself as the Eleventh? I am probably wrong, but I did think that it was only others who did that?But agree that Hurt could be an aged 8th or the real 9th – I just wonder if that is in the “too obvious” category for Moffat?
That Hurt’s Doctor is somehow in some personal ‘time lock’ could explain Clara’s lack of knowledge. He’s a suppressed memory, if you like and Clara only has access to the conscious parts of the Doctor. Hurt’s Doc is the Doctor’s id in Freudian terms?
I guess the reason I try to suppress the Id idea is that (a) we have sort of been there, done that with the Valeyard and (b) it makes me think of that episode of Lost in Space where Will’s “Id” possessed Doctor Smith (Series 3 – The Space Creature (I think))
But, yes, clearly it is possible that Hurt is the Doctor’s Id (and I guess that brings the list of possible Hurt options to 6?).
But even a suppressed memory would surely be in the deceased Doctor’s track of tears? Once he is dead, what suppresses the memory? Clara has not walked into Smith’s memory, she has walked into the memories of the last incarnation in this timeline. Hence the remark about lives not yet lived. No?
I agree with Doctor Hurt being between 8 and 9. My reasoning is:
The Book of the Time War presents the Doctors name. Maybe the reason it does that is to separate the identity of the incarnation who didn’t do things “in the name of the Doctor”. Clara thinks she’s seen eleven incarnations in his Time Line, but not this one. But from references in Stolen Earth/Journey’s End when they discuss the Time War, everything about the Time War was “Time Locked”. Surely that means the whole run, hence how Caan was able to rescue Davros and his ship from its fate. Therefore whatever aspects of the Doctors Timeline that fought in the war are still there.
I guess the thing about the sealing of the Time War is that anything goes – the device can be utilised to suit whatever narrative need arises. Yes, some of the Doctor’s history/actions must be trapped there – but not the memories. Lots of people remember the Time War even though its sealed.
Does the History of the Time War identify the Doctor’s name? Are we sure about that? Clara said he was mentioned in it but not that he wrote it or that his real name was mentioned in it. She could have learnt the Doctor’s real name from something else – something tiny is the only real clue- the crib, anything really. It is not stated she read it in the book is it? I got the impression that we were to believe River wrote the History – Clara’s statement she always thought Professor Song was a man?
So perhaps this intervention and counter-intervention by the GI and Clara somehow altered events to allow some seepage of this personality (maybe by subtlety altering the Time Lock?
Yes, perhaps that is right. Anything is possible with respect to the Time Lock.
I’d like to think the 50th is more likely to be an expansion of “what it is to be the Doctor”. With the announcement for Matt’s end in the Christmas Special, we joked about “Twelfth Night” as a potential title, but that would work if there is some sort of reconciliation for a missing Doctor. Eleven becomes Twelve, and Twelfth Night sees the close of his run.
I have no faith in “announcements”. Moffat may have had his plan for a shock regeneration thwarted by some loose lips at the BBC, but that does not mean that he cannot still have one. He could do something tricksy at the end of the 50th that showed the future…the regeneration…and then in the Christmas Special show how Smith got to that point. Have his cake and eat it too. Or Smith could actually leave in the 50th.I like the idea of Smith’s time starting with Eleventh Hour and finishing with Twelfth Night – there is a poetry to that in story-telling terms which is very attractive.
Equally, of course, for those who are wanting a female Doctor, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is about falling in love with someone whose gender is not what you think it is…
18 June 2013 at 19:55 #12503Jack became the Face of Boe simply by the passage of time. He was unable to die, so lived for centuries – and the ravages of time affected his appearance and physical form. He became the Face of Boe as part of that process and finally gave up life as we saw in Gridlock. Well, that is the conjecture anyway – nothing is stated explicitly in the series.
I think it more likely than not that Tennant will be playing his Doctor and that Clara and Eleven will encounter he and Rose at a point earlier in the Tenth’s timeline than Doomsday. But – who knows?
18 June 2013 at 18:54 #12499But I’m still pretty adamant that Hurt’s costume dates him pretty conclusively somewhere between McGann and Eccleston.
@jimthefish
I have to say that as soon as I saw Hurt, my immediate response was “Okay – you are the real 9th Doctor, the one who sealed the Time War”. Partly, I think, that was because I knew Moffat had wanted Eccleston involved in the Anniversary Special.
Then I shifted, and spent days vacillating between him being the aged Doctor Eight or Doctor Zero.
The Doctor Zero notion appeals, because it might mean that the reason the Doctor originally left Gallifrey is to be revealed.
The aged Doctor 8 also appeals, but that would seem to mean the Time War, because that is the “big thing” between BG and AG Doctor Who. And it seems to me that if some other dastardly deed is now interposed, it will upset the underlying theme of each of the AG Doctors thus far.
Examining the text, then, brings me back to a future Doctor of some kind (although whether it could be a future Doctor affected by the GI is still an open possibility)
But I am interested to know why you think the costume so positively identifies Hurt?Perhaps Eleven did the only thing he could do — which was to write Hurt’s Doctor out of his own timeline. Maybe it’s a similar dilemma to the one in Genesis of the Daleks. If the Doctor undoes the actions of the Hurt Doctor then a lot of incidental ‘good’ will be undone with it.
I would run with this but for the script statements in both Nightmare in Silver and Name of the Doctor. There seem clearly enough to be eleven versions of the Doctor that Smith now is. I can’t see how he could excise part of his own time-line. Even if he could, why would Clara not encounter that version when she is travelling through his “track of tears”?
If Smith or one of the other AG Doctors excised Hurt, there would still be the fact of that happening and the regeneration leading to Hurt, plus the memories of the Doctor are there for Clara to plunder, even if he had been somehow excised.
It is that, more than anything else, which makes me think Hurt is a forward-looking Doctor rather than a backward-looking Doctor.
I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that it is the Hurt Doctor with whom the Silence and Madame Kovarian et al have the grievance with.
Yes, I think that might well be right.
The thing is, though, that the Eleventh did fall at Trenzalore. He was dying and then Clara intervened. Silence commenced falling – but Clara stopped it. The Eleventh stepped into his own time tunnel and has yet to emerge – so, for all relevant purposes, the Eleventh has fallen and we have not seem him rise. Yet.
You might be right about the TARDIS. Nothing magical about my thought. I was just trying to come up with something that Hurt might do that might cause that reaction in Smith and be considered a non-Doctor thing to do. Deliberately killing the TARDIS to create the time tunnel, or even allowing the TARDIS to shut herself down for that purpose, seemed to me to fit the bill.
“The Doctor knowing what his future holds from being in his timestream, uses help from his past (i.e. Ten) to change it. I think it would make Eleven’s regeneration – possibly as you say coalescing with ten into one form – quite an uplifting, positive change, rather than a mournful departure.”
Absolutely. And what a moment that would be: the three versions of the Doctor coalescing into one, thereby eradicating the Valeyard and other canon baggage (such as regeneration limits) and affecting the Doctor fundamentally, setting a new course. Plus, Rose would lose her Doctor again. (Unless Rose is a Zygon trying to trick the Tennant Doctor?)One matter of interest, to me anyway, was the “daisest daisy” line from Pertwee as Smith fell – which easily leads you to thinking about the hermit teacher and K’Anpo Rimpoche – and the idea that more than one form of the one Time Lord can exist simultaneously and then merge as in Planet of the Spiders.
My word, this Anniversary Special could be something…
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