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2 December 2013 at 20:05 #22154
Apologies if someone has posted this already but it’s a rather nice interview with both Neil Gaiman and Terrence Dicks about the upcoming 50th.
I really liked hearing what Dicks had to say in particular as, like many here, I grew up devouring his TARGET novels:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/22/doctor_who_gaiman_dicks/
2 December 2013 at 19:49 #22152Wild Christmas speculation (with a promise I have not seen any of the spoilers that are, perhaps, out there – this is genuine speculation!)
Doubling – are we done with it?
We’ve had many a story involving two time streams and those proved to be narrative foreshadowing (yay bow-tie obsession) culminating in the “Day of the Doctor” and the two time streams of Gallifrey – one in which it falls and one in which it falls no more.
We’ve also had many a story involving Doctor dopplegangers, from “The Almost People” and Eleven/ Ganger Eleven to “Nightmare in Silver” and Eleven/ Cyber-Eleven.
What if we are still in the Doctor’s time-stream and there are two versions of Eleven in there; the Eleven who emerges from the time-line where the Hurt Doctor did commit genocide and the Eleven from the time-stream where he did not?
I can imagine that the Alliance built the Pandorica for Genocidal Eleven and the summary of the Christmas special rather hearkens back to the Alliance.
So, what if the Doctor meets and has to defeat his “dark” self in order to stabilise the time-line change and it is the battle with himself which causes his regeneration?
This would be really neat as it would mean “dark Eleven” could be the Valeyard.
I do hope so, that would be such a nice “bring all the themes on home” narrative bow-tie for Christmas!
Plus, @ardaraith , where are you? You usually want to discuss the Doctor’s crib and babies!
See my posts above 🙂
2 December 2013 at 19:23 #22148@scaryb Lol 🙂 Well you know all about “shipping” now and you have that newly acquired Doctorate of Squeeee thanks to @Shazzbot !
Let us know what you think of the Five-ish Doctors – I think there’s a thread for it somewhere 🙂
2 December 2013 at 19:04 #22146@scaryb You can find the “FishDr” which is actually the “Five(ish) Doctors Reboot” on the Doctor Who BBC website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01m3kfy
It’s great! 🙂
2 December 2013 at 14:39 #22132Oh and @wolfweed LOL at the image of Murdoch as Davros in charge of the spoiler machine!
Also @whohar sorry your post about the Silence being behind the Doctor’s memory loss got ignored.
We’ve had the explanation that Eleven’s memory loss is due to PTSD as a result of trying to live with his war crimes in “The Day of the Doctor” but I am very happy to hear The Silence are back because that massive loose end needs some (bow) tying.
I can’t help but recall Kovarian and her alliance with the Silence and wonder again if her reference to a “bitter endless war” was to the Time War.
2 December 2013 at 14:19 #22131So who wants to lay a Who bet (with a fond toast to @htpbdet who enjoyed betting on the upcoming plots of Who!) that there will be a baby in a crib (the Doctor’s old Time Lord crib to be precise) for Christmas?
This also fits in with the Osiris myth going on under the surface, as Horus was conceived by Isis after she put Osiris’ scattered body back together again (just as the Doctor was fractured in his own time-line by the Great Intelligence and “put back together” by Clara).
I’m really certain there will be a baby in a crib for Christmas (the Osiris mythos is a precursor for the Christian mythos) and in fact I hereby declare that I will eat a bow tie if there isn’t.
River left us with a mystery in “The Name of the Doctor” – her psychic link to Clara. We already know that blood can psychically connect people from a bubble universe to this one, thanks to the plot of “Hide”. And now we know that Gallifrey is in a bubble universe. So is Clara a descendant of River (connected by blood)?
The theory that Clara is the Doctor’s grand-daughter has been mooted before by several (perhaps @bluesqueakpip originally here?).
It’s just too neat for Moffat to resist – Smith regenerates into Capaldi and Clara gasps “grand-father”?
A return to the Doctor’s family and that crib or not? Roll up ladies, gents, clone-batches, multi-forms and place your bets!
30 November 2013 at 17:16 #22046@curvedspace That is a good article.
However, I don’t think it is entirely correct in its reading of the Moffat era.
Moffat likes to think about the nature of time for a Time Lord. And, in some ways, death has no dominion, or rather, a Time Lord can pretend it has no dominion.
In “The Wedding of River Song” the Doctor has this exchange with Doruim Maldovar:
Doctor “I have got a time machine, Dorium. It’s all still going on. For me it never stops. Liz the First is still waiting in a glade to elope with me. I could help Rose Tyler with her homework. I could go on all Jack’s stag parties in one night.”
Maldovar: “Time catches up with us all, Doctor!”
The Doctor: “Well it has never laid a glove on me!
Then Eleven calls his old friend Lethbridge Stewart only to find out that time has indeed caught up with him, as the Brigadier died a few months ago. The Doctor looks devastated. We do not see the Brigadier happily resurrected, nor any grief over his death ameliorated,as the article suggests is the case with deaths in the Moffat era. Nor can we do so without a substitution, because the actor, Nicholas Courtney, himself died in 2011.
When Rory is taken by a Weeping Angel and Amy elects to join him in “The Angels Take Manhattan” we see the Doctor in anguished grief because a time paradox means he cannot ever visit them in the New York past. They are lost to him forever. Moreover, we see him mourning them in several subsequent episodes, symbolised by the fact that he continues to wear Amy’s glasses. Again, grief is not ameliorated here. Eleven is heart-broken.
Finally, the Doctor is shown to be devastated by the loss of River in “The Name of the Doctor” He tears up when Clara tells him she has seen River (and the Doctor almost never cries) Moreover he reveals that he never went back to visit archived River in the Library because it would have hurt him too much. If that isn’t genuine grief over a genuine loss I don’t know what is.
It’s certainly true that New Who has used time time-paradoxes, time-locks and alternate universes to separate the Doctor from those he loves because otherwise, as he suggests to Dorium above, in theory he could keep visiting them indefinitely prior to the point of their death, or at least until the time tracks became so overlaid with the possibility of meeting himself that it was no longer safe to do so from the point of temporal stability (which would make a great grief stricken story in itself).
So, I submit, that whatever criticisms of Moffat one might wish to make, the idea that he has banished death or grief from the Who universe is simply not correct. He has simply thought about how that works for a time traveller.
(Thanks to http://www.planetclaire.org for the script quotes)
30 November 2013 at 14:38 #22033@phaseshift I didn’t realise there was so much modding going on behind the scenes!
Thanks again to The Doctor Who Forum team @craig @Shazzbot @jimthefish and @phaseshift for your time and energy, donated for free, out of fan-love, to the running of the site.
I’ve been involved in collective not-for-profit organising myself and I know that the rewards (joy, creation, new connections with people and playful, delightful interactions) are balanced by the down-sides (inter-personal squabbles, feeling taken for granted, fatigue).
Sorry I don’t have time (my work requires a lot of evening and weekend work as well as the usual day hours) to step up and volunteer as a mod myself, but maybe others will?!
In the meantime I think reminding people to be civil and not to take any of your work for granted is important.
Sometimes, especially on the inter-webs, we can all cross a line in the heat of the moment. So folks, if you know you have, an apology can go a long way!
For now, for as long as people have the energy, this remains a quirkily joyful little corner of the Who-niverse.
Deep thanks to all of you for making it happen.
30 November 2013 at 12:42 #22026@phaseshift I missed your entire Time Lords blog over the summer I’m afraid! What a labour of love – is it fair to sum up as “the Time Lords are dodgy as f… udge” ? 🙂
Agreed, although I have looked forward to their return for a while now. I’ve always enjoyed the Doctor’s struggles with TL society – his love/ hate relationship with his own culture.
@Phaseshift and @bluesqueakpip = exactly! For anyone who has been following Moffat’s tenure in detail I think there can be no doubt that two time-streams are involved and Gallifrey did indeed burn in one of them.
Just to add to the “Clara as the factor which changed things”, she was the one who figured out that Hurt Doctor was from a time before he had ended the Time War (she saw in his eyes that he was not yet carrying that burden) and that enabled Eleven and Twelve to follow him back in time to Gallfirey at the moment of decision. But even then, as you say, his future selves were simply going to share the load with him and participate in the genocidal red-button pushing decision, until she said “Wait!”
And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Hurt Doctor, at the time of the decision, was not travelling with a companion. This has been a consistent New Who theme – the Doctor is at his most dangerous when he is companion-less. and they are the ones who often serve as his conscience. Ten was also companionless at the time. So, it’s probably safe to assume that in time-stream one, Twelve was, likewise, companionless during the encounter.
What’s more, Hurt Doctor explicitly parked the TARDIS some distance away and walked to his encounter with The Moment alone, because he could not bear his TARDIS to see his decision either (she being his constant companion, with, as we know, somewhat of a mind of her own).
Remember his blistering speech to Kovarian? The Doctor, alone, is not necessarily “a good man” and that is why he needs to many rules.
29 November 2013 at 12:33 #21986Thanks for the thought @Phaseshift , like others, I would prefer the sofa to be a space for shorter posts as it is the “welcome” space for new members and arriving to be greeted with a series of gigantic posts (however interesting) can be a bit off-putting on a landing page!
29 November 2013 at 12:29 #21985Enjoyed the discussions on the nature of the Time War.
I agree with @Thomick that it would have been great to see more of the strategizing in the Time Lord War Room, the chilling decisions to shift time here or there in order to resurrect and replay a certain battle amongst the “lesser” races. “The End of Time” and “The Night of the Doctor” made it clear on-screen in a way that the “The Day of the Doctor” did not that the Time Lords displayed a deeply callous sense of superiority over the course of the War.
As @bluesqueakpip says, Time Lord war-driven time-resurrections are the reason why Cass fears and despises the Mcgann Doctor so much.
Now wouldn’t that make a good spin-off novel series set during the Time War – The Zombie Armies of Time ?
On the question of two time-streams and whether Gallifrey burned in one of them and not in the other, I would say that it is possible to walk away from “The Day of the Doctor” with a far more benign view of the Doctor and the Time Lords than the entirety of New Who previously allowed.
That’s not a good thing, in my book – the ret-conning of war crimes and genocide using a focus on the innocence of little patrician (Time Lord) children to do it?
It’s possible, but it’s not canonically consistent with “The End of Time”, in which we saw Gallifrey burning.
Anyone who knows their Who, as Moffat surely does, knows that the Time Lords have never been benign. Their policy of non-interference, before the outbreak of the Time War, was often a source of frustration for the Doctor and their hierarchical and stuffy society (which seemed to have a servant class of some kind) made him run screaming for the hills.
Hopefully, Time Lord menace and the Doctor’s ambivalence will be maintained and the “search for home” which might look so rosy now after the darkness of the Doctor’s journey since Ecclestone, will turn out to be deeply conflicted, particularly once he gets there!
But regarding two time-streams, in the story-telling, as I’ve said previously, Moffat’s tenure has been littered with doubling and time-streams, from “Amy’s Choice” to “The Girl Who Waited”. Usually, in television narrative architecture, smaller stories are used to mirror or reflect the larger arc.
Did the conscience of the Moment always appear to Hurt Doctor as Bad-Wolf-Rose? Did it always happen the way we saw it?
Well, not being capable of existing in fourteen dimensions at once like the TARDIS, time shifts are always going to hurt out human heads 🙂
I think it’s interesting that Eleven appeared not to remember the events from Ten’s perspective, which in one time-stream, he should have done, right?
Eleven makes jokes about Ten snogging a Zygon as if it were a separate weird thing his earlier self had got up to all on his own. Sure, he’s been deliberately forgetting things (as previously established) thanks to war crimes guilt, but would you forget events in which you “saved the day” and learned you had “never” committed genocide?
It’s also interesting that Moffat used the fez as the “gateway object” between the portals opened by The Moment. That immediately recalls the time-jumping of the Doctor in “The Big Hang” (in which the fez featured significantly). The Doctor reboots the universe and Amy remembers both time-streams afterwards; the one in which her parents disappeared when she was a kid and the one in which they didn’t. Both “really happened” from her and our perspective.
27 November 2013 at 00:51 #21724He is condemned to centuries of guilt for something he didn’t do.
Ah but he did do it. The Ecclestone Doctor we first meet is wracked with guilt because he remembers that he made the decision to burn Gallifrey and time-lock the Time War with it burning inside. He made that decision and lo we see Gallifrey burning.
For what other reason does the Billie Piper conscience of The Moment ensure Hurt to Eleven do not remember the Clara intervention? When Hurt Doctor says he does not want to survive his decision, she says that his punishment will be to live. Likewise the Doctor must live with the guilt of the genocide of the Time Lords, because he chose it. It’s not simply something he “didn’t do”.The “other way” he finds later in that moment does not obviate his initial choice.
26 November 2013 at 23:57 #21718@Shazzbot Thanks for finding the correct attribution for the phoenix necklace spot to @lula !
@timeloop Yes I saw that interview with Moffat and I also saw your earlier post re “The End of Time” when you’d re-checked that Gallifrey is indeed burning on-screen.
The thing is, Moffat’s perspective doesn’t settle the question for me. Once you have released a piece of creative fiction into the world you cannot control its interpretations and nor should you attempt to. The new tendency of TV writers on Twitter and in interviews to tell us “what they meant” in their narratives is one I deplore, in particular as their commentary is often far more one dimensional than the possibilities afforded by their creative text. I am a firm believer that the creation/ the text is greater than the creator.
Moffat and his writers’ team have spent his tenure writing about time loops, the re-writing of time, different time streams etc. and now this interview wants to reduce the complexity of that narrative to ‘ “it never happened” because I wrote over Russell T’s story-line? Just….. NO!
The entire “The Day of the Doctor” was about the Doctor re-writing his decision, not about him never making it.
I have to say that if Moffat really believes the Doctor “… never did that, he couldn’t. He’s the Doctor – he’s the man who doesn’t do that” then his take on New Who is far less interesting and less bold than Russell T.’s. It is also, as you point out, a textually inconsistent position, given the tone of Tennant and what we see on-screen in “The End of Time”.
Ignore what Moffat says in interviews (when frankly he was probably a bit tipsy and simplifying anyway) and read the collective New Who text instead!
Did Old Amy in Tom MacRae’s “The Girl Who Waited” “never exist”? She did, because we saw her story, and yet, her times-stream was over-written, because she helped young Amy not to get trapped in the way she had been in Re Anchor. Both time-streams exist for us, the audience, and for our understanding of the history of the characters, even though one goes forward and the other does not.
Did the Doctor never burn Gallifrey? He did, because we saw it burning, and yet, its burning was over-written, because Clara helped two future versions of Hurt Doctor calculate how not to burn it. Both time-streams exist for us, the audience, an for our understanding of the history of the characters, even though one goes forward and the other does not.
25 November 2013 at 01:19 #21475@ardaraith I like the idea too (that they are still in the Doctor’s time stream).
I also noticed on a re-watch that Clara is positioned as Barbara (working in a school with a young fellow male teacher coming to tell her about the Doctor). I don’t think Clara is River but she may still turn out to be the nanny – all those Mary Poppins parallels we (@HTPBDET was keen) noticed.
What if there still turns out to be a baby in that cot after all? River and the Doctor’s child or grandchild and River entrusted her to Clara?
24 November 2013 at 23:11 #21464I’d agree that we saw Gallifrey burning, plus a mad seer saying only two people (the Master and the Doctor) live. That’s now been changed: but it did happen. Because if it hadn’t happened, it couldn’t have been changed – Clara only exists because the Doctor is the man created by the Time War.
Agreed! And I think we are supposed to recall JCoT because that was the other episode where a big red button made a very specific appearance.
Moffat’s entire tenure is about time and what can and cannot be re-written (“not those times, don’t you dare!” as River says). Eleven rebooted the entire universe and yet Amy remembered both versions – the one in which her parents were gone and the one in which they were not.
Doubling (pregnant Amy/ not pregnant Amy, Cyber-Doctor/ not-Cyber Doctor etc.) and the double time-stream (red waterfall, green anchor, the Doctor dies at Lake Silencio/ the Doctor does not die at Lake Silencio) have been Moffat’s most persistent calling cards. And a long and fascinating thesis could be written on the question of re-writing history and what is remembered and what is forgotten in relation to Moffat’s Who (including in the context of Britain’s “place in the world”).
I like both the idea that The Curator is another face of The Moment and/ or a future incarnation of the Doctor revisiting “an old favourite” face.
24 November 2013 at 22:01 #21438Ages ago the Hive Mind worked out that, derived from Old Saxon/ Old Norse
Os win = God’s power
Os wald = God’s friend
and from what I can gather Os good = God’s goodness
So it could be that Osgood is a Clara-fragment, part of a trinity of Doctor-protectors, and one which (as discussed up thread) in particular represents Who fans.
It is time locked. I think we agree so far? That means the event cannot be altered or time WILL disintegrate. Time would die. Doctors 9-11 are left thinking they did it, since most Daleks and all TLs except the Master disappear.
We have seen Gallifrey time-locked and burning in “The End of Time” two-parter (we actually saw the planet burning on-screen as the Doctor shouted “Back into the Time War Rassilon, back into Hell”) and now Gallifrey is in a bubble universe but not burning. So, I don’t think it is simply that 9-11 are left thinking they committed genocide when they never did.
There will always be a past which the Doctor remembers when he made the choice to push the red button and use the Moment, just as there will always be a past which the Doctor remembers when he made a different choice. Forgetting has been shown to be an escapist and problematic strategy (as practiced by Eleven). Hopefully the Doctor will never forget (and should never forget) that he was “The War Doctor” and “The Oncoming Storm”.
I don’t think Moffat’s narrative chess move was simply that New Who’s character up to this point was all based on “a false reality”. That would be to take away the depth of New Who Doctor and absolve him. I don’t think he would want such an absolution.
24 November 2013 at 17:47 #21387I don’t know @pedant I think @denvaldron ‘s criticisms are valid tbh.
I enjoyed the episode in so many ways, not least (which I haven’t mentioned yet) the cinematography. The shot which took us from planetary explosion to a coffee cup was particularly beautiful. I enjoyed most of all, the collective experience of sharing fifty years of the programme with fellow fans. However, it was a baggy old, saggy old beast of a script, which rather reflects the totality of Who thus far.
Given more time, it would indeed have been great to consider in-depth serious peace negotiations between humans and Zygons. I would very much like Who, going forward, to explore the perspective of some of the alien races we encounter, from their POV, as very often they are simply “baddies”.
The Elizabeth the First sub-plot was not my favourite aspect. It was mostly there for comedic effect (Ten and his sex-capades). It also tied the Doctor further back into his old history of working for the British Government (via UNIT) and really I’m not fond of the Doctor as an intergalactic James Bond.
However, I am delighted the Time Lords are potentially back in play. There are lots of interesting directions the long narrative could go in from here. Eleven looked full of hope at the possibility of going “home”, but of course the First Doctor did run away in the first place because Time Lord society was stuffy, rule-bound and problematic. A long arc which explored nostalgia for an imagined home versus the far more conflicted and complicated reality once one returns could be fantastic.
@ardaraith I missed the reference to the High Council – will have to re-watch.
@timeloop In terms of whether the Doctor did or did not burn Gallifrey. I’m going with two time-streams myself.
I don’t think The Day of the Doctor seeks to erase the Doctor’s history as the “killer of his own kind”, at least I hope not. The conscience of the Moment (Billie) does not permit Hurt Doctor to go back into his time-stream with the memory that he has encountered his future selves and chosen, this time, to “save the children”. Time is not re-written so Ecclestone and Tennant leave the Time War secure in the knowledge that Gallifrey is safe in a bubble universe. It is only a Ten and Eleven (although it seems we should now be calling them Eleven and Twelve) who have lived through the darkness of that genocidal choice and taken responsibility for it who are able to work with Hurt Doctor to find another way.
24 November 2013 at 13:14 #21351Well I hope everyone is recovering from their 50th anniversary celebrations, whether that be on your sofa or cinemas from Mexico City to Mars.
@phaseshift did you manage to quaff cocktails from Doctor 5 to Doctor 11 and stay standing? I’m not surprised the “Great Green Vampire” for Doctor 4 proved strong medicine – it is based on Hemingway’s famous cocktail “Death in the Afternoon” after all 🙂
So to the episode, also a question of death, and rebirth; just as all the Egyptology symbolism earlier in the season promised.
Remember the great pyramid which housed the Old God at the Rings of Akhaten – the parasitic old god who fed on the memories of others? A narrative parallel for the Eleventh Doctor, as we noted at the time, who has slowly been forgetting his own past because he doesn’t want to remember the Time War, more precisely the 2.74 billion children he burned at Gallifrey?
Remember the Doctor “destroyed” at Trenzalor by the Great Intelligence and scattered through his own time-line, just as Osiris was destroyed by Set and his body parts scattered? Well, just as the magician-goddess Isis searched for Osiris’ body parts across the land of the Nile and put them back together again, so Clara (who wore a phoenix necklace in the Rings of Akhaten as I think @Shazzbot pointed out originally on these boards) searched for the Doctor across the tracks of his time-stream and saved him.
Moffat delivered a rebirth of the Doctor (meta-narratively speaking certainly a Christ-figure of the small screen) for the 50th from his dark past as a war criminal and an architect of genocide; a dark past which has, of course, served the show well.
As the brain-child of Russell T. Davis, Ecclestone’s Doctor burst onto our screens in 2005 as the “last of the Time Lords” with a terrible secret in his hearts. Ecclestone, Tennant and Smith have carried that darkness with them through all the years since. The Eleventh Doctor could not forgive Khaler-Jex in “A Town Called Mercy”, a doctor who resorted to war crimes in an attempt to save his people, and neither has he been able to forgive himself. The darkness in our New Who Doctors has resulted in wonderful additional layers for the character and some fine acting from those who have played this era’s madman in a blue box, but Moffat wanted the sun to rise on the next fifty years, and who can blame him?
The Doctor is beloved by children, has been beloved by children for fifty years. He’s always been a bit of a Pied Piper figure, dressed like a jester, calling them away to adventure. So what could be more terrible than the deaths of all the children on Gallifrey he is responsible for? And what could be more fitting than that the first young companion he took with him following the Time War, Rose, and the most recent, Clara, should together, help him choose differently.
Et in Acadia Ego (I [death] am here, even in Paradise) is the famous title of two paintings by Nicholas Poussain. a painter alive at the time Elizabeth the 1st was on the throne. And it is through a painting we revisit Acadia, Gallifrey’s second city, as Hurt Doctor makes the decision to summon The Moment when he writes “no more” on the walls there.
Of course, it is also the phrase he writes the second time around, when he and his future-selves decide that “Gallifrey shall fall no more”. Eleven now remembers it both ways. He is the Time Lord who burned his people and the Time Lord who saved them – a duality, self and shadow-self finally integrated together. I would say, the one who wears the red bow-tie and the one who wears the blue bow-tie at last combined into the one who wears the spotty bow-tie, but people will probably throw shoes at me 🙂
I am not quite sure how this fall of Gallifrey fits with the fall of Gallifrey we learned about in “The End of Time” (Tennant’s last hurrah). It doesn’t really, but that must be thanks to the tweak of a Clara-fragment in the Doctor’s time-stream, right?
Then it was a revived Lord Rassilon’s proposal, endorsed by a vote in the chamber of the High Council to “end time itself”, which prompted the Doctor to time-lock Gallifrey and end the Time War with the effective genocide of his own people. The High Council in the “Day of the Doctor” seemed more bewildered than intent on becoming non-corporeal entities. This made Hurt Doctor’s choice grittier of course, because he was not faced with a mad President intent on the annihilation of everything, but with children running through burning streets.
John Hurt was instantly the Doctor. He played the part with absolute generosity of spirit – never stealing it, but providing it with deft touches of rocket fuel. His scenes with Billie were among the most marvellous of the episode. She was golden, flirtatious, terrible and kind; a Bad Wolf-Rose replicant to die for, an oracle at Delphi fit for a Time Lord.
Certainly the favourite line of The Doctor Who Forum posse who chewed over the episode in London last night agreed that the best line was “Allons-y!” “Geronimo!” followed by Hurt’s droll “For Christ-sakes!”
I may have squealed when Tom Baker appeared (even though I’d inadvertently seen a spoiler to that effect on the interwebs a couple of days ago).
I think @ardaraith is right, the geek-girl scientist wearing the Fourth Doctor’s scarf at Unit was definitely a representative of the fans and that was, surrounded as we were by fantastic cos-players at the Excel 50th celebrations (many of them, indeed, in 4th Doctor scarves), a really nice touch, particularly as it honoured the female fans of the show, blowing away the cobwebs of that dusty old myth that Who is “for boys”.
Oh, and we met Linda Lee! But that’s a story for another post.
22 November 2013 at 14:55 #21145Hi @thommck
It’s suitable for kids using the traditional “no sex or violence” criteria but it’s not made for kids. It’s very much Gatis’ love letter to early Who/ behind the scenes at the BBC, and thematically it is quite sad as it focuses on William Hartnell’s declining health.
18 November 2013 at 13:56 #20895Looking forward to Asylum of the Whovians 🙂
Thanks for organising @Shazzbot
Certainly looking forward to shouting our Emperor @craig a drink for all his hard work setting up this site.
And pleased to see a decent number of the Fish Clan in attendance!
Comrades who can’t be there, especially those overseas, such as @JanetteB and @blenkinsopthebrave and @whohar and the sadly MIA @Bobbingbird- we will certainly think of you across time and space.
@phaseshift Did I forget to give you the Great Green Vampire 4th Doctor cocktail recipe details?
One nicely chilled glass of champagne and then a finger of absinthe poured carefully on top. Some varieties of absinthe float, so you get a nice double-colour effect for a bit. Some might say this ruins a perfectly delicious glass of champagne (and they’d probably be right!) but you can’t get a more decadent combination, and I think the 4th Doctor would have really appreciated that.
Sorry you can’t be with us in the flesh but wow are you going to be drunk enough for all of us if your ambitious cocktail plans come to fruition 🙂 Reviews please, after you recover!
10 November 2013 at 15:44 #20487Waves at @Shazzbot and @scaryb .
Yes, absolutely @ScaryB , I shall go and take a look at those trailers both in red-shift and blue-shift 🙂
Congrats to @craig on starting to receive PR materials! (re the Gaiman promo from Puffin). You have truly arrived as a Master of this universe.
Two weeks to go? How has this happened?
I owe @phaseshift a cocktail recipe. How about “The Great Green Vampire”, in honour of our mutual 4th Doctor – chilled champagne with a topping of absinthe! Good for a toast to @htpbdet as I know he was fond of champagne.
And ha, re the trailers, I knew we were getting the Time War!
10 November 2013 at 12:33 #20467Dear friends,
I am late (or am I early?). Please forgive me.
I am so sad to hear @htpbdet is no longer on this plane of existence with us, and damn it is just not fair <shakes fist at universe> that he didn’t get to see the 50th nor we to enjoy his spiffy comments on it.
@scaryb ‘s image of him off on his travels in a certain blue box was quite lovely and @pedant ‘s description of him as “a true romantic” was absolutely how he appeared to me.
I had the pleasure of arguing with him on a number of occasions both here and on The Graun 🙂
His insistence that Ten’s feelings for Rose were entirely platonic was quite maddening :-).
His encyclopaedic knowledge of Who was just awe-inspiring.
I could tell that he would be fabulous, flamboyant, gossipy, grouchy and erudite company.
His willingness to share some of his autobiography with us; looking at the stars in shared wonder and grief with his grandmother, his proposal from the wonderful McShe in full Leela regalia (I was tremendously envious of that), the terrible loss of her and his daughters after a night in with his son and beloved Who… these were tremendously affecting.
For so many of us, as for him, Doctor Who has abiding emotional meaning; a wondrous space of adventure we’ve voyaged in alongside the hard times of this particular bubble universe.
@htpbdet was an original child of the Doctor, having fallen in love with the show from the very start, and so in these, the end and beginning times of Doctor Who, it was a pleasure to reflect on time, history, memory and imagination in his company; to share a little of the scar tissue of his journey through the universe, from 1963 to now.
He was the Grandfather Time of our Whoniverse.
20 October 2013 at 21:33 #18861@Shazzbot @scaryb @phaseshift 🙂 xx
@scaryb – Love the Yeti avatar
@phaseshift Did you get tickets for the 50th after all?
@craig A fishy pint it is!
Or indeed, one of those amazing cocktail recipes! 700 members – amazing!
20 October 2013 at 17:16 #18845Waves excitedly at everyone as the 50th approaches xxx
20 October 2013 at 17:16 #18844Wow – thanks for all the organising @Shazzbot – I and dark doppleganger Juniperfish will be there on the 22nd 🙂
20 October 2013 at 17:11 #18843WoW!!! I swim off to a galaxy far, far away for a bit and when I return from my fishy migrations I find this!
The new look is amazing. I can’t believe we’ve grown from a madcap Grauniad spin-off to a titan of the Whoniverse (well a healthily growing minnow anyway).
Fantastic job @craig – really amazing labour of love.
Are you still managing hosting costs by yourself ok btw or is it time for a whip-round?
I am excited now that we are in 50th count-down mode!
12 September 2013 at 20:05 #17193Waves at @bluesqueakpip 🙂
and also at @phaseshift (You were asking me about Nine Worlds, way back when. It was great – will definitely attend again.)
Woohoo – Autumn is coming, the dematerialisation circuit is almost back online…
9 September 2013 at 08:15 #171008 September 2013 at 16:27 #17085Hey everyone <waves fishily> – I’ve been a bit MIA – arrgh so much to catch up on!
Looking forward to the sofa here as the Autumn encroaches upon our last golden days of Summer (in the UK anyway).
I imagine Mr. Capaldi making faces in the mirror, tap-dancing with butterflies, as the Doctor starts to inhabit him.
Welcome to the blue box of anticipation!
15 August 2013 at 12:58 #16227Convention Report! I went to Nine Worlds at the weekend https://nineworlds.co.uk/ . It’s a new multi-fandom convention run by fans for fans which got going via Kickstarter and the desire for more inclusive fan-spaces.
It was fantastic!
It had a number of different “tracks” which were mini conventions in themselves (but you could move freely between them) including a book track and a dedicated Doctor Who track, a Geek Feminism track etc.
Sadly I didn’t get to hang out in the Doctor Who track because I was there working in other parts of the con rather than as a punter (although I did meet Gary Russell who used to script edit for Doctor Who, Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures and now works with Big Finish).
There’s a half decent report about the convention (although naturally it sticks to the more conventional face of it and misses brilliant aspects such as the Bronies or how LGBT inclusive it was ) in the Daily Mail, so I’ll have to break my golden rule and link!
Anyway, I’ve no doubt there will be a dedicated Doctor Who track next year too and I’d highly recommend the experience !
15 August 2013 at 12:44 #16226Have people seen this?
http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/doctor-who/26901/doctor-who-bill-nighy-turned-down-doctor-role
Sorry if it’s already been discussed! Not terribly gracious of Nighy is it? But it makes me love Capaldi even more – he clearly took the role partly because he was a child-fan and holds it in his heart the way we do.
12 August 2013 at 22:52 #15998Hey everyone, this is interesting – a discussion of Lindy Orthia’s (ed) new book Doctor Who and Race (basically a blog post by one of the in-production reviewers which takes down the Daily Mail’s review of the book)
http://www.philipsandifer.com/2013/05/shockingly-daily-mail-is-evil.html
The book is published now – I haven’t read it but it sounds well worth getting hold of. There’s a particularly interesting sounding chapter on The Talons of Weing Chiang.
6 August 2013 at 15:31 #15588A few Capaldi era thoughts:
If Capaldi’s Doctor isn’t at least a bit dry, snippy and sardonic I shall be disappointed. Not to typecast him, I know how versatile he is, but snarky Doctor would be fun!
Mating aside, it’s surely time for a non-humanoid alien companion in the TARDIS.
I very much hope Strax, Vastra and Jenny continue as occasional TARDIS-hoppers too, as others have said.
Let’s have the Master as a Time Lady for the Capaldi era. That would be such a smart thing to do right now if the showrunners did want to prepare the way further for a female Doctor some regenerations down the line.
Still hoping for a return of the Time Lords so the Doctor can move on from his lonely god/ war criminal angsty time-loop. I think last-of-the-Time-Lords was a brilliant move on RTD’s part, but it’s time to change it up now.
What’s on your wish list?
5 August 2013 at 00:43 #15328@bluesqueakpip lol 🙂
It was a toe-curlingly amateur event, but for all that there was a sweet slow drama.
Smithy could barely look at the camera. He’s obviously going through tremendous emotion putting the part down, as so many Who actors do. Capaldi has a wise head on his shoulders, but even he seemed almost shy, tip-toeing into the bear-pit that is Who fandom.
What worries me is that I smell trouble behind the scenes, dissent in the machinery. I hope Capaldi gets the smooth working environment he deserves, because filming Who is a punishing schedule.
4 August 2013 at 23:50 #15316@phaseshift 13 millon eh? Oh, some dodgy alien bar will take ’em – wheeeeee, that purple liquid goes well with this tooth medication! 🙂
@osakahatter I hear the writing for Hannibal is excellent, but the levels of gore have thus far put me off. Yes, I really can’t see Simm vs Capaldi working out.
4 August 2013 at 23:20 #15309Alex Kingston facing off against Peter Capaldi. C’mon, doesn’t that sound like the most magnificent OK Corral moment?
Oh I’d definitely watch that 🙂
Yes I do hope we will cross Kingston’s River’s time line again. I suspect we might, as the Moff loves her so, and he is most likely going to hand over before too long himself.
Moreover, if Gaiman rides again we simply must meet the Corsair. Who was talking about Eddie Izzard up-thread? Izzard in his drag days as the Corsair – I demand it!
4 August 2013 at 23:01 #15299@jimthefish Oh, there’s a doll of Levine with pins in it somewhere on Moff’s desk, for sure!
And I can’t picture PC doing the Last of the TimeLords angst – I reckon he’ll either have come to terms with it, or won’t be the last anymore.
Agreed. What’s more, I look forward to the casting for the new Master when he (or she) shows up, because they’ll need someone who can pull off more venom than Capaldi – quite a feat!
Hmmmn – who would play well against him as the Master? I fancy Eva Green’s chances. She was Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale but she was also a rather wonderful Morgan le Fey in the otherwise dubious Camelot.
4 August 2013 at 22:43 #15290@bluesqueakpip I agree – it was a mess and definitely hasty leak-control.
It was sort of an endearing (and very British) mess. It really reminded me of 1970s tele (unfortunately, it reminded me somewhat of Jim’ll Fix It)
I mean, Smithy said “he”, then a clip of Moff, deliberately still saying the gender neutral “person”, followed? So they couldn’t even cut it together to keep up the guessing-game momentum for half an hour? As @wolfweed says, Capaldi’s name was already all over the bookies.
It was always a bum’s rush trying to keep the regeneration a secret.
4 August 2013 at 22:22 #15281@craig – nice work already 🙂
Peter Capaldi is definitely an interesting choice for Who. He is both a forwards and backwards looking Doctor at this 50th year, deliberately the last in a cycle of 13 regenerations I suspect, before the clock resets (as we’ve discussed on these pages before).
He is (to state the obvious) like the show’s first and as yet unbroken template, white and male, which is beginning to look a little retro. But he is also 55, which means his life-span pretty much matches the show’s at this point; symbolic, I think.
And as the show has become break-out popular in the States, where the template for television leads in sci-fi and fantasy is relentlessly younger and underwear model sexy, choosing older (if proven talent) over younger and prettier is brave (if marketably eccentric and “British”).
Of course, the Doctor always turns out to be the good wizard in fairytales and kids love wizards, whom they know are often ancient. So with an eye on the next generation of fans, kids just turning 6, 7, 8, for whom Capaldi will be “their” Doctor, 55 is just fine. Elizabeth Sladen helmed the Sarah Jane Adventures in her fifties and kids loved her, after all.
Disappointed as I am not to see the Doctor regenerate as a woman, Capaldi will be a firecracker of a Time Lord. But please, as @Shazzbot says, no Clara snogging!
And yes indeed @bluesqueakpip, Grandfather looks much more likely now, which would be highly narratively satisfying as part of the circularity of 50 years Moffat seems to be weaving (spider that he is).
Dearly beloved Matt Smith, you’ve been simply amazing. You have revived the bow-tie as a fashion accessory, capered across the stars like a time-travelling Chaplin, and I know you’ll make us cry when you go.
Dear Peter Capaldi, whether he be velvety smooth or one fierce bad rabbit, your Doctor will be a whole new venus fly-trap of an adventure. I can’t wait to have it.
4 August 2013 at 20:48 #15240Twitter is already looking forward to being able to overdub Malcolm Tucker dialogue onto Twelfth Doctor scenes for small children to find unwittingly on YouTube. For shame! 🙂
I wonder what Linda Lee will make of Tucker-Doctor.
4 August 2013 at 20:10 #15226Had a quick look on Tumblr to see the reception there (for anyone unfamiliar, it’s a blogging social media site frequented by teen and twenty-something fans, in particular lots of US fans. BBC Worldwide blogs on there – they know it’s a gateway to a key overseas demographic).
Some complaints that Capaldi is “too old” and “not hot” and that it will be “creepy” if he dates Clara, but plenty of excitement and positive reception too.
I’m betting Capaldi will get a younger, male, somewhat easy-on-the-eye companion at some point…
@bluesqueakpip Agreed! Would love to see Capaldi and Kingston play together – wow there would be sparks.
4 August 2013 at 19:33 #15184Capaldi is talking now (they dug up a Doctor Who fan letter he wrote to the Radio Times as a 15 year old). He’s being terribly sweet and modest and has promised to drop the language.
Now Matt is sending Peter a pre-recorded message saying good luck and he’s looking forward to him in the role…
Zoe is wrapping it up!
Live-blogging @phaseshift is MIA
4 August 2013 at 19:29 #15178Still not ginger….
Still not a woman…
Can we at least get Capaldi in drag?
I’m happy they’ve gone older again…
That’s a lot of the Doc’s regenerations with curly hair.
4 August 2013 at 19:27 #15169Here we go <SPOILERS>…….
Peter Capaldi it is!!!!!! Cue swearing? 🙂
4 August 2013 at 19:25 #15165Moffat is teasing us (he is saying “person”). Hawking says he’d like a woman and now Moff is teasing us with that…
4 August 2013 at 19:24 #15160Ten mins to go… aren’t we supposed to be getting an interview with the new guy (gal)?
Zoe Ball says we are getting closer and now there’s a Moff pre-recorded clip paying tribute to Smithy…
4 August 2013 at 19:20 #15152Hi @Shazzbot – sorry I didn’t realise you couldn’t see!
At the moment it’s not very live – lots of recorded talking heads – ex companions and UK TV luminaries talking about their fave Docs interspersed with clips of them…
Now we’ve gone live to Bernard Cribbins, a total cutie as ever…
4 August 2013 at 19:14 #15145Smithy said “he” of his successor…
4 August 2013 at 19:08 #15136@chickenelly I’m watching through my fingers 🙂
Eee I remember Zoe Ball’s Dad on Blue Peter…
4 August 2013 at 15:01 #15059@phaseshift – thanks for the tooth commiseration 🙂
*See* you for the live blog tonight! You will have to have a tipple for me, as apparently that’s a bad plan after a gnasher divestiture.
I’m sure those in the colonies <waves at @blenkinsopthebrave> (will we get any hints on the Kennedy fourth wall thesis today?) will be amused to read stream-of-consciousness reactions to the announcement later on, as they’ll likely be asleep during live-air.
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