The Doctor Who thread

[Hursticon]

What I am looking forward to is the DW docudrama on tonight with the dude from Harry Potter as William Hartnell!

"An Adventure in Space and Time"? - Yep, me too!

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Also, the BBC website currently has a special available for viewing; written & directed by Peter Davison, entitled: "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot".
(Just a CAUTION: Extremely minor spoilers, none with any real context however )

[GoktimusPrime]

Very enjoyable and it was great seeing every Doctor making an appearance, although only four of them were "actively" appearing, the others were 'inserted' visually or w/ doubles.

I felt that the story still hasn't addressed the issue of a Time Lord's regenerations count. If anything it's confused me even more by redeeming the War Doctor as a "proper" Doctor.

And I thought he was a fan, so should have worked that out better, instead of retconning what already existed.

Perhaps that's part of the problem. IMO fans often don't make the best writers... often wantonly retconning (or just blatantly ignoring) existing canon to suit their own whims. That's why I don't read fan fics. At least JJ Abrams had the decency to create a parallel universe for his Star Trek films.

Speaking of tomorrow - from the commercial on TV, could tomorrow's episode be loosely referred to as "The 4 Doctors", as it will include 8 (Hurt), 11 (Tennant), 12 (Smith), 13 (Capaldi).... but not all four at the same time though.

Five Doctors. It "actively" features the War Doctor (Hurt), the Fourth (T. Baker), the War Doctor (Hurt), the Tenth (Tennant), the Eleventh (Smith) and the Twelfth (Capaldi). Although the last one doesn't "actively interact" with the others until the very end scene where every Doctor can be seen standing next to each other. I'm assuming that at least four of those Doctors were played by their respective actors and the others were played by doubles. But no, we don't see all of them "actively" interacting with each other at the same time.

Although it's arguably more interaction that what we saw with the First Doctor in "The Three Doctors," and the Fourth in "The Five Doctors."

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It's too early for discussion I feel so I'll hold off at the moment, but Goki I'm fairly certain there's a line that fixes the numbering issue - Will be re-watching to see if I'm right.

[GoktimusPrime]

Will be re-watching to see if I'm right.

I like this idea.

[Hursticon]

I like this idea.

1:08:39 - Hit the link, old boy.

[Paul Agnew]

although only four of them were "actively" appearing, the others were 'inserted' visually or w/ doubles.

Pretty sure Madame Tussauds played a hand in this.

[griffin]

Spoilers sweetie...


Obviously...



(come back when you've see the episode - it's online and being replayed tonight, so there's no excuse to complain about being spoiled after tonight if you read today's postings)


I set the alarm, and got up early, after just 4 hours sleep... which was a first for me with this series (and probably a lot of other people). It was like getting up during the night for something live on TV.



So in one episode, we have guidebooks and wikis on the 9th to 12th Doctors needing to be rewritten. Or at least, create confusion for fans, who now in future have to refer to Doctors by their actor's name, rather than their number. (which of course will create its own confusion with their being a 1st Baker Doctor and a 2nd Baker Doctor)
With Hurt NOW being the 9th incarnation of the Doctor (shown to regenerate FROM Mcgann and TO Eccleston), it shuffles the four of the new series along by one.
As I guessed in my previous post, the Eccleston Doctor is now the 10th Doctor, the Tennant Doctor is now the 11th Doctor, the Smith Doctor is now the 12th Doctor, and the Capaldi Doctor is the 13th.
Besides - the Timelord Generals refer to all 13 Doctors surrounding Galifrey at the end - and all 13 known Doctors were shown.

One thing the retcon now messes up, is that prior to the "Name of the Doctor" episode, whenever the number of past doctors flashed up on screen in a couple episodes, it only showed the ones we knew before the retcon. (naturally)


This should mean that in the next episode, if Moffat remembers his DrWho history, we should see the creation of the Valeyard as some as-yet-explained side-effect of the Doctor's regeneration into his 13th incarnation.

Well, all that confusion is now for the diehard fans to argue about on fansites now, until the end of time...



As for the episode itself, it felt like it had a bigger budget, but for some reason I was expecting more of the Time War... which we knew had to be featured eventually after being an underlying plot device for the last 9 years of the new series.

The appearance of Tom Baker was a nice touch, as I hope he was wanting to make an appearance to make up for "spoiling" the 20th Anniversary story "The 5 Doctors" by refusing to be a part of it at all.
I was also hoping that Eccleston was willing to be an active part of it too, despite saying that he'd only do a season as a favour to Russell T Davies and not come back to it.
It would have been nice to have Mcgann in it as well, since he was "brought out of retirement" with the 7 minute webisode "Night of the Doctor"... Considering the 20th episode had 5 in the title, and 4 active Doctors in the story, I thought they might have tried to get more of the older Doctors in the *50th* Anniversary story. They had Tom Baker have a cameo, why couldn't they have the other surviving actors who are also too old to play their Doctor character?

Zygons were a nice inclusion, as the 4th Doctor story was one of the early ones I remember most. We didn't get to see much of them though, possibly so that it didn't take away attention from the main story. It was just a catalyst to the main story, of changing history.

I was never a fan of the Russell T Davies having Gallifrey destroyed or time-locked in the current series, as it prevented the story from properly visiting his home planet, and forced a darker element to the Doctor's personality... so now we have something that may lead a rescuing of the planet.
I get the feeling that Moffat may not have been a fan of Davies work on the first four seasons either, as this story paints the Timelords as better people than Davies did in "End of Time", and re-writes the disappearance of Gallifrey to be something less permanent than what Davies wanted it to be.

I was also not a fan of the Doctor suddenly aging 200-400 years during the Smith Doctor, but not showing any sign of it physically or mentally (he still has a "young" excitable personality, for someone who's seen and done a lot during that time), or *needing* to age that much. However, we now see that it was done for a reason, as Moffat said he had been planning ahead for this story - the Doctor needed all those years to run the calculations (in his head I guess, or in the Tardis computer) to save Gallifrey.
(not to mention that scene with the Screwdriver needing 400 years to calculate the right sonics... only to be wasted by not being needed)

So many thoughts...
It was good to watch the entire Smith Doctor run of stories in the weeks before this episode, to get a proper feel for the character, and be fresh in the mind.
Now we have to wait a month for the next episode.

It's just a shame that some of these "seasons" are taking two years. Season 4 and 7 were both two years long, which only gives us about 7 episodes a year...
I'm too impatient.
I want an American yearly season of 26 episodes, not a British season of 6.

Capaldi isn't in tomorrow's Ep dude, his debut is this year's Xmas special.

We got to see his eyes, so does that count?
It was good timing to have him on hand to include as an uncredited cameo, so that the Timelord Generals were able to say "all 13 of him" were circling Galifrey at the end.
It was a shame that we couldn't see more of him, but I know how that would have spoiled the drama of the next episode, which is supposed to be the one to properly introduce the Capaldi Doctor. (see, even I can't use the numbers anymore, because it confuses me now )
I know he's been publicly announced as the next one, but in the show, it probably wouldn't have the same effect if we already knew what he was like in a previous one.

[GoktimusPrime]

Paul Agnew: I did not know that! Whoa!!

We got to see his eyes, so does that count?

It might've also been Capaldi standing alongside the other 12 Doctors at the end. So we also got to see him... most from behind and from in front obscured in darkness.

[Hursticon]

We got to see his eyes, so does that count?

I reckon it does mate!

It might've also been Capaldi standing alongside the other 12 Doctors at the end. So we also got to see him... most from behind and from in front obscured in darkness.

That was a pretty awesome closing shot I thought.

Reading the discussion here and in other places, it really does show me just how gaping the holes are in my knowledge of Doctor Who; I've seen a stack of episodes in my life but the vast majority have been out of sequence, with most of Tennant's & Eccelston's tenures being literally all over the place.
(I made a concerted effort to see Smith's properly, episode for episode as it aired )

I WILL have to fix that.

Most of my exposure had been from re-runs during the early 90s of Tom Baker's run (So was really chuffed to see his cameo, being MY first Doctor ), with spatterings of Dalek & Cybermen themed Jon Pertwee stories rented on VHS from Civic Video!

The Valeyard seems like it'd be a hard thing to tackle at this point (Had to do a wiki search on that one, ), at least on-screen without having another "Multi-Doctor" episode to deal with it, so perhaps it's a story better leant to an Animated or Audio-based story?
...Also, I thought that a recent retcon at some point had dispelled the hard-rule of only 13 regenerations?

Finally, on Eccelston: I really can't say I missed him at all, however great it might've been for him to be at least present in order to be regenerated into; I caught very little of his tenure and to be honest he never felt like "The Doctor" to me, he felt more like someone pretending to be the Doctor as opposed to actually being the Doctor, you know what I mean? - Does that make sense?

That said, I do want to go back and see his & Tennant's tenure properly, in full, as it seems there's a number of great stories I've missed out on between them for one reason or another.
(I REALLY want to see more of Troughton's era too, however many Eps are lost to time )




P.S. Peter Davison's "The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot" was hilariously brilliant and got far more people involved than I had even considered it would've!