Forum:Doctor Who

Harry Turtledove: Index > Doctor Who

Original post

An outgrowth of the DW discussions scattered across Talk:Blue vs. Grey. I think we have enough geek power among our small band of regulars to overwhelm that discussion page; safer to do this elsewhere.

We were on the verge of discussing the relative merits of the various Doctors. I'm very new to the series; it's only been within the last year that people have told me I'd enjoy it, and I only started watching in February when Amazon made the adventures of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors and select adventures from the first seven available for free to Amazon Prime members. (Since then I've found a site that has every Doctor Who and spinoff episode for free, except the ones from the 60s that the archivists lost; and in those cases they have the partial reconstructions. crossingthewhoniverse.com, for anyone who's interested.)

I watched Chris Eccleston's entire season in about three days and then poured through David Tennant's three and a half seasons in just under a month. Then I went back and started to work my way through the select episodes Amazon had made available of the classic Doctors. In a very short time I learned that Matt Smith's first season was available OnDemand, so I more or less abandoned the classic Doctors in favor of that, and I coincidentally wound up all caught up right before the show returned. Then they took their mid-season hiatus and I discovered the free site I mentioned above, and have been picking off episodes here and there.

William Hartnell is really only worth watching as a point of historical interest--by which I mean the history of the show; as a source of history education, a low-budget 60s TV show featuring post-imperially hungover Brits giving their impressions of foreign cultures is . . . suspect. "The Aztecs" was the only Hartnell episode available on Amazon, and it was boring. Now I've watched some of the more significant ones, like the very first episode where he abducts the two teachers and tries to kill the caveman; the one where he meets the Daleks for the first time; and the never-ending "Daleks' Master Plan." They're more interesting but still nothing special. Since so much of the show's continuity had yet to work itself out, it's often hard to imagine that he's the same Doctor as the more recent ones, and he had a selfish streak that makes the feeling even worse. At one point in the first Dalek episode, he and Susan and Ian have a chance to escape the Daleks' clutches, but Barbara is imprisoned by them. The Doctor's like "Fuck Barbara! I want to save my own skin!" and Ian and Susan pretty much have to force him to come with them.

Patrick Troughton's era suffered from the same technical difficulties but he was more in keeping with the Doctor we all know and love, personality wise. His last episode was the first time we learned he was a Time Lord, and his relationships with his companions are much stronger, especially Jamie. They lack the tiresome sexual tension that Russell T Davies was so fond of, especially during Tenant's years.

Actually I was watching a Jon Pertwee episode right before I came over here. I agree with TR's assessment that that was really the genesis of most of the show's modern elements. The whole Austin Powers look and feel is certainly dated, but I do like his era just the same.

Tom Baker I've actually never gotten around to watching. The longest-serving Doctor and the only one the old-timers ever ask for by name (and whom Tennant and Smith have both made references to in interviews suggesting he's the definitive classic Doctor to them as well) is the only one who's escaped my notice. I'll get to him sooner or later. I've seen short clips and while it's not fair to judge based on something like that I can't help thinking the goofiness will annoy me.

Peter Davison I've seen in "The Five Doctors," where the old-timers stole the show; "The Caves of Androzani," whose election as the most popular episode ever I just don't understand; and the skit he did with Tennant in '07 where the TARDIS crosses its own time stream. Based on that limited sample size my impression is that he's pretty vanilla.

I watched Colin Baker in "Trial of a Time Lord" and also watched a series of interviews from the DVD extras. I know he's the least popular Doctor and I thought I would dislike him, but I thought he gave a pretty good performance, especially considering his strained relationship with the headwriter, who kept forcing him to do things that he knew were stupid and that the fans would hate. Hard not to pity the bum rap he got. And I liked his performance.

Sylvester McCoy is intriguing. I've only seen a couple of episodes from the last season when they focused on that maladjusted girl he had for a companion. They had good chemistry (they really sold the scene where he has to destroy her faith in him by calling her "an emotional crrripple") but the writing was contrived and they kept forcing them into situations that made no sense. To think that the last episode of so venerable a franchise could have been the Master whisking people off to a planet ruled by intelligent cheetahs. Even the shitty TV movie was a fitter ending. Speaking of which . . . .

Paul McGann . . . not much to say about him. Of all the peformances of the Doctor I've seen (everyone but Tom Baker) his Doctor came off as the most likable, the most nonthreatening, the most pleasant to be around. He did a solid performance. The movie was really nothing to write home about. I didn't care about it one way or the other till I learned afterward that there's some old rule saying there can be only thirteen Doctors, at which point they'll either need to cancel the show forever or come up with a way to circumvent that rule and alienate the purists. Then I thought "Well that was a waste of an incarnation." But knowing what I know about the Seventh Doctor, it would be too much to imagine him doing the things in the Time War that we know the Doctor did. Better to have a more-or-less blank slate to hang all that on.

Chris Eccleston is my answer to the "Who's your Doctor?" question. I'm so glad he provided me with my introduction to the series. I loved the brooding intensity that would express itself now as uncontrollable fury, now as gloating over the destruction he's wrought (I saw it happen! I made it happen!!") now euphoria ("Everybody lives!") and now as guilt and regret. Unlike Tennant, who played his Doctor inconsistently, with Eccleston it was believably all from the same core personality, whose true nature always shone through in the end.

I would agree with you, there. I'm so happy that he was the first Doctor I watched. His performance, along with Billie Piper's, was commendable. Episodes during his run were memorable. Zhukov15 (talk) 21:15, December 30, 2013 (UTC)

Last week I was very depressed to learn just how very close he came to doing "The Day of the Doctor." Moffett had been his favorite writer during his season so he was willing to return for a Moffett script despite the bad blood with the franchise. But he wanted his favorite director too, and Moffett wanted his favorite director, and they weren't able to work it out.

Having the proper Ninth Doctor in the place of Not-in-the-Name-of-the-Doctor would have elevated the story somewhat, and alleviated many of my complaints, but I would still hate the ending. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:16, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

David Tennant I like, and it's certainly easy to see how he became so iconic. In the first two seasons he usually was just a nice guy whose wealth of experience meant he could inadvertantly be pushed too far; but the later he went on, the more turgid and overblown his stories became. From that shitty Christmas special set on the Space Titanic on, every little detail took on so much significance that I kept thinking I would have to take a quiz after the episode. I'm glad he went out when he did, and his final episode was just magnificent story-telling, from the battle with the entire universe at stake where every ounce of character he had was put to the test, to the tear-jerking farewell tour where he helped out each of his companions. And then he regenerated into the incumbent . . .

Along with most of the UK, I find that Tennant was one of favourite incarnations. It was not his fault that later episodes were not that great. I agree that End of Time was well done. Zhukov15 (talk) 21:15, December 30, 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't blame Tennant for being in bad episodes, any more than I would hold it against Colin Baker or, for that matter, Matt Smith over the past year. I do think of the three Tennant was the least willing to go down swinging with a bad script, though when he liked his scripts--and there were plenty of good ones in S4, even though my intense dislike of Catherine Tate made them harder for me to appreciate--he did fine with them.

Also, I thought he was the best part of "The Day of the Doctor." He reprised the role so naturally and comfortably that you'd think "The End of Time" was four weeks ago, not four years. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:16, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Matt Smith's cartoony monologue was such a jarring contrast to the emotional impact of Tennant's final scene, made even worse by the fact that it was a monologue; Davies has admitted that it was probably unfair to make him give those ridiculous lines without another, more familiar actor to anchor him. Then it was a few months of fans thinking "What a dick!" before he came back with the most complete reboot since Troughton yielded the TARDIS to Pertwee. His first few episodes suffered from some bad writing, but even then he quickly put his stamp on the role and made it his own. And once he and Moffat hit their stride, the rest of Season Five was full of brilliant episodes with a finale that brought the whole season together so well that all the deficiencies early on, like Churchill being duped into helping the Daleks be reborn, turn into strengths in their own right. By the end of his first season I was fully supportive of his being the Doctor. Then he got the chance to play opposite Liz Sladen before she died, he taught the old grouch the true meaning of Christmas in so successful a Christmas Carol parody that it just makes you glad to be alive, and now this season. . . . I have a lot of problems with the way they've been doing a lot of it. But Smith is turning in great performances even in episodes I don't like, buoyed by great chemistry with Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and their daughter Alex Kingston when she's around. The strength of the casting has carried some weak stories all by itself, and it elevates strong stories, even one-off episodes like the van Gogh one, to classic status. And based on his performance with Sarah Jane I think he'll be able to strike a similar chemistry with just about any companion, should Gillan and Darvill decide to move on. I can see a real possibility of him becoming the most beloved Doctor yet.

I'm always eager to get other fans' thoughts on the subject.

I'm by no means a die-hard fan. I started watching with the reboot, and caught much of Ecceleston's run. It wasn't easy, as I didn't have BBCA and Sci-Fi (before it was "SyFy") was notorious for just throwing it on at random times. Further, the fact that Ecceleston was only staying the one season got out not long after it started airing Stateside. So there were a couple of issues that hobbled my ability to fully enjoy his run.

I'd never heard of him before I started watching. I've since learned that he's got a long list of successes as a classical actor. So picking him as the man to reintroduce the Doctor is really a lot like casting Patrick Stewart to be captain of the Enterprise for a new generation of Star Trek adventures.

In-universe, his one-year run worked out brilliantly. He was a broken man in search of redemption. Appearing for thirteen weeks allowed progress in his quest for healing to be made each week; then in the season finale he finds what he's been looking for and can be reborn. As you say, the Tenth Doctor was a lot less haunted by the past. (The Doctor seems to have backslid a bit in his eleventh incarnation, though. They've really got a lot more in common with each other than either has with the Tenth.)

Out of universe Eccleston apparently had no faith in the production team to make the revival anything more than a short-lived novelty that wouldn't be sustained for long. He feared that frustrated writers and producers would take it out on him, as their predecessors did to some of the actors who played the Doctor toward the end of the original show's run, so he told them he would do one season and then leave no matter what the ratings said. My guess is that, given the roles he usually played, he was as afraid of success as he was of failure: Being typecast as the Doctor would likely have hurt his career.

Not many details have come out but he's let slip hints that he didn't enjoy working on the show in interviews. He's completely rejected the possibility of repriesing the role for the fiftieth anniversary special, as tradition would dictate. This could be especially problematic because he and Tennant are really the only two former Doctors who haven't aged past the point where they can put on their costumes and not look distractingly out of place to HD viewers. A Tennant-Smith buddy show could be fun, I guess, but it would hardly capture the full scope that a golden jubilee should. Turtle Fan 23:20, August 11, 2011 (UTC)

That having been said, Ecceleston's run was quite brilliant, and now that I'm removed, I can appreciate that much more. I can't say that he's my Doctor. Ecceleston was far too visible an actor before he took the part, so there is a part of my brain that still thinks "Ecceleston as the Ninth Doctor" in a rather meta fashion. Tennant and Matt Smith (especially Smith) don't have that problem. But I routinely think of the episode "Dalek" and what a legitmately brilliant performance everyone gives in that one--Ecceleston's palpable terror upon seeing what is otherwise a giant salt-shaker is just amazing. (It also says how much the show has imprinted itself on the culture that even I, who had limited experience with the show, knew that the Daleks were bad news.)

"Dalek" was certainly his finest hour. I think it was among the most relatable moments the show's had: No one in the audience can travel through time or turn into someone else to avoid dying, nor even make a sonic screwdriver with a bajillion functions. But it's a very common experience to want to blame a particular person, thing, or event for everything that's gone wrong in someone's life, and Eccleston did such a great job of showing what it's like to work through that.

I had researched the show a bit before I started watching so I knew what a Dalek was. But I was struck that, if I hadn't, the promo at the end of the previous episode would have made no sense at all. There were probably a lot of people in that boat. Turtle Fan 23:20, August 11, 2011 (UTC)

Tennant I was able to watch on BBCA, which is about as "correct" a venue as one could ask for, I suppose, and so I was able to absorb far more of his run chronologically and uninterrupted, and thus see the growth within the storyline and behind the scenes. Tennant gradually stops being as tortured a creature as Ecceleston, and soon seems to be more intent on enjoying himself. Moreover, as I said elsewhere, Tennant's performance was such that eventually it pulled Mrs. TR into a show she'd done her best to avoid her entire life, and left her thoroughly addicted to it that even after Tennant left, she still enjoys it. So for those reasons, the Tenth Doctor must be my Doctor.

Though Smith is trying his hardest to make me reconsider.

As for the rest of them--I tried Hartnell, but I suspect that his run will be more of an antique curiosity. However, it's not hard to see the grumpy old asshole echoed in Ecceleston's tortured and self-loathing take.

Given the loss of most the Second Doctor's episodes, I've been hesitant to try and sort out Troughton's run.

I think there are only seven or eight intact arcs of his. Just about all of them are considered classics. So are a lot of the partial reconstructions, though you've got to be a really hard core fan to go through those.

I've seen three of his intact arcs and they really do stand on their own quite well. "Tomb of the Cybermen" is a really fun adventure in the grand tradition of golden age science fiction, though the Cybermen of the era look and sound really pathetic to anyone who's seen them in the revival.

And his final arc, "The War Games," is worth a watch. It sort of goes on for way too long with an A story that' depends on novelty for such interest value as it has. But the final two episodes involve the Time Lords demanding that the Doctor return to Gallifrey to be punished for breaking their laws, which boil down to "Let lesser beings annihilate one another if they so choose." He gives a very spirited defense of why it's wrong to allow injustice to occur when one has the power to stop it, but nonetheless they force him to turn into Jon Pertwee, temporarily disable the TARDIS, and send him into exile.

Eventually they pardon him, but they never do come around to his way of thinking. From time to time they try to trip him up, and in the era of the Sixth Doctor, played by Colin Baker (no relation), they spend an entire season trying him for crimes against their principal of "noninterference." They're clearly a very partial jury who dislike him so much for his maverick status that they're willing to fall under the sway of a very dangerous charlatan to destroy him until the Master, of all people, turns out to be the only one willing to stand up for him. By this point it's clear that they are, in the Doctor's words, "decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core," and that they've gotten worse and worse as the series has gone on.

Usually the revival writers do a pretty good job of providing necessary background before reintroducing an element of the old show, but in this case, if they'd somehow worked all this into Tennant's swansong, I think I would have enjoyed this even more: showing the evil lengths the Time Lords were willing to go to as being the natural result of a long process of evolution. A it was I was like "Huh? I thought they were the good guys." Turtle Fan 23:20, August 11, 2011 (UTC)

Pertwee: as said elsewhere, only seen the first story arc (with the same villain in the first episode of Ecceleston's run--nice call back), but you can see how the Third Doctor is the same guy as the Tenth and the Eleventh.

Baker-I suppose in a sense the Fourth Doctor may also be called "my Doctor" for no other reason than his run was the first to make it to the U.S. and that he was the Doctor the longest. The fellow with the curly hair, long multi-color scarf and brown coat is (or was, I think) the "go to" image for most Americans upon hearing "Doctor Who". I vaguely recall one or two eps of his run, but I was a toddler when his run was aired on PBS. The local affiliate made the strange decision to air it after "Seasame Street". That damn theme song scared the holy hell out of little ole' me, and I either changed the channel as fast as I could, or ran from the room. I guess I should face my "fears" soon.

The question of the most recognizable Doctor seems to be a generational thing. Surveys have been done where people who know very little about the show were asked to pick "Doctor Who" (presumably anyone who knows enough to call him the Doctor would be knowledgeable to skew the results) out of a lineup featuring photos of each version of the Doctor. People in their 30s and under usually pick Tennant; people older than that usually pick Tom.

Smith is fast gaining ground on Tennant after his two blitzkrieg promotion tours of the US this year. He seems to be going all-out to ingratiate himself to the American public. I even saw him on Craig Ferguson's show a couple months ago explaining his preference for East Coast rap. I have no use for rap in any time zone, so I was unimpressed, but he clearly knew his stuff. Turtle Fan 23:20, August 11, 2011 (UTC)

I won't comment on the others between Baker and Ecceleston. I've never watched any of them, and I probably should. TR 19:28, August 11, 2011 (UTC)

Missing Episodes Recovered

An old film collector in England recently discovered that his collection included two of the previously-lost episodes, one from the Hartnell story "Galaxy 4" and one from the Troughton story "The Underwater Menace." Both are still incomplete. This reduces the total number of missing episodes to 106 (out of something like 775 after the most recent season's completion). It's the first dent to be made in that total since the summer of 2004, which also means it's the first since Chris Eccleston introduced the Doctor to the 21st century. And Whovians rejoiced. Turtle Fan 21:26, December 12, 2011 (UTC)

Doctor Who 80's Anime

It's a fan made movie, but I must say, this was really impressive.Link Mr Nelg

Angels Take Manhattan (Spoilers)

I was promised an emotional roller coaster, but it really didn't measure up. While the revelation that the Doctor inadvertantly created the Angels was interesting, it really screws up series continuity, as I'm sure we've all seen discussed on some forum or other. Admittedly, it was pretty awesome when they brought Tom Baker back to play the flashback sequence. The Billie Piper cameo, on the other hand, was just embarrassing. I can't believe they went to all that trouble just to set up "a Rose between two thorns." It wasn't even that funny.

I thought it was in poor taste for River to "memorialize" Sarah Jane with "Good riddance to that stuck-up bitch." Of course, in the poor taste department, nothing can top Amy and Rory acting out an extremely graphic version of The Aristocrats. Also quite the letdown that their exit from series canon was being burned at the stake by angry villagers who felt their act had corrupted their children's morals. It's not like the sight of Rory fist-fucking Amy while she crammed her shoe down his throat looked like fun; if anything, I'd worry those kids would all think of "sex" as traumatic and become celibate.

And what did any of that have to do with the treasure hunt for Al Capone's vault?

...it wasn't Geraldo's fault. TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Hell, what were they doing in New York if that's what they wanted? Capone had no allies among the Five Families and hardly ever went there himself. And wasn't it a bit out of character for Davros to challenge the Doctor to a treasure hunt to begin with?

Now that anyone who ignored the spoiler warning is off the scent, that was an extremely powerful episode; in some ways the equal to "The End of Time." You know, watching Amy's first episode, with Tennant's farewell tour of his companions still fresh in my mind (and thinking "kissogram" meant "stripper") I had serious doubts as to Gillan's ability to fill her predecessors' shoes. She came off as a pale imitation. Now it's hard to imagine the show without her, or at least the Eleventh Doctor era (about which I had similar doubts between spoiling the pathos of Tennant's final moments with "Legs! I've still got legs!" and the Komedy with the food right after he crash landed). The Christmas Carol adaptation and the episode with Katy Manning and the late Liz Sladen do offer some reassurance: Smith seems easy to work with and able to strike a winning chemistry with a diverse range of co-stars.

Overall, I agree. We've already seen the new companion, and Smith seemed to work with her just fine. TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I've looked up clips of her in a few different things and I do worry I'm going to find her annoying. Plus I don't like the fact that, with the exception of Catherine Tate, the casting people seem unwilling to consider anyone but good-looking young women to play the primary companion. I'd like to see a season, or a semi-season or whatever, where the Doctor's main companion is male; that's how it worked throughout the storied Patrick Troughton/Frazer Hines tenure, and many people consider that the show's golden era. There are other examples as well. (Actually, I'd really like to see James Corden become a series regular. He pairs up with Smith perfectly; their humor is funny, their drama is tense, their emotional moments are poignant.)

However, "Asylum" did demonstrate that Smith and Coleman can play together without either dragging the other one down. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:59, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I know that Gillan specifically asked to be written out in such a way that slammed the door shut on any future appearances.

That makes the ending a little more bearable--it almost felt vindictive how permanent the thing was, especially after "The Power of Three" made such a point of telling us how Amy and Rory had come to enjoy their mundane lives in the present. TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I think "The Power of Three" was meant to prime the pump so we'd be even more emotionally invested the Ponds as death approached. "Look how lovable they are!"

At least UNIT's back on the side of the angels. What with giving Earth a self-destruct mechanism, allying with the Bane, helping to round up children as gifts to those terrifying 456, and taking part in the conspiracy to steal the TARDIS, they were a far cry from the Third Doctor's invaluable allies. And of course it was a stroke of genius to have the Brig's daughter responsible for cleaning up their act. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:59, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I had hoped they'd at least leave that door open for Rory, even if only so the Doctor has the option of another pre-regeneration farewell tour or something like that. I guess he could peek in on Little Amelia, as he did New Year's Eve Rose,

Speaking of--Rose's exit was referred to as "permanent" the first time, but she did come back to help save the world in Series 4 easily enough. So who knows. (It occurs to me that the Doctor did interact with a victim in the past way back in "Blink"; I'm not quite clear why getting thrown back in time by an Angel makes it impossible for the Doctor to contact either Amy or Rory--I must have missed something.) TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I recall reading that when Billie Piper left, she had already pitched the idea of her returning a few years later to Davies. The seeming permanence of her departure was because anything less would have rendered implausible any possibility of the Doctor finding a new companion and moving on. It also added to the dramatic impact of her return. Freema Agyeman also left with the intention of popping in and out during the next season as well as on the spin-offs, though the Law & Order gig forced her to scale back significantly on the latter. I don't know for a fact when Davies decided to make Torchwood or when John Barrowman signed on, but I have seen interviews which occurred pretty soon after he was written out as a TARDIS regular that implied Jack would continue to be a significant presence. Liz Sladen had originally intended "School Reunion" to be a for-one-night-only reprise, just enough to confirm that the revived series is indeed in the same continuity as the old (a question which was left wide open throughout Eccleston's tenure, if you look closely), but she had so much fun with it that they launched another spin-off.

So from an out-of-universe perspective, the Season 4 finale was very easy to throw together, though it did require a bit of a hand-wave in-universe to get Rose back.

Gillan, on the other hand, specifically told Moffat that she wanted something so definitive that it would preclude a similar cameo. That implies she doesn't want to appear again and would turn it down even if Moffat can come up with a workaround for her being stranded. I'm not sure why; unlike Eccleston, who to my great sorrow ruled out returning for any hypothetical multi-Doctor stories as soon as he left, Gillan always insists she loved working on DW. I wouldn't be surprised if her attitude softens in the future. (Especially if her career falters--We don't wish that on her, of course, but she's not that versatile a performer, and she's frankly even more likely to be type-cast than Wil Wheaton.)

I have no idea whether Darvill made the same request; what I was thinking would happen was, the Angels would kill Amy and Rory would leave the Doctor out of anger and hatred that he'd led her to this. Now getting Rory un-stranded means ipso facto getting Amy un-stranded as well; we can't even have him return as an elderly widower, because the tombstone is quite clear that he goes first. So I guess if Gillan won't go for it, we can't get Darvill back, either, even if he would be willing. Too bad. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:59, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

As for "Blink," and why he can't go back for them, beats me. I guess it has something to do with the fact that he'd already seen the gravestone and knew how things would end for them--but that makes no sense. If he can't change events you've already seen concluded, what the hell was all that flitting about in "The Big Bang"? And even if he can't bring them back to the present, why can't he at least stop in for a visit?

Though consider that, while he did save his own skin, and Martha's, in "Blink," he told the DVD guy he was fucked even while saying "But you can help me get unfucked!". And he wouldn't even let Sally and what's-his-name ride back with the TARDIS. That's cold. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:59, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

though Caitlin Blackwood will surely age out of the role soon, if she hasn't already. Maybe Rory's father could stand in. (Some explaining the Doctor will have to do if he sees him again, hmm?)

Yeah. "The Power of Three" really casts a pall over the whole thing. TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I've been getting deeply into the show's history the last few months, so here's what Brian's "What happened to your old companions?" question set off in my mind:

"The people who used to travel with me? Well let's see, first there was Susan. I threw her out of the TARDIS and forced her into a shotgun wedding, then took off. I promised her I'd go back one day, but I never did. The Daleks did, though.

"Next there were Ian and Barbara. I tried for two years to get them home, but they figured out I had no idea how, so when a captured Dalek time ship fell into our laps, they used that instead. I gave them quite a guilt trip.

"I left Vicki in the ruins of Troy to spend the rest of her life among ancients who'd just lost a war and had their city sacked--this is the girl who thought twentieth century UK was unbearable primitive, mind you.

"Katerina died. Sara Kingdom died. Ann Chaplet died. Steven got so sick of me letting them die that he stormed off in a huff. He came back, but then I punished him by forcing him to spend the rest of his life among aliens of the week.

"Dodo, who cares. Ben and Polly, similar to Ian and Barbaba. Victoria fled in terror. Jamie and Zoe had their memories erased. Liz quit her job because she couldn't stand my limitless egoism. Jo joined a hippie commune. Mike went crazy. The rest of UNIT I just ditched. I asked after Benton and Harry but never checked in on them. I did check in on the Brig from time to time, but when I learned he died it never occurred to me that I could just go back to a slightly earlier date.

"I ditched Sarah Jane and ran off. Leeta moved to Gallifrey, so she's toast. K9 broke. Romana made me leave her in a parallel universe. Adric died. Nyssa moved to a leper colony. Tegan had a nervous breakdown. Kamelion begged me to kill him. Turlough turned himself into the law. Peri died--or did she? Glitz wandered off and took Mel with him. Ace, I have no idea.

"Grace and Chang Lee both said they wanted no part of our attempt to relaunch the show in America, and given Fox's track record with sci fi, who can blame them?

"I threw Adam out of the TARDIS because he got on my nerves. Lynda died. I left Jack to his miserable fate and avoided him for 150 years. Meanwhile he was using me as a role model in the way he ran Torchwood, and after he killed his own grandson, he learned too late that the knowledge that you've done what you need to do does nothing to alleviate the pain they don't think I feel.

"I ruined Harriet Jones's career, and denied Britain a Golden Age, because she'd raised valid questions about the reliability of my commitment to defending Earth. Madame Pompadour died young, but not young enough to keep from wondering why I'd broken my promise to take her traveling. Mickey left because he couldn't stand the constant reminders that Rose didn't love him anymore. Then she wound up in the same universe with him and continued reminding him of it.

"Sally gave me information that would save my life and I brushed her off. Martha couldn't take the heartache I caused her. Astrid died. River--you know about River, right, Brian?--sacrificed herself to save me in the creepy library, and now every time I see her I have to pretend I don't know what will happen. Donna's brain fried; I did reverse the damage at the last second by turning her back into the bitch, and now The Office is ruined.

What amuses me is the accuracy.Zhukov15 (talk) 21:30, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

"I forced Jackson to confront the deaths of his family. I busted Christina out of police custody and told her to leave me alone. I thought I was saving Adelaide's life, but what I was really doing was forcing her to kill herself rather than allow history to take its course. I did save Wilf's life, with an enormous guilt trip attached.

"I drove Van Gogh to the point of suicide by constantly mispronouncing his name. I manipulated Kazran into falling in love, then immediately made him cause his beloved's death. I used Canton T Delaware as part of an elaborate, unnecessary scheme designed to traumatize your family. Rita died. Craig nearly met a fate worse than death and only escaped by disregarding series continuity. Madge got her husband back and probably bored him to death shortly thereafter. Oswin was already worse than dead when I found her. I abducted you and got you shot for no reason, so we're all caught up.

"But Amy, who's already died once, and Rory, who dies all the time? They'll be fine."

Indulgent, yes, but it proves the point. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:59, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Of course, the whole point to last year was that fixed points in time aren't quite impossible to avert. And if Jack is indeed the Face of Boe, he avoids another one in the end by finally dying. (Presumably of embarrassment after someone reminds him of Shark Attack 3: Megalodon.)

Other than that my only problem was inconsistency with the Angels. I counted at least three scenes where an Angel stood still and waited even though no one was watching them.

Maybe they were just trying to be patient?:) TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

And really, how often is the Statue of Liberty (which, of course, is not made of stone) going to be unobserved long enough to get off Bedsloe Island, cross the harbor, come ashore, walk to this Winter Quay place, do her thing, and get back home unnoticed?

That was a fridge moment, but the effect was so damn cool/intimidating at the time, I just ignored it. TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

I was wondering about that one as soon as I saw her, I'm afraid, though the image was so cool that I forgave it. I thought Rory's attempt at wit was pretty lame. I did quite like the disbelieving resignation of the guy from the teaser. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:59, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Not quite my only problem, actually: We get no new DW all year, then it's back for a measly five episodes, and gone again? We really should have had a full season. Turtle Fan (talk) 06:04, October 1, 2012 (UTC)

They're doing something goofy-we'll get the Christmas episode, then another 8 in the spring or something. TR (talk) 05:18, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Presumably, hopefully, another Christmas episode in '13, plus the ballyhooed anniversary special. In total, sixteen episodes in a two-year period--for a show that's given us fourteen in every year since it came on except '09. (Technically fifteen in '10, albeit barely.) I get that they're British, but it's annoying. Wait all year for it, and as soon as you get used to it being on, it's gone.

That's true of most shows I watch these days, I'm afraid. It's getting harder and harder to get used to a weekly TV routine. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:59, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

The Name of the Doctor

First of all, every time I say that title I feel like I should be beginning a prayer. But never mind that.

I want to get my thoughts on the season finale down now, before it airs, in no small part because I'm hoping I'll be pleasantly surprised and it will actually be good, and predicting all the ways in which I can see it failing should help clear the air for me a bit. But I haven't had much hope since learning the premise of it, and seeing the trailer after "Nightmare in Silver" just now certainly didn't help. (River's grave? We do already know how she dies, don't we? Strax and Vastra coming to blows? Enough with them already! Those eyeless critters in morning suits?)

When the blue head talked about "the fields of Tranzalore, the Fall of the Eleventh, and The Question . . . Doctor Who?" I assumed he was setting us up for Matt Smith's final episode (hence the Fall of the Eleventh). My wild guess was that, if the Doc can't speak falsely or fail to answer, and it's that important that whoever is asking not learn his name, maybe he'd regenerate so that he'd get all loopy and out of it for a little while, as he does in every post-regeneration episode, and would be able to say truthfully "I don't know." But I just don't see how the reveal of his name will by itself provide enough dramatic tension to be worthy of a season finale.

As I see it, his name might be something banal and ordinary, which would be anticlimactic to the point of being ridiculous. "My name is . . . Bob." Susan had a banal and ordinary name (assuming that was her name, and not a pseudonym she assumed for her life on Totters Lane which wound up sticking). It might be something barely pronounceable, like Romanadvoratrelundar; in that case, no one will ever use it. It might be something sort of halfway between the two, a moderately fantastic name like Rassilon or Borusa. Or maybe it will be a pun on Who, like OHM (which was supposed to be the name of the big bad in "The Three Doctors" but was changed to Omega--with everyone shifting the emphasis to the first syllable and saying it like OHM-ega). I'm certain they won't shatter the fourth wall like this, but it did occur to me that "WHO" could be turned into a very appropriate acronym for "William Hartnell and Others."

No matter what his name is, though, I just can't imagine it being at all relevant. He's been the Doctor so long, he's the Doctor to everyone who knows him in universe (including the one person who does know his name), he's the Doctor to all the show's fans, and he's "Doctor Who" to the uninitiated and the evil supercomputer in The War Machines. No one's going to refer to him as anything else at this point, anymore than people talk about Thomas Wilson or Henry Gehrig or Hiram Grant.

Ian and Barbara tried to learn his name in the first few episodes, but at that point the amount of information they didn't know about him was understandably terrifying, considering how completely they relied on him and how little effort he was making either to put them at ease or to earn their trust. They never did learn his name, but within a few episodes they did become quite comfortable with him; and if he insisted on being addressed only by his (dubious) title, they were okay with that. From that point up through "The Wedding of River Song," with the above mentioned exception of The War Machines, "Doctor Who?" was nothing but a very occasional in-joke. Now all of a sudden it's the most dangerous and destructive bit of information in existence (which must be serious, considering that what was at stake in the Series 6 finale, the Series 5 finale, The End of Time, the Series 4 finale, and the Series 3 finale, plus a handful of classic serials like Inferno, The Three Doctors, The Pyramids of Mars, The Armageddon Factor, The City of Death, and Logopolis was literally everything). We haven't even had any clues as to why . . . someone . . . will be able to use this stray bit of information to commit unspeakable evil, so this one-hour episode is going to have to lay everything on us from beginning to end. I really don't see how we can be expected to go from zero to buying that his name will make all the difference in such a short time.

Anyway, the finale should really be about learning why there are multiple Claras; that's what "The Snowmen" set us up for, but ever since all we've gotten are tiny little cockteases that immediately hit dead ends. Now I must admit I was somewhat skeptical when they announced that Coleman was joining the cast (well I'd never heard of her, though I worried she was chosen just because she was yet another good-looking young woman, but I quickly made a point of finding a few clips of her in different roles, and was not too thrilled with what I saw). When she was rolled out as a nineteenth century woman I thought the Doctor would finally stop using contemporary Earth as his home base, but he's doing even more of it now, so much so that the whole show's starting to look like some sort of pop culture parody. That's not Coleman's fault, of course, and she really has exceeded my low expectations by quite a lot. I get the feeling the writers and directors are holding her back a bit, that she could do more if she were given better stories (more on that in a minute), allowed to sass the Doctor a la Karen Gillan or Catherine Tate without immediately being thrown back into a silly, naive characterization, and liberated from those irritating brats she babysits. (They feel like some cheap off-brand version of Sarah Jane's young friends and bog down literally every scene they have. At least they were catatonic through the meat of "Nightmare in Silver." But for God's sake, what kind of chess club member falls for fool's mate? Even someone making legal moves at random isn't going to leave that avenue open.)

As for the season (or the second half of the season) up to this point, I've been disappointed. Moffett continues to see horror stories as his main strength, and is turning almost every episode into one, no matter who writes it. The horror is failing because for the most part there's a disconnect with the threats; even though they're shown to be credible enemies, we don't feel in our bones that they're dangerous. Tonight's Cybermen and the Ice Warrior of a few weeks ago were the exceptions; the intimidation they instilled was visceral, instinctive. My reaction to the Crimson Horror was much closer to disgust than it was to fear, and the ice bitch from the frozen pond was just annoying. "Journey to the Center of the TARDIS" was a good episode with a foreboding atmosphere, but it was never clear what we were supposed to be afraid of. Being downloaded through the wifi, having a sun-god drink(?) my memories, and getting trapped in a pocket universe where time goes by so slowly (sing it, Righteous Brothers) all sound vaguely unpleasant, but they're all so abstract and notional and I was so busy considering exactly what they implied that I couldn't actually feel any alarm at the prospect.

The one-off characters have all been mediocre and forgettable. Vastra has occasional moments of glory; her detailed, regretful explanation to the Second Clara of why the Doctor would not help her was deeply moving. Jenny's just kind of there, and as an aside, while it's certainly a minor point I wish they'd stop pulling same sex couples out of their asses for the hell of it. Strax . . . Even when their schemes have been credibly dangerous, I do not find Sontarans themselves to be worth taking seriously. So using him for comic relief is an improvement, but thus far he's only told the same one or two jokes over and over: He grossly misreads the situation and recommends "a full frontal assault" with three increasingly ridiculous weapons. I've always liked the Doctor having part-time companions he could call on when he needs backup, but this outfit isn't fit to shine Glitz's shoes, never mind Lethbridge-Stewart's.

Then there's the stray bits of continuity porn that keep cropping up, from the trying-too-hard-to-be-retro new opening (I was hoping that for these eight anniversary season episodes they'd reuse each of the first eight Doctors' openings with Smith's headshot undergoing the appropriate graphic effect) to the growing difficulty he's having getting the TARDIS to go where he wants it to, to all sorts of offhand references being tossed about here and there. We've always had those but they're becoming far more common, and I assume they're meant as anniversary presents for veteran viewers. The Ice Warrior episode didn't need any of that, since it was reintroducing an old monster. The TARDIS episode had the one scene with the various sound bites as Evil Brother Number Two takes the console apart, but I was hoping for more: go into a few old companions' rooms, stumble upon a recorder or a bunch of jelly babies, things like that. It's the kind of episode that should be steeped in that sort of thing. There was one quick reference to Susan in "The Rings of Akhaten" (the first time in forever that the Doctor has spoken of her, not counting his vague "I know what you mean" response to Dr Constantine), the use of the crystal from The Green Death in "Hide" (though Smith annoyingly went 0 for 2 pronouncing the planet's name correctly, and one has to wonder, if he's had the crystal lying around all these years, why he hasn't simply used it every time a companion's been mind-controlled in the interim), and a very bitchy and unfair characterization of Tegan in "The Crimson Horror." "Nightmare in Silver" had this in spades ("This is a moonbase!" indeed; we're lucky they didn't follow it up with "But it's so large a moon we could really consider it to be the tenth planet, and it goes around in a circular orbit like a wheel in space"). The whole thing was supposed to be in the style of a Troughton-era Cyberman story, and it sort of managed that, but it didn't quite play the tribute straight, coming off more as a loving but irreverent pastiche.

So to sum it up, I've been on the whole disappointed by these seven episodes and I have serious doubts that learning the Doctor's name is going to be enough to turn the season around, but I certainly do hope I'm wrong and will gladly eat crow next week if I am.

I do hold out much stronger hope for the anniversary special when Tennant and Piper return. Since it's just them, I'm assuming it's the Tenth Doctor's clone rather than a Time Stream-crossing Doctor, and that he and Rose punch through from their parallel universe again. I do think that's the way to do it; "The Five Doctors" proved that this idea of "We're gonna bring everyone in from every era!", with actors who have aged way, way out of their roles and clunky workarounds for those who are dead, unavailable, or unwilling to come back, simply can't live up to the excitement it instills in the popular imagination of fans. (Sorry, Johnny B.) I don't see why people are excited about the Zygons coming back, I didn't find them remotely memorable--octopus tentacles with the faces of anthropomorphized hounds. Having the Daleks and Cybermen in a rematch will be cool if the Cybermen are actually competitive and it's not a one-sided curb stomp like it was in "Doomsday." And . . . yeah. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:26, May 12, 2013 (UTC)

So the episode was certainly very, very different from what I expected.

As I said, I really don't care what the Doctor's name is, but I do not appreciate being cock-teased about it. Nevertheless, the significance of his name turns out to be a lot more interesting than I'd thought it would--what remains after the name he'd chosen as a promise to himself is invalidated as a broken promise. "But you did not do it in the name of the Doctor." That's a pretty awesome line, although "Introducing John Hurt as The Doctor" would seem to undercut it.

Immediately after the episode I went online to see if anyone thought they had found some clues. The first halfway compelling theory I found was that he is an aged version of the clone of the Tenth Doctor. That clone is an offshoot of the Doctor but is not the Doctor himself. He did something because he had no choice and did it in the name of peace, but the real Doctor did not approve. And if the theory that the clone and Rose (rather than a time stream crossing Ten with his contemporary companion) are going to turn up in the anniversary special is correct . . . well, who knows. The problem is that the clone's actions in "Journey's End" are not a secret; Rose, Martha, Donna (even if she would soon forget), Sarah Jane, Jack, Mickey, and Jackie all watched it happen, and none of them were sworn to silence or anything. Davros saw it too and he apparently survived; if nothing else, what happened to him there wasn't any deadlier than any of the other things that killed him over the years.

I have a very vague sense we're going to learn that the First Doctor is in fact the second incarnation of this particular Time Lord. Maybe we'll finally learn his origin story properly and we'll learn that there was something . . . difficult about his birth. Maybe one or both of his parents were evil, or something. His father was a typical Gallifreyan prick who kidnapped an Earth woman ("I'm half human on my mother's side" is a widely ignored line dismissed as part of Eight's all-around loopiness) and forced her to become a Time Lord (Leela's exit from the series did suggest it was possible for a human to "convert," and that would allegedly have been reinforced in Ace's exit had the show staved off cancellation one year longer, though Donna's exit seems to negate the possibility). She was so miserable at having been forced into this life she didn't choose that she gave her son a name that means "pain" (hence John Hurt?). As he was raised in the asshole-ish ways of the Time Lords, young Pain lived up to his name. One day he was confronted with the pain he had caused and refused to do anything about it, believing that the Gallifreyan laws (most likely something about "only to observe, never to interfere") were necessary to maintain peace. But the pain he caused upset him so badly that it sent him into some sort of crisis that caused him to regenerate into Hartnell, and with his new life he decided to take on a new name, replacing Pain with something with connotations of healing. He then preached another way to his fellows, but was ostracized for his non-conformity and disowned by his family, all except Susan. At her prompting, he stole a broken Type 40 TARDIS based on the recommendation of a young girl he'd never met, and the adventure began. That's just my shot in the dark.

Back to the episode, though. The things that had worried me in the trailer turned out not to be relevant at all. The trio of Vastra, Jenny, and Strax were well used this time, and the Doctor's emotional explanation of why he was going to fight for them really did make them sympathetic. River, though--She's a polarizing figure, I understand, but I generally like her. Not last night! There was no point to her being there as she was. Someone to feed Clara exposition? Having her as a psychic link instead of actually being there was absurd. Having her tease us with the needlessly cryptic and thoroughly uninteresting ten millionth repetition of "Spoilers!" was dumb, especially now that we've got her back story and no longer see her as this figure shrouded in mystery. Worst of all was the decision to set the episode, from her perspective, after "Silence in the Library." If she can continue to take part in adventures beyond that point, it undermines the tragedy that's been inherent in the character from the start--that she's foredoomed, that the Doctor knows it, and that every time he sees her he has to pretend he doesn't know how her journey ends. A terrible and thoroughly unnecessary decision.

Clara's big signature moment was certainly awesome, enough so to justify the character's slow start. I'm skeptical where she can go from here, however. There's really no topping what she's done, nor is she going to be able to fill anything close to a companion's role now that she's seen the Doctor at every point in his life. She knows way, way too much, and the point of the companion has always been as an audience stand in, including someone to get lost in the mystery. And wiping her memory while keeping her around awhile later would be the worst thing they could possibly do. I don't know how long Coleman's under contract for, but I believe the best course now is to write her out in the anniversary special.

As for villains, those whisperers were kind of pathetic. Their creepy appearance gives them a certain memorability, but unlike similarly creepy Moffett inventions like the Angels, Silence, and Vashta Nerada (sp?), it ends there. Having them serve a villain we've seen before is better than having them show up out of nowhere, but it raises new questions: If the Great Intelligence can create mooks ex nihilo, why bother with the snowmen, or the yetis? And why is it of all enemies the one that hates the Doctor so much it's prepared to sacrifice its existence to make him miserable? The Master didn't feel that way; sure he refused to regenerate in "Last of the Time Lords" because he knew it would hurt the Doctor, but he'd already sown the seeds of his resurrection by other means. He wasn't willing to embrace oblivion just to torture the poor guy. Davros decided to stay on the burning Dalek ship and curse the Doctor rather than leave aboard the TARDIS, but he'd made other escape arrangements. I don't see why the GI's hatred would run so much deeper than theirs.

The only thing other than that I can think to say is that, as far as continuity porn goes, the virtual appearances by other Doctors were certainly pretty awesome. Especially the initial theft of the TARDIS. I might have wished that the other appearances had also involved some rudimentary interaction or at least a hint of what Clara's role in each of those episodes was. For the most part she seemed to be standing around watching him walk past.

An interesting if problematic finale overall. There should have been something leading up to it in each of the recent episodes; maybe as I mull over it certain connections I missed will become apparent, but even if they do it has nothing of the sense of a puzzle being completed that I got from "The Big Bang," or even "Last of the Time Lords" or "The Parting of the Ways." Leaving us wondering about John Hurt for six months feels rather unfair, and I don't think the season-ending cliffhanger is a format that serves a show with such long off-seasons well. But it will guarantee that I look forward to November 23, and that I'll have wheels turning in my head trying to figure it out up till then. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:14, May 19, 2013 (UTC)

I suspect the splitting up of the season, with half of it wrapping up the Ponds and then the other half introducing Clara, didn't really do the whole thing any favors. There were several strong moments throughout, but it seemed less disciplined overall.

The end result is a merely ok season finale. It resolved Clara's status as the Impossible Girl in a rather pat manner, especially for all the build-up. It also seems to have resolved River Song's character, which was much better. But it seemed more of a wrap-up of open plotlines without having much of a plot in itself. Of course, it opened up a whole new can worms with the reveal of John Hurt; given the dialog, I agree with your guess that we're meant to believe that there have been more regenerations than we've been told, and that the Doctor called himself something else before he became the First Doctor.

Unless it turns out that the Doctor's real name is Joshua Bar Joseph, or Albert Einstein, or something that will throw the whole series into a new light, I find I also don't terribly care about that plot point. TR (talk) 02:32, May 20, 2013 (UTC)

Vale Undecim

So Matt Smith is hanging up his cool bowtie on Christmas. I was starting to get the same vibe from his performance as I got from Tennant as he headed into his last season, but I neither expected nor wanted him to leave just yet. I suspect he's finding that with Gillan and Darvill gone, it's just not the same. (Bad news for Coleman--we're told she was cast as the companion based entirely on her chemistry with Smith, and I got the sense she was pretty dependent on him as a partner based on scenes this season where she had to interact with guest stars on her own.) I also shouldn't wonder that he feels his star has risen as high as it's going to, and if he rides DW any further he'll be in danger of type casting.

I'm thinking that he and Moffett have both had their minds made up for some time. I'm also thinking the anniversary special will end in another cliffhanger which will set up the Fall of the Eleventh after Tennant and Hurt take off. Smith and Moffett will certainly want to give The End of Time a run for its money, and to do that they'll need to build big story momentum. No doubt in my mind that "The Name of the Doctor" is their running start.

I was hoping Gillan and Darvill, as well as James Corden and Katy Manning and a few others, would cameo in Smith's swansong, as Tennant's castmates all did in his. It might happen but I think the Ponds will sense it's "too soon" to shoot tbeir fixed point in time etween the eyes.

Anyway, on to the next Doctor. I'm in the camp that would love to see Eddie Izzard get the role. He wanted to be Nine, he wanted to be Ten, he wanted to be Eleven; he's got Tom Baker's endorsement, and could equal Baker in eccentricities and the sense he's hiding something. He can do funny with the best of them; he can do dark with the best of them; he can switch between the two even more effortlessly than Smith can. At 51, he can bring back a certain mature gravitas that's been missing since Eccleston left, and which will be very hard to recapture if we get three young Doctors in a row. And of course he would be fine with any costume they come up with for him, though I would hope they don't put him in drag regularly.

If they do want a Doctor in a dress, a few months ago I saw Minnie Driver on a talk show, and though Doctor Who didn't come up I couldn't shake the feeling she'd be a fine Doctor. No idea whether she'd be interested.

Among more conventional choices, though I haven't heard his name come up, Dan Stevens is pretty popular, he's looking to make his next big move, and I don't believe he has any upcoming commitments after he finishes his current project with Liam Neeson. If I were him I'd consider it.

Of course, most likely it will be someone nobody's ever heard of. Aside from Eccleston and Peter Davison, it pretty much always is. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:16, June 3, 2013 (UTC)

Peter Capaldi

I must confess I had no idea who he was when Zoe What's-Her-Name announced him; I wasn't even sure I'd heard the name right (at first I thought Capote) and kept waiting for his name to flash on the screen so I could look him up.

I've not seen The Thick of It (that may change if I can find it online somewhere free of charge) or the movie he won an Oscar for. I did look at a highlight reel of his finest moments from The Thick of It (as selected by the person who came up with it, of course) on YouTube, and I was pretty happy with what I saw. I remembered him as the evil bureaucrat from what should have been Torchwood's swansong. (If they ever do bring Barrowman back, we might expect an awkward moment; of course, at this point bringing him back at all would constitute an awkward moment in and of itself.) I don't remember him from "The Fires of Pompeii," though I'll give that one a rewatch one of these days. (What an amusing coincidence that Matt Smith's predecessor, successor, and principal costar were all together.)

From what I've been able to see so far, plus Moffet's three-word description of the Twelfth Doctor as "different from Matt," I'm expecting (assuming they write to his strengths) a sort of a Colin Baker style: sharp-tongued, grouchy, irritable, and superior, but still the Doctor, with two hearts of gold underneath. I'm afraid I question how well Coleman will do opposite him; it's probably going to be night and day compared to working with Smith,and she's been pretty dependent on her chemistry with him to date. She might end up as a Nicola Bryant to his Baker. Of course, I also feel her story has reached its natural conclusion, and once he current cliffhanger has been resolved I'm really at a loss as to how she can pick up from there with another story arc.

I was still hoping for Izzard, but I'd made peace with the realization that his time has come and gone. Capaldi brings some of the things that had made Izzard such an appealing choice to me: He's older (the same age Hartnell was in 1963, actually, though he looks younger by most of a generation), and that superior, self-important streak will hopefully put an end to the self-loathing motif that's been going on pretty much unabated since "Journey's End." Those who had wanted a return to more outlandish costumes will be disappointed; I just don't see how Capaldi can look good in anything that's not conservative, and though I've been picking up on a lot of Colin Baker parallels I certainly hope they don't foredoom him by making him look ridiculous.

Overall, I think I'm pretty happy with this choice--especially since I'd been seeing some increasingly alarming names bandied about as frontrunners, including Burn Gorman, Craig Charles, and *shudder* Russell Brand. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:33, August 5, 2013 (UTC)

I can hear Brand's "where's my sonic screw driver?" in my head right now.

My reaction to Capaldi's name was "Who?" Then he came out, and my response was: "Oh, hey, Frobisher from Torchwood." I don't remember him from "Fires of Pompeii", either. But I do sort of remember him from one or two other things. I think I agree with your assessment of him for the most part.

I didn't recognize him as Frobisher right away, but when I read it on his filmography I thought, Ah yes, of course. When I saw his face there was a moment of "Okay, I know I've seen you somewhere. . . . " Turtle Fan (talk) 21:44, August 5, 2013 (UTC)

In the interests of expediency, I do hope that he sticks around for a while. He needn't try to break Tom Baker's record, but I hope it's longer than the average three-four years, since it now seems possible, with the John Hurt bombshell, that this is actually the twelfth regeneration... TR (talk) 05:16, August 5, 2013 (UTC)

Ah yes, the regeneration limit. One of my favorite SF bloggers rolled out a theory last month that has Hurt as the Valeyard; he's about to do something to give himself infinite regenerations, and Smith regenerates into Capaldi (though of course he didn't say Capaldi when he wrote it) to preempt him. In the process the Doctor himself obtains infinite regenerations. But I have to say, I'm fine with the regeneration limit being ignored altogether from here on out. It hasn't been a major plot point since 1982, and it hasn't been mentioned since the relaunch (not counting that sarcastic line in Sarah Jane Adventures when the Doctor's crawling through the heating duct with the kids). It was sort of alluded to here and there between '82 and '05, mostly in reference to the Master--and since then we've seen the Master have one perfectly normal regeneration and one death that could have been prevented by regeneration. But in the latter case it was clear he was deliberately refusing. There was no "I can't regenerate! I've used up all my regenerations, you know that."

Limit or no limit, I think three or four years feels about right for most of the Doctors. (Apparently when Peter Davison got the part, Patrick Troughton told him he thought the last two Doctors had held it way too long and urged Davison to reintroduce the tradition of a fairly quick turnover.) Of course, Capaldi is an older actor with a meaty CV already in the books; Smith and Tennant before him were young actors just starting out their careers. They both must have felt some pressure to move on to other projects before Doctor Who became the only thing they'd ever done and typecasting set in. That won't be a concern this time, another advantage to breaking the streak of giving the part to youngsters. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:44, August 5, 2013 (UTC)

The Thick of It is fucking amazing. Hulu's got all four seasons/series plus the Christmas specials for free. Jelay14 (talk) 23:26, August 5, 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm going to have to take a look. I found a hilarious mash-up on YouTube that has Malcolm Tucker commenting on different plot elements of Season 7. I realize that the Doctor's not going to go around with his voice box connected to a sewer like that, but once again I really, really hope that rough outer shell of disdain and irritability is translated into the character. It's probably just a result of doing this internal comparison, but I'm suddenly realizing that the Eleventh has been really, really, really nice. Even when he does things like call Strax "a psychotic potato dwarf" to his face, his hearts just aren't in it. For someone whose introduction to the show was watching Eccleston literally foam at the mouth as he screamed at a wounded Dalek and thinking "Damn, this is going to be good!" I'm rather surprised I haven't been bothered by that up till now. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:28, August 9, 2013 (UTC)

The Day of the Doctor Synopsis

So BBC just put out an official synopsis:

"The Doctors embark on their greatest adventure in this 50th anniversary special: in 2013, something terrible is awakening in London's National Gallery; in 1562, a murderous plot is afoot in Elizabethan England; and somewhere in space an ancient battle reaches its devastating conclusion. All of reality is at stake as the Doctor's own dangerous past comes back to haunt him."

As one would expect, it doesn't offer us much. I'm thinking the reference to the Doctor's PAST might mean we can rule out the possibility of Hurt as the Valeyard, since the Master said he came in post-Capaldi; though even then, the Doctor's second trial is certainly in the past, so maybe not. Angela Peasance, who played Elizabeth I in "The Shakespeare Code," had already been confirmed as taking part in the special, so the revelation of an Elizabethan side-adventure is not unexpected (though the date is problematic: Elizabeth turned 29 in 1562, Peasance turned 72 this year. And if anything I'd think they'd go with 1563 so they could connect something to 1963 by putting it in a 400-year vault or something.)

To recap, aside from Angela Peasance we know that the following veteran actors are also returning: Matt Smith (duh), Jenna Louise Coleman, David Tennant, Billie Piper, Jemma Redgrave (the Brig's daughter from "The Power of Three," I would guess to take point on the National Gallery crisis) and of course John Hurt. Smith, Tennant, and Hurt are it as far as Doctors go (my hearts broke when I read that Eccleston was offered a role and turned it down) and if any other former companions are coming back it's an amazingly well-kept secret. (I did see one blogger suggest that John Barrowman's very vocal disappointment at his exclusion may be a red herring to conceal the fact that Jack will turn up after all, but one can find bloggers suggesting just about anything, so I'm not taking that seriously.) Daleks, Cybermen, and Zygons are all going to turn up (so we're told; as far as I know only the latter have actually been photographed on set) and rumors are that Time Lords were seen in that goddamned Comic Con exclusive trailer that they never did make available for the general public, officially or otherwise. Since we're going to be delving into the Doctor's past, it's hard to imagine that Time Lords would not cameo. Still, this story is beginning to sound awfully crowded, and I'm starting to worry it will come off as being loaded up with all sorts of extraneous plot elements.

Over the past few months I've come up with my own speculation about how this all fits together, and I must say I've become rather attached to it. I'm afraid I'll be rather disappointed if (more likely, when) it turns out I'm wrong. Turtle Fan (talk) 18:23, November 4, 2013 (UTC)

For a Beginner (Zhukov15)

I always to watch this series but never found the time. Can someone provide me a brief summary? Zhukov15 (talk) 23:37, November 4, 2013 (UTC)

The series' protagonist is known as the Doctor, a title he assumed as his main identity to symbolize a promise he once made to himself. His real name is unknown but may finally be revealed in the upcoming episode. (His name is NOT Who, even though an evil supercomputer once thought it was.) He is an alien from a race known as the Time Lords. The most significant fact about Time Lord biology is a process called regeneration, which allows a mortally wounded Time Lord to heal himself by rewriting his DNA. In the process he takes on an entirely new body, while retaining the memories and experiences he'd already had. His new personality tends to be a variation on a general theme, as the nurture portion of his psyche stays constant while the nature portion changes. This allows a Time Lord to live for many centuries, and also allows the BBC to keep the show going when the leading man moves on. According to one wit, "It's a way for the Doctor to change into someone else whenever the actor playing him starts wanting more money."

There have been eleven Doctors with a twelfth due to take over next year. There's also an unknown figure who appeared in a cliffhanger last spring among echoes of the Doctor's past lives. The Doctor described him this way: "I said he was me, I didn't say he was the Doctor. . . . My name, my real name, it's not important. What's important is the name you choose. It's like a promise you make to yourself. He's the one who broke the promise. . . . He is my secret." The mystery man then explains "What I did, I did without choice. . . . In the name of peace and sanity!" To which the response is "But not in the name of the Doctor." Naturally it's been a long six months speculating about this figure's identity.

The Doctor lives in a vehicle of Time Lord manufacture known as the TARDIS. It can travel into the past or future and to any point in physical space. Sometimes it flies there, usually it materializes and dematerializes. It's massive inside, possibly infinite, but due to its extradimensional nature its exterior can be quite tiny. It's supposed to take on the appearance of something that blends into the scenery of whatever time and place it materializes in, but whether because it's broken or just cranky, it always appears as a police box, a sort of emergency phone booth placed throughout London by the Metropolitan Police Service in the 1950s and 60s. The rules change every time it comes up but the TARDIS has some sort of intelligence.

The Doctor invites interesting people he meets along the way to travel with him. His original companion was his granddaughter, who joined him when he went into self-imposed exile from his homeworld of Gallifrey. She went by the alias of Susan Foreman and helped to humanize him in his early travels. At the Doctor's tearful insistence, she stayed behind after one of his adventures to marry a local human man.

Since then he's had dozens of other companions. They love him but their adventures tend to end badly (at least from his perspective), and he's racked with guilt whenever they leave. Every now and then this guilt leads him to say he won't take on any more companions, but it never lasts. Since his favorite planet is Earth, most of his companions are humans. For some reason he defaults to what the audience considers the current time period: In the 60s he mostly turned up in the 60s, in the 80s he tended to favor the 80s, these days he generally visits the 10s, etc. Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble, Jack Harkness, Sarah Jane Smith (whom he'd met as the Third Doctor, parted from as the Fourth Doctor, and reunited with as the Tenth Doctor), Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song, and Clara Oswald are the prominent companions of recent years. Each of them except Clara, who is still part of the cast, has had a particularly tragic departure episode. In the old series they would most often just slip away quietly, though there were a few tear-jerkers back then too, like Adric's death, Tegan's nervous breakdown, Jo's engagement to a sexy young scientist, and the above-mentioned decision to let Susan spread her wings.

His primary enemies are the Daleks, a race of superintelligent mutated blobs who live within suits of armor. They also possess time travel technology, as well as a pathological xenophobia that leads them to want to exterminate any non-Daleks they encounter. They're extremely powerful and no one but the Doctor ever has much luck defeating them. On the first day of their existence he had the opportunity to destroy them and preclude their existence, but he just couldn't bring himself to commit genocide. So he feels partly responsible for everything they've done since. He did think he'd caused their extinction in the Last Great Time War, when they went to war with the Time Lords. A few survived and eventually managed to rebuild their race by exploiting the Doctor's emotional damage.

Then there are the Cybermen, descendants of humans from Earth's sister planet who were forced to survive their world's gradual destruction by adding more and more cybernetic implants to their bodies. Eventually they became, for all intents and purposes, artificial life forms. At that point they started upgrading regular humans by force.

The Doctor's greatest individual enemy is the Master, a fellow exiled Time Lord, childhood friend, and one time sworn enemy. He is the only Time Lord other than the Doctor who survived the Time War. He's bent on conquest of the universe; unfortunately, this mostly involved overly complicated zany schemes back in the day. He's only appeared twice since the relaunch so whether he's grown more realistic is something of an open question. However, John Simm, the principal actor to play him in the modern series, was apparently under orders to play the role with even more camp than his predecessors had. Nevertheless, his capacity for terror and malice, and even a dark kind of sympathy, are not drowned out.

The Time Lords were a civilization of highly evolved aliens with control over time travel and a bajillion other things. They were sworn only to observe the affairs of lesser species, never to interfere. The Doctor's desire to travel through the universe and become involved in people's lives, the Master's thirst for conquest, and the desires of various other renegades were equally anathema to them, and anyone who wanted to play an active role in the universe was driven into exile. The Doctor would occasionally, reluctantly, call in the Time Lords to help with problems too big for him to handle, and they would sometimes demand his help as well. These encounters were always dangerous; twice they put the Doctor on trial for capital crimes. On their insular homeworld they became decadent and corrupt. During their war with the Daleks, they were threatened by a species whose abilities were equal to their own, and they responded to being shocked out of their complacency by waging an increasingly amoral kind of total war until they became even worse than the Daleks themselves. The Doctor destroyed both sides by putting them in a time lock. As mentioned above, a handful of Daleks escaped the lock and eventually rebuilt their race, with the Doctor's reluctant tacit consent. (Each time he had a chance to stop them, extenuating circumstances led to his deciding not to.) On the one occasion that the Time Lords mounted a comeback, he insisted that preventing their return was worth ANY sacrifice it required. They were forced back behind the time lock by the combined efforts of the Doctor and the Master. The latter stranded himself with them to punish the Lord President, and in the process saved the Doctor's life, though he still had to regenerate from the Tenth into the Eleventh incarnation. So now the Doctor is the Last of the Time Lords, a terrible emotional burden that makes him even more desperate for the love of his companions, and even less able to cope with the emotional devastation of inevitably losing each of them.

That should cover the basics. Over the course of the show's history, periodic changes in actors, production teams, etc would occasionally align in such a way that make it possible to break that history into a number of distinct eras. Any of the following stories works as a starting point for someone going in cold, though some are better than others:

• An Unearthly Child (1963)

• Tomb of the Cybermen (1967)

• Spearhead from Space (1970)

• The Three Doctors (1973)

• The Ark in Space (1975)

• The Face of Evil (1977)

• The Ribos Operation (1978)

• Logopolis (1981)

• Trial of a Time Lord (1986)

• Remembrance of the Daleks (1988)

NOTE: The show was cancelled in 1989. In 1996 a rather half-hearted attempt at a relaunch was made; the pilot from this relaunch became a more or less standalone movie whose title is merely Doctor Who. The Seventh Doctor, who had been the current Doctor at the time of cancellation, appeared just long enough to regenerate into the Eighth Doctor, who led an all-new cast, none of whom appeared in any episode except the one. Not a recommended starting point. A successful relaunch occurred with--

• Rose (2005)

• The Eleventh Hour (2010)

I usually recommend starting with "Rose" and watching through to "The End of Time," which aired in 2010. This covers the runs of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors as well as the entire tenure of showrunner Russell T Davies. "Rose" assumes the audience has no prior knowledge of the show, and every element from the classic series that is reintroduced is explained as it comes up (with the exception of the Time Lords, who appear in "The End of Time" and are not at all what you'll expect if you're not familiar with their twentieth century appearances). After that you can decide whether to plunge ahead into "The Eleventh Hour" and begin watching the current team of Matt Smith as the Doctor and Steven Moffett as showrunner, or to go back and sample some classic stories from the first eight Doctors' runs. In the final few minutes of "The End of Time," in the wake of the Tenth Doctor's emotionally devastating death, the Eleventh Doctor is introduced as an annoying buffoon, and much of his first episode reinforces that impression. However, you'll very quickly come to see that there's much, much more to him than meets the eye. The giant, enormous, robo-voiced eye. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:10, November 5, 2013 (UTC)

Now that's a summary. Thank you. Zhukov15 (talk) 13:01, November 5, 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm always happy to discuss Doctor Who. Of course, brevity is relative, but given the length and complexity of the show's run, even a bare bones summary tends to be . . . robust. Turtle Fan (talk) 17:49, November 5, 2013 (UTC)

Starting with "Rose". Got it.

Can you please recommend any classic episodes that can makes understanding the story more easier?Zhukov15 (talk) 21:10, November 30, 2013 (UTC)

Well I'd need to know exactly what you'd want to understand. My general advice is to sample each of the first eight Doctors after you've finished either "The End of Time" or "The Name of the Doctor" (you should go into "The Day of the Doctor" with some understanding of the early Doctors, if only so you'll realize just how much history should have been included and wasn't) and decide which era seems to have the most interesting stuff going on. For the combination of quality, accessibility, and easy availability, here's how I'd go (here's how I went, as a matter of fact):

• First Doctor: "The Aztecs" The Doctor and his original three companions find themselves in pre-Columbian Mexico. Barbara, a historian, is mistaken for a goddess and decides to test her theory that the Aztec Empire could have birthed a great civilization if it hadn't been so brutal. She tries to order them to give up human sacrifice despite the Doctor's warnings that, once you've seen the outcome of a historical event, you cannot change it--the first iteration of an important rule that crops up in every era of the show to constrain characters' actions in such a way that give them much weightier consequences. A good encapsulation of what is in retrospect the main story of the Hartnell years, a transition from the haughtiness of a Time Lord to the compassionate advocate he'd later come to be.

• Second Doctor: "Tomb of the Cybermen" Until recently the only complete story from the Second Doctor's first two seasons. On a far-off planet the Doctor, Jamie, and new companion Victoria stumble upon an archaeological expedition led by a madman with the goal of awakening and enslaving the dangerous Cybermen, entombed in suspended animation. It was written as a sort of semi-reboot for new audiences who hadn't followed the show's first four years to enter into.

• Third Doctor: "Spearhead from Space" At the conclusion of the Second Doctor's final journey, the Time Lords forced him to regenerate and sentenced him to exile for what they considered to be his crimes. "Spearhead from Space" picks up where that left off, with the newly-regenerated Third Doctor arriving on Earth in a disabled TARDIS and coming under the care of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, commander of UNIT, a military force set up to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats. UNIT had been previously seen in the Second Doctor's story "Invasion," but would take center stage for most of the Pertwee years.

• Special Bonus: "The Three Doctors" The original anniversary special sees William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton reprise their roles as all three Doctors combine forces to defeat a dangerous new enemy capable of draining energy out of the universe. At the conclusion of this story the Time Lords reward the Third Doctor by ending his exile, repairing his TARDIS and leaving him free to travel the cosmos once again. The First and Second have no memory of the events, which is typical for multi-Doctor stories, with one strange exception that comes much, much, much later.

• Fourth Doctor: "The Ark in Space" The Third Doctor largely remained with UNIT after his exile ended, and he died there. The Fourth Doctor would continue working part-time for Lethbridge-Stewart, but not for long. After recovering from his regeneration and stopping a terrestrial plot with the UNIT boys, the new Doctor kicks off his long reign by taking the much-loved Sarah Jane and the more forgettable Harry on a season-long odyssey of interconnected episodes (including the masterpiece "Genesis of the Daleks," my favorite twentieth-century story). In the first chapter they find themselves aboard a sleeper ship filled with humans fleeing a dying Earth in the far future, right before they come out of hibernation.

• Fifth Doctor: "Earthshock" After spending most of his first season generally putzing around with his ever-growing entourage, the youthful new Doctor must defend Earth by battling an old enemy in the past and future. The battle culminates with the departure of the unpopular companion Adric in an emotionally cathartic manner.

• Sixth Doctor: "Vengeance on Varos" The much-maligned Colin Baker put in a lot of good performances in stories that were heavily bogged down by increasingly meddlesome studio executives. His largely unsuccessful twilight struggle is really on full view in this very dark and gritty social satire.

• Seventh Doctor: "Remembrance of the Daleks" Sylvester McCoy doesn't balance humor and deadly intensity quite so well as Christopher Eccleston does. With Eccleston the two moods complement one another, whereas with McCoy it's more like they merely coexist. Nevertheless, McCoy manages to be captivating as his Doctor plays a high-stakes gambit to entrap the Daleks in their final antebellum appearance. Sophie Aldred's angry, spunky Ace is quite good here too, though she's better still in "The Curse of Fenric"--which all things considered is not a good starting point, though it is the last good story of the twentieth century.

• Eighth Doctor: "Doctor Who" Seven years after the show's cancellation, Fox tried to revive it by coproducing a backdoor pilot with the BBC. simply called Doctor Who. McCoy reprises his role as the Doctor for the introduction, then halfway through the first act hands it off to Paul McGann, who must pursue the Master ("played" in an incredibly wooden fashion by Julia Roberts's idiot brother Eric) across San Francisco on New Year's Eve 1999. The backdoor pilot was not picked up in any of the three countries in which it aired (given Fox's well-deserved reputation for screwing up science fiction shows, that's certainly for the best) and the show went back into the vault for another nine years. McGann's appearance became a One Night Only thing until two or three weeks ago when he got involved in the fiftieth anniversary special festivities by starring in a prequel mini-episode to "The Day of the Doctor." That pissed me off tremendously (and convinced me not to spend money to see "Day" in 3D, so I suppose I should be grateful for that) but once again it wasn't McGann's fault. He does a perfectly competent job of playing the Doctor in a likable if somewhat generic fashion.

Over the last week I've gotten more and more pissed off at the negatives of "Day of the Doctor" and am pretty much ready to say I hate the episode. Now we've got the formulaically named "Time of the Doctor" coming up next, and at the end of that, the Twelfth Doctor (I guess--we never did find out how Hurt's Doctor affects the numbering, and I'm inclined to overlook him entirely). I still like Smith but now I do believe the time has come for him to go; I'm assuming (wishfully thinking, perhaps) that Capaldi's much straighter style will force Moffat to write more serious stories. The fairy tale motif really only worked for the one season, and things have felt downright hellish since Amy and Rory got themselves zapped back in time. Someone who expects life to be hard will hopefully feel more at home in the darker stories Moffat's now favoring. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:28, December 1, 2013 (UTC)

I am partaking in a Doctor Who marathon and right now I'm on the third series (Utopia, to be exact). Is there a reliable site where I can watch the episodes in peace? On the Internet, free? Zhukov15 (talk) 02:28, December 17, 2013 (UTC)

Ah, "Utopia." That's a good one. A strong story on its own right and one hell of a cliffhanger. I'm afraid it's also pretty much the last time we see the Tenth Doctor just have fun without the weight of the universe on his shoulders, without everything being larger-than-life.

Where have you been watching the show up till now? I watched the new series on Amazon Instant Video. It's free if you have a Prime membership, which costs $79 a year; I've had one for years because, with the amount of online shopping I do, the free shipping is worth it, and being able to watch Doctor Who (as well as numerous other shows and movies I would not have seen otherwise) is an added bonus. I watched up through Season 5 that way, then started watching first-run episodes beginning with the Season 6 premiere, "The Impossible Astronaut." These days Amazon Prime members can watch everything up through "The Angels Take Manhattan" for free. From "The Snowmen" on we'd still have to pay, but as new episodes come out they shift old ones over to the free list all the time.

For the most part I watched the original series on dailymotion.com. There are several channels whose owners upload just about all of the classic stories. Occasionally the BBC flags something and forces one of the channels to close, but others take its place before long, presumably because the owner of the challenged channel just makes a new one. Type in the story you're looking for (say, "Genesis of the Daleks Part 3") and you should find it with a little bit of digging on the search results page. It's harder to find the 21st century episodes that way; for instance, I just popped over there for a quick search to look for te next few episodes on your list. I couldn't find "The Sound of Drums," but I could find the one after that, "Last of the Time Lords." (That makes no sense, as those two episodes are very much a package deal, but then I didn't look all that hard for "The Sound of Drums." Also, "The Sound of Drums" is a title which is kind of generic, unlike "Last of the Time Lords." If the episode doesn't have something like "Daleks" or "TARDIS" or "Cybermen" in the title, you might want to include "Doctor Who" at the end when you search.)

Furthermore, I don't know who your cable provider is, but mine currently has Seasons 5-7 available On Demand. You should at least be able to get the most recent season that way, assuming you get BBCA to begin with.

By the way, after you finish "Last of the Time Lords," and before you move onto "Voyage of the Damned" (a boring-ass episode if you ask me, for all the action and admittedly stunning camera work) be sure to check out "Time Crash," which has the Tenth Doctor accidentally stumble upon the Fifth Doctor while he's tinkering with the TARDIS following the events of the Series 3 finale. David Tennant credits Peter Davison as his inspiration to pursue a career in acting, and it clearly takes every ounce of professionalism he has to get through the scene without asking for an autograph or something. (It was shot before Tennant's marriage turned Davison into an in-law.) The so-called minisodes like that are easily available on YouTube, unlike the full episodes. I do believe the BBC considers them canonical too, even though in this case they chose to ignore the implications of the Doctor remembering the meeting from Five's perspective as well as Ten's. (In all other multi-Doctor stories, including "Day of the Doctor," only the latest Doctor remembers what happened, for some reason.) Turtle Fan (talk) 05:04, December 17, 2013 (UTC)

This is my, perhaps rather biased, opinion but sometimes I feel that Christopher Eccleston was one of the more better Doctors. Episodes of his run were also more lighter than the ones Tennant's in. Zhukov15 (talk) 21:37, December 17, 2013 (UTC)

Oh I loved Eccleston. Seeing a clip of him channeling all that rage and pain into his confrontation with the broken-down Dalek in the underground bunker in Utah is what convinced me to start watching the show. (I would much later learn that in doing so he had disobeyed the orders of the director, who wanted him to deliver those lines in a light, mocking tone, as Tom Baker would have done.) His ability to switch back and forth between gut-busting, even manic, humor and soul-crushing agony, and be 100% invested in both, made him far and away my favorite during the year I spent getting caught up. Eventually I was won over by Matt Smith, by a combination of Smith's energy and team spirit, Eccleston's steady out-of-character grumbling about his falling out with Russell T Davies, and the simple fact that, as the most recent Doctor, the Eleventh offered Smith more emotional depth and experience to draw on. But the Ninth Doctor remained a very close second to the Eleventh, and ever since "The Angels Take Manhattan" I think Eccleston is edging out Smith in my book once again. Unfortunately, "The Day of the Doctor" really made him irrelevant. Partly his own fault for refusing to reprise the role when Moffett offered it, though at that point Moffett should have gone back to the drawing board; and even if Eccleston had gotten on board, the story still would have been dodgy at best. I'll hold off on saying more till you're completely caught up.

One other thing I'll say about Eccleston, though: Unlike Tennant, you very rarely hear his castmates praise him or talk about how much fun they had with him. However, it's my opinion (and nothing more than that) that Billie Piper (Rose), John Barrowman (Jack), and Camille Coduri (Jackie) all had much better chemistry with him than they did with Tennant. Only Noel Clarke (Mickey) put in his best performances opposite Tennant, and ironically, Clarke is the only companion to both Doctors whom I have seen praise Eccleston. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:43, December 18, 2013 (UTC)

The Day of the Doctor was, to me atleast, pretty amazing. Not so much the plot of the episode but all the incarnations of the Doctor and the backstory of Gallifrey shown... Zhukov15 (talk) 21:15, December 30, 2013 (UTC)

The problem with that backstory is that it's at odds with everything else we've seen of Gallifrey. That was supposed to be the last day of the Time War; so was the world where Rassilon was plotting to bust out of the time lock and deploy the Final Sanction. The two versions of Gallifrey are as different as chalk and Tuesday, to quote Clarence Potter. In "Day" we hear that the High Council is useless and ineffective; in "End" we'd seen them on the verge of the biggest game-changer in the history of games. In "Day" the whole planet is up to its eyeballs in Daleks; in "End" it's a few shot-down flying saucers that look like they've been there a while and the line "This is only the furthest edge of the Time War." In "Day" the "Doctor" is still on Gallifrey; in "End" he's taken the Moment and left the planet. In "Day" it's a one-on-one match between the Daleks and the Time Lords; in "End" it's become at least a three-cornered war, with those bogeymen the Doctor alludes to when he's explaining to the Master what a terrible idea opening the Time Lock was. In "Day" the Daleks are on the verge of complete victory; in "End" it's a stalemate hurtling toward mutually assured destruction. The two images are so different that I don't see how they can even be in the same continuity.

And leaving aside the fact that "The End of Time" is the far better story, and thus the one I'm more inclined to believe, it's also more in line with everything we ever saw of Gallifrey in the antebellum. Gallifrey was detached, removed; it was where Time Lords haughtily made plans that would affect other places, while their own world kept on turning. Sure it's possible to believe that, once they wound up in a total war with a race whose abilities are equal to their own, their defenses could be battered down. (Hell, even the damned Sontarans found a way in once, and those guys are pathetic.) Everything from the old canon, however, suggests that, thanks to their complete certainty of their own superiority, they'd think nothing of sacrificing as many other worlds as needed to extend their defenses (no doubt the fate of the home worlds of the Nestene and Zygons, among however many others). Even Moffett knows this: He had that woman Cass say as much in "Night of the Doctor." If all that still wasn't enough, it would be the Final Sanction, not a vainglorious last stand.

Yes, I won't deny that the backstory is at odds with itself. However, I would it say it's better than being kept in the dark about Gallifrey and the Doctor's origins, as it seems to be in the revived series. Zhukov15 (talk) 21:07, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Oh I'd love to see Gallifrey and the Doctor's origins. I want to know what his birth name is, what drove him to take that "Never cruel nor cowardly" promise and become the Doctor, and why he went into self-imposed exile. That's what the 50th should have been, as it would have celebrated the show's entire run and lived up to the promise of "the secret [he's] been running from all [his] life."

By contrast, I could easily interpolate the shape of the Time War based on the available information, so I'd contend it didn't need to be seen. In fact I'd go so far as to say it's an exception to the "show us don't tell us" rule; I think most fans found the shadowy images in their imaginations much cooler than what we saw--that is, CGI flying saucers in orbit, and a few Daleks gunning down extras in Time Lord costumes in a back alley while small, controlled fires burned in the background. Even the Dalek invasion of Earth in "The Stolen Earth" blew that out of the water. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:45, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

As for "all the incarnations of the Doctor": Well I can't deny I thought that was pretty cool, for the forty-five seconds or so that it lasted; but once I thought back on it, it's really just some grainy old footage and a bunch of police boxes. Not that great a money shot.

That was the same problem in "The Name of the Doctor". It's clear all those moments were taken from footage from the classic series. Zhukov15 (talk) 21:07, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Of course, but somehow it seemed more appropriate there. The point to those scenes was to show Clara interacting with the early Doctors, and you certainly can't have any of them reprising their roles now; even those who are still alive are way, way too old for it. Peter Davison could almost pull it off, until you remember that the Fifth Doctor was defined largely by his youth. In "Time Crash" he wound up as more of an elder statesman; it worked in a short comedy sketch, it wouldn't work in a full-length episode, especially not a dramatic one.

On the other hand, having seen An Adventure in Space and Time and been very impressed with how well they recreated everything, I would not have been opposed to the sparing use of David Bradley in some new "First" Doctor footage. And in both "Name" and "Day," the First Doctor had the largest role of any of them. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:45, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

If you're referring to the Doctors who made original appearances: Smith was all right; it wasn't his best work. Tennant was great and was the only major component of the episode I completely enjoyed. Hurt sucked. Nothing against the actor; he did what he could, but his character was written so terribly that he never stood a chance. After the dark intensity of his introduction, complete with the visceral hatred with which Smith greeted him, you'd expect that to carry over to his actual interactions with Smith and Tennant; but instead he was little more than the straight man to set up their jokes. I hate the idea of this other Doctor being squeezed into the order, and I refuse to join in the officially-prescribed delusion that he's always been there. Even at his best, all he did was make me painfully aware that it was supposed to be Eccleston instead; and at his worst he felt like an interloper trying to butt into the far better chemistry between Smith and Tennant. If Moffett was so wed to a script that had been written specifically for Eccleston, he should have considered Eccleston indispensable and given him his damned director, or else gone back to the drawing board when Eccleston pulled out. Or at least given it to McGann. Or at the very least given the role of "the War Doctor" (grr) to someone else. Hurt's a good actor but he was the wrong man for the job. This became clear to me when I saw McGann ask the witches for a wine that will turn him into a warrior. Shouldn't that produce someone who looks more like Vinn Diesel or the Rock?

As to the cameos: Tom Baker's appearance was confusing, but cool enough that I'm willing to overlook that and enjoy it for what it was. Peter Capaldi's blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance was okay; I was hoping they'd use him in some way, but obviously you can't give him a huge role to play. I feel like it could have been tweaked.

I haven't seen it yet, but I'm told that Peter Davison wrote a parody which aired immediately after the episode in the UK that chronicles the efforts of himself, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy to get into the episode. In the end it's they who hide under the dust covers during one of the cuts when UNIT discovers where the Zygons are hiding. Not sure if this cut was actually used in the episode, but either way, that means Eccleston was the only living Doctor who did not participate. And you've got a story that very much depended on his involvement. So I'm afraid my mourning for the one Doctor who wasn't there overwhelmed my enjoyment of however many who were. But even if Eccleston had been involved, it wouldn't have corrected my biggest complaint: If Gallifrey is saved, and even worse, saved in the past so that it was never destroyed to begin with, that completely neuters all the pathos of every single "Last of the Time Lords" moment in the last eight years. So it's not enough that I didn't like this one episode (and I wanted to, how I wanted to!), it's now retroactively ruined episodes I did like. I wasn't too happy with "Time of the Doctor" either, and I'm desperately hoping the tone of the show gets serious again, and the losses the Doctor suffers actually matter. I do believe Capaldi's the man for that job, and so I eagerly hung on his first words to see if they'd signal an improvement in the coming year. "My kidneys. I don't like the color." *groan* Turtle Fan (talk) 20:16, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Any word on when DW is going to start again?

Sometimes it's tied into Easter, which is quite late this year; but since Moffett's been executive producer, for whatever reason he likes to keep little details like air dates and episode titles secret until the last minute.

Whenever S8 starts, I hope it's one unbroken 13-week run. I really believe the last two seasons have suffered for being broken up, especially the most recent one. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:45, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

I take it you're all caught up, then? Given that you were wrapping up S3 just a couple of weeks ago, that's impressive. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:45, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

It had started mostly as just a way to end boredom and kill time. Now I am seriously interested. Somewhat. Zhukov15 (talk) 03:15, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

For me it was similar. I went from "Rose" to "The End of Time" in a little under a month. Picked off S5 at a more leisurely rate and was all caught up for S6 with about two weeks to spare.

As for the 20th-century series, I went through periods of pounding through them and periods of barely touching them. All in all it took me a little under two years to work through the entire canon (not counting Torchwood, that is). Turtle Fan (talk) 20:36, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

It was shorter (one month), admittedly because I had time and I mostly just watched the revived series only.Zhukov15 (talk) 21:30, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

"My kidneys. I don't like the color." *sigh* Atleast it's not the ginger thing all over again. Zhukov15 (talk) 21:07, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Well yes, you can't really judge a Doctor by his one-liner at the end of his predecessor's swansong episode. Neither "New teeth. That's weird" nor "Still not ginger!" and all the other nonsense that went with it showed any promise whatsoever. (I do believe, however, that if Smith had simply given a much more muted "Still not ginger" and nothing else, no "New legs!" or "Lots of fingers!" or "I'm a girl!" it would have capped off Tennant's farewell tour perfectly, by harkening back to his first episode while at the same time reminding us that no one actor is the end-all and be-all of the role.) For that matter, Colin Baker's lines in "The Caves of Androzani" were really the best of any of them, and he's considered (unfairly, I believe) the worst Doctor of all.

"Do you know how to fly the TARDIS?". Is he asking Clara to fly it for him cause..he's having post-regeneration problems or because he has no clue? Zhukov15 (talk) 03:15, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

His wits are always scrambled after a regeneration. He was certainly in no condition to drive in "The Christmas Invasion" or "Castrovalva." In "The Eleventh Hour" he tried to fly off right after the fish fingers and custard and screwed it up. In "Robot," "Time and the Rani," and the movie he didn't even try till the end of each respective story. I don't remember how he got to Vulcan in "Power of the Daleks" or to Jocanda in "The Twin Dilemma." In "Spearhead from Space" the TARDIS had a boot on its wheel so it was a moot point.

If I had to guess I'd say the Doctor doesn't trust himself to pilot the TARDIS just yet and would prefer to let someone else do it. Of course, Clara doesn't know how, so he'll have to try it himself, and will most likely end up crashing into something or other, thus beginning his first adventure in his new life. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:36, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

Still, I was desperate for a sign that the show's going to get good again, and that's not what I got. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:45, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

I always equate Eccleston, Tennat, and Russell T. Davies with the days of good DW episodes. Series 7 was okay, not fantastic, but ok. Zhukov15 (talk) 03:15, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

My two favorite seasons have been S1 and S5. It so happens that each was the first season for a new executive producer. It could just be coincidence but I don't think so. I feel like new showrunners come in with a full season's worth of ideas based on their own understandings of what the show is, then have to scramble a bit to fill up subsequent seasons. By contrast, twentieth-century executive producers usually needed a year or two to get their sea legs, perhaps because (up through the end of the Fifth Doctor era, anyway) those seasons were so much longer.

My favourites were Rose's and Donna's run. Actually, pre-Moffat episodes are generally my favourites. Moffat's episode before were also, yes, good. Now... Maybe the show will get good again...Zhukov15 (talk) 21:30, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

Donna was in some great episodes, probably Tennant's best season overall; but she herself annoyed the shit out of me. Thankfully, eight of the thirteen episodes that season had her splitting companion duties with someone else, be it Rose, Martha, River, or the whole gang; and there were one or two others in which she was used sparingly, such as the highly disturbing "Midnight." Turtle Fan (talk) 20:04, January 2, 2014 (UTC)

Davies's run was marked by traditional science fiction and time travel elements recombined in novel ways as well as a conscious attempt to steep the show in its own history, and of course references to the Time War every other week. Good stuff, but it had its weaknesses, which compounded with time: the stories became too big, too bombastic; everything seemed to have cosmic implications. The Daleks cropped up way too often, especially since every single story ended with them returning to extinction. (Moffett had the right idea with "Victory of the Daleks" and then their relative hiatus, a shame he couldn't maintain his commitment to it.)

Moffett wrote some of the best episodes during the Davies era: "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances," "The Girl in the Fireplace," "Blink," and "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead," as well as the mini-episode "Time Crash." They were marked by a much softer, much mistier quality when compared with typical Davies episodes, an atmosphere in which it's possible to imagine monsters under the bed and undefined dangers lurking in the shadows, but also one of fairy godmothers and knights in shining armor. It was a welcome counterpoint to the relatively hard science fiction of the rest of those seasons. But now it dominates entire seasons, and it's too much, like eating lobster every night: you become painfully aware of the deficiencies that were easy to overlook when it was just a rare treat. Still, I loved S5; I liked the diversity of storytelling, the character building, and especially the sense that, while each episode stood up well in its own right, it was also new piece of a puzzle that would be assembled in the finale. And was it ever! Those last two episodes aren't quite my favorites (they're close) but they are the ones I hold up as flawless. But then Moffett attempted something similar in S6, and it wasn't nearly as much fun: too self-consciously clever, as if the show kept talking up some spectacular finish on which it couldn't deliver, but which might have been satisfying had it been built up to in the much more organic fashion of S5.

Then came the year-long absence of any DW, except the boring-as-hell "The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe," and then the five episode farewell tour for Amy and Rory. I very much enjoyed four of those episodes ("Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" was painfully tedious as well as frustratingly illogical, which is what happens when you start with a title and expect an entire story to fall into place around it) largely because they were standalone adventures; by this point I had no patience for the need to take notes and try to guess which plot elements one week would hold a key for solving a mystery four weeks later. "The Snowmen" was all right; surprisingly, it was really Vastra who saved it for me, though her two irritating sidekicks had nothing to do with that. But the remaining eight episodes of S7 were terrible drudgery. They were boring, they were for the most part too abstract (I'm supposed to feel visceral terror at being downloaded through the wifi, or having an angry sun god drink my memories? I don't even know what those mean!) and they were much too cutesy. Not one of the one-off guest stars was at all memorable, though that had always been a great strength of Moffett's before. Coleman's performances were shaky, and while Smith continued to pour himself into the role, Moffett was no longer writing to his strengths: too many overblown "I. AM. THE. DOCTOR!!!!" speeches and breathless pouring through convoluted explanations at a mile a minute, too few subtle emotional shades and glimpses into sides of his character that are otherwise kept deeply private. Then came the "But not in the name of the Doctor!" cliffhanger, which had me genuinely excited, and then that led to the profound disappointment I've already discussed.

The Moffett era has to date been defined by attempts to bring this fairytale atmosphere into--well, just about everything. When he worked under Davies a certain element of soft horror was seen as his greatest strength, and now he wants that in everything, whether he's the episode's writer or not. Doctor Who should never be all about one particular style to the exclusion of all others. And since it's a fairytale, no matter how scary it gets they all have to live happily ever after, which is why fixed points in time no longer matter, why River's tear-jerking death now has a much happier and more certain epilogue, why Gallifrey is not only coming back but was never destroyed to begin with, and why rules which were imposed to constrain the narrative in such a way that would maintain a level of tension are so pointedly kicked to the curb. The one time in Moffett's run that the Doctor has been confronted by a significant loss he could not recover was when Rory was captured by the Angels a second time and Amy willingly joined him. The Doctor's plaintiff warning "You are creating a fixed point in time!" didn't carry much weight after "The Wedding of River Song," but it turns out the Ponds really are gone for good--but even then, we've still had many reminders that, while they did miss the Doctor, they too lived happily ever after. I'm not saying I wanted them to die in misery, but taken with all the rest of these pat endings, it really serves to drain away the sense that anything truly important can actually be at stake anymore. That's what I mean when I say I desperately need the show to become serious again. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:36, January 1, 2014 (UTC)

Drs 1 through 8

I've seen representative samplings of Hartnell through McCoy, and all of McGann's run. Tom Baker is my favorite Doctor, but Peri Brown (from the Davison and C. Baker years) is my favorite companion. I just do not understand how the Hartnell-Troughton show was popular enough to evolve into the better-known definitive Doctor, which itself always remained pretty much a mediocre show. Were Brits in the 1960s simply easily amused?Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 11:17, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

I guess it's possible that audiences just wanted different things back then.

Personally I lost interest in DW years ago. The tentpole episode "Day of the Doctor" introduced a fundamental change to the narrative structure of the franchise that rebooted the premise which had attracted me to the show in the first place clean out of existence. It not only set a precedent that fatally compromised storytelling possibilities moving forward, but being all timey wimey, it retroactively sucked all the meaning out of most of my favorite episodes that had aired earlier. It was Smith's penultimate episode; I stuck around for his finale, which was unsatisfying and unworthy, and gave Capaldi's first season a chance; through no fault of his, I found it almost entirely unwatchable. I did come back for the two-part season finale of his third and final full season. The first part was very intriguing on several levels, but the second squandered its potential. Part 2 also ended with a complete non sequitir of a cliffhanger that I guess was supposed to set the stage for Capaldi's final season, but I didn't tune back in for that, and from what I understand that was definitely the right choice. I have not touched the Thirteenth Doctor and don't expect I'll ever watch another episode again. Even hearing through cultural osmosis that the incomparable John Barrowman was rejoining the cast for a limited run did not tempt me. Actually, at this point I'd be far more likely to rewatch Torchwood than anything from the franchise's flagship. (With the possible exception of the van Gogh episode: That one was beautiful, it stands almost completely alone in continuity, and because they dealt with mental illness in a respectful and realistic way, it should be immune from the sloppy self-contradictory bullshit that was introduced later.)

Skimming back over the above page I'm somewhat embarrassed by how devoted I was to the show. Still, I won't deny that I took great enjoyment from it at the time. For a while there, anyway. Turtle Fan (talk) 14:26, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

The 1960s DW is a mediocre show with bad acting, glacial pacing, and dragged-out serials with plots that could easily have been condensed into an hour of Star Trek or a half hour of Twilight Zone. It is like watching paint dry. Jamie McCrimmon is the saving grace, being the only performance with any electricity, but his dialogue is interchangeable with every other assistant of the era. In an era when entertainment options were few, I guess people didn't realize how horrible the show was.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 07:40, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

You know full well that artistic tastes change over time. I doubt it's a matter of their not knowing it was horrible so much as it was not horrible by their standards at all. True it's pretty tedious today, but we are not the audience for whom it was made.

To be sure, I did find even the best of the serials of that era pretty tedious when I was watching. I was really doing it more as a historical survey than anything else. I'd already been won over by Eccleston and Tennant and wanted to see how the way to that point had been paved. I remember finding it very interesting how, even though there wasn't the faintest whiff of the Doc's origins as a renegade Time Lord during Hartnell's era, he still somehow mixed the sneering superiority of the rest of that race with a keen interest in humanity. At first he just watches events with idle curiosity, but gradually he starts to influence them, flying in the face of his people's orthodoxy. Compassion steadily displaced arrogance as his tenure wore on, but never eliminated it altogether. I guess that was always a fairly obvious way to evolve the character, but it's almost as if someone knew he had to provide a transitional figure between the aloof superbeings who raised him and against whom he'd already rebelled and the helpful activist of the future.

But again, that just goes to show that it's only of value to someone who's already invested in later iterations of the franchise. Most of his stories do make for very tedious slogs, though I remember an Old West themed one toward the end that was just goofy fun.

I'd say Troughton got better writing, but the improvement was pretty marginal, if memory serves. (And I'm pretty sure it does; funny how it's all coming back to me as I write. It's not tempting me to return to the fold, though.) Turtle Fan (talk) 16:21, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

The Wyatt Earp episode was a cute novelty, but felt too much like a generic Western with The Doctor etched into it. It's funny how the research as to which Earp brother did what, and where Johnny Ringo was at the time, appears to have been based on the movie Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) rather than historical fact.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 17:58, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

The original idea was that they'd alternate between a historically accurate story set in Earth's past and a scientifically accurate episode set elsewhere. That's why the original cast included a science teacher and a history teacher. It wasn't long before they gave up on this idea and realized it was more fun if they just made shit up. Just as well, as the show would be even less accessible to a modern audience if it had remained steeped in what post-imperial Brits considered to be correct history education. See the Aztec story for what that would have looked like. I've heard they've gotten a bit stricter about historicity since the current showrunner took over, but I can't speak to that from firsthand experience. Turtle Fan (talk) 14:21, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

A few episodes of the original Peabody & Sherman are a bit hard to watch for that reason, especially the ones involving Native Americans.Matthew Babe Stevenson (talk) 18:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)