Doctor Who

[Brad]

EDIT: Snowbotic: Where did you get that Christmas promo pic from?!

Ehehe just saw it on DoctorWhoTV Apparently the title is expected to follow shortly. Also, re: the spoilers

 

I'm guessing that the Teselecta just emulated the regeneration effect to make their copy seem realistic, and River's poison obviously prevented regeneration and the Doctor never implied himself he could regenerate did he...? Eh I can't remember. Either way he was trying to keep War Doctor a secret so because everyone expected him to regenerate, he had to go along with it maybe? Hopefully Moffat will cover every plot hole and put this story to rest with respect. I'm interested to see the solution.

[Doctor MK]

Ehehe just saw it on DoctorWhoTV Apparently the title is expected to follow shortly. Also, re: the spoilers

 

I'm guessing that the Teselecta just emulated the regeneration effect to make their copy seem realistic, and River's poison obviously prevented regeneration and the Doctor never implied himself he could regenerate did he...? Eh I can't remember. Either way he was trying to keep War Doctor a secret so everyone expected him to regenerate and he had to go along with it? Hopefully Moffat will cover every plot hole and put this story to rest with respect. I'm interested to see the solution.

 

I admit they're pretty poor nitpicks on my part and can easily be glossed over, but still, I can't help but feel that Moffat has just suddenly decided "it's the last episode of the 50th year, we've got a new Doctor to introduce, I can round up the regenerations to match the limit... why not go the whole hog and really change everything!" as opposed to this being the plan all along. But at the same time, I 

really want to see how he does it and it would be a fine send-off for Matt.

 

I suppose my main concern is the same as the one I had throughout Series 7 - not enough build up. We were only properly introduced to Trenzalore two episodes ago, Gallifrey was only just brought back, and straight away we're going to send The Doctor off to meet his untimely demise at the hands of every monster ever. The Day of the Doctor got away with its big surprises because they'd been boiling away in the background for 8 years now, this one - especially to tie the regeneration limit into - seems a tad too recent.

 

Still, I look forward to being proven wrong (as I inevitably will) and having a huge fanboyish grin on my face come Christmas Day!

[Debug Ring]

Just gonna go off on a bit of a story about my Saturday.

I was at the ExCeL celebrations, as some of you may know, and had the greatest time! Met a few of the actors, got a few autographs, got a pic with the series 5-7A TARDIS console, wore Matt Smith's on-screen tweed jacket in the costume trailer, which I really liked! The panels were really good. I liked especially the Regenerations one, with Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and the Eleventh Hour one with Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman, Steven Moffat and Marcus Wilson. All of the panels were great, and as were the people on them.

Man, I'll probably come back and add more to this post, including pictures and things, but at the minute I'm still rather excited about being there to remember it.

[- Eternal Paradox -]

My reaction to the day of the doctor was this: WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON?

 

It did not make one lick of sense to me, and I found it very hard to follow. What? How? When? Why?

 

If I had to give my list of problems and -My Name-s, it would be this:

• Tenth has an adventure that we've never seen before and apparently, he won't remember. When did this happen? After series 4?
• We never got to see John Hurt's "War Doctor" actually do any warring. More-so, he never committed the act of destroying Galifrey. If #9 "Watched it happen, Made it happen!", then how? If the big bomb with a conscience showed him what happened, how can #9, #10 and #11 even exist, or have their memories of destroying galifrey. IT MAKES NO SENSE.
• WHY THE HECK IS #4 HERE? How? When? Why? And more importantly, why he hell didn't he say "Would you like a jelly baby?
• By now, the entity of Russel T Davies work and continuity has now been officially pissed on.
• None of the alive doctors who were willing to join in were used, instead they used stock footage.
• What was the conclusion to the Zygon plot? You never bothered to tell us.

Can I go on to say that I never imagined that the doctor would use some kind of superweapon to destroy Galifrey. I imagined him pulling a big lever or something and wiping them all from existence, whilst they were locked in the time-lock. Russel was purposely vague, and with good reason. Moffat has removed one of the best plot elements of the doctor, and part of his key pathos. He destroyed his own world, he's the last of his kind, he's special. Except now he's not. BLEH.

 

All in all, it wasn't absolutely terrible, but it wasn't a decent celebration of 50 years.

 

Can I also say how-much I dislike River Song? Grrr, I dislike her. Why is it such a shock that the Doctor has a wife? He must of had some kind of family before, or else how did we get Susan? I just... dislike her. She was fine as a one time character, but since Moffat brought her back he's become dependent on her and the weeping angels. Ugh.

 

Moffat isn't a bad writer, He's a bad show-runner. He needs someone to hone him in, some-one to steer the right direction. It doesn't help that the show's budget and length have been halved.

[TheGerkuman]

Paradox: I have some answers.

 

1) Between Waters of Mars and The End of Time. He told the Ood about the wedding/nuptuals.

2) When he transformed from 8th to War, he was young. By the time we meet him, he's old. That's a lot of time. As for the 'Made it Happen' quote, The Doctor would remember having the weapon and then presumably waking up in the tardis with Gallifrey not being there anymore. I mean, he was on a neighbouring planet (or even closer) when he pushed it and expected to die. I think you'd expect memory loss and assume you did the deed.

3)Yeah, I admit this one's a bit messy. We have no idea who he is. It's like who that Time Lady was in The End of Time, you're not supposed to know.

4) Firstly, this is not the only time this has happened in the series run. Especially in pre-revival who. Compared the Hartnell and Troughton years to the Unit years, or everything to the 7th doctor's run. Secondly, surely the whole point of The Doctor's guilt is that he felt it. This happens in real life, where people blame themselves for things they didn't understand or didn't even do. Finding out the truth doesn't negate that, especially since the guilt changed him as a person. So even if the reasons don't add up, the guilt still does.

5) How would you explain them all being older? (Minus 8th Doctor of course, but then why would he be in it and not the other living ones.) Also, why mix archive footage with non-archive footage? Would you need to re-cast the earlier doctors?

6) They worked it out.

 

I hope that helped. I think it did, ultimately, make sense but whether or not you thought it was a good story is a totally different matter and yours to decide

[Brad]

• Tenth has an adventure that we've never seen before and apparently, he won't remember. When did this happen? After series 4?
• We never got to see John Hurt's "War Doctor" actually do any warring. More-so, he never committed the act of destroying Galifrey. If #9 "Watched it happen, Made it happen!", then how? If the big bomb with a conscience showed him what happened, how can #9, #10 and #11 even exist, or have their memories of destroying galifrey. IT MAKES NO SENSE.
• WHY THE HECK IS #4 HERE? How? When? Why? And more importantly, why he hell didn't he say "Would you like a jelly baby?
• By now, the entity of Russel T Davies work and continuity has now been officially pissed on.
• None of the alive doctors who were willing to join in were used, instead they used stock footage.
• What was the conclusion to the Zygon plot? You never bothered to tell us.

Can I go on to say that I never imagined that the doctor would use some kind of superweapon to destroy Galifrey. I imagined him pulling a big lever or something and wiping them all from existence, whilst they were locked in the time-lock. Russel was purposely vague, and with good reason. Moffat has removed one of the best plot elements of the doctor, and part of his key pathos. He destroyed his own world, he's the last of his kind, he's special. Except now he's not. BLEH.

 

All in all, it wasn't absolutely terrible, but it wasn't a decent celebration of 50 years.

• Ten's adventures, if we think in terms of the age he gave us, probably happens sometime after Series 4.
• Both Hurt and Ten forget their adventure due to time being out of sync, so they go on thinking Gallifrey is destroyed until Ten becomes Eleven and does the entire thing again. 
• It's hinted that the Doctor in the far future revisits some of his favourite faces.
• Russell T. Davis was as flawed as Moffat and they write Who differently. But his continuity IS still in check ("Bad Wolf?" Hurt: "Bad Wolf Girl, I could kiss you!" Rose: "Oh that'll happen")
• We've seen all the Doctor's regenerations on screen now, meaning we know how they looked before they regenerated. It wouldn't be possible for them to come back old or they'd break the entire continuity of the franchise. They no longer can play the character, unfortunately, unless what I said above about revisiting faces happens one day.
• Throwaway line for sure, but Ten and Eleven made them work out a peace treaty, as they said while stylishly crossing their legs in sync.

Also, I don't think Time Lords are stupid enough to have a lever that kills their entire race. The Doctor literally used a glorified big red button, so it's pretty much the same concept? The Doctor always went on regretting his decision and wishing he could undo it, paying the guilt for killing all of them. Moffat did something that not only the character WOULD believable do, but also changed the show's direction and did a landmark things as he set out to. The Doctor is still the last of his kind so far - Gallifrey is locked away in a single moment somewhere in the infinite universe. He's not going to find them for a very, very long time. 

 

Also, the whole "the key to his character is he killed his race" is completely false, since he had multiple adventures on Gallifrey before it was destroyed. The Doctor was never defined by it, it only scarred him - but now, he can finally recover from the trauma of it, knowing he saved his people.

[Scar]

Response to Paradox in the spoiler tags.

Tenth has an adventure that we've never seen before and apparently, he won't remember. When did this happen? After series 4?

Not sure it really matters. But like it has been mentioned before its sometime after Series 4, when he's alone. Probably between Waters of Mars and The End of Time.

We never got to see John Hurt's "War Doctor" actually do any warring.

If you watched the Night of the Doctor, Hurt was made to look a lot younger. The years when he actually fought were off-screen. Unless they wanted to make a full feature-length movie, I see no reason to show the Doctor fighting.

And even then "The War Doctor" may only mean that its the Doctor that was in the war, the Doctor that did the unforgivable.

More-so, he never committed the act of destroying Galifrey. If #9 "Watched it happen, Made it happen!", then how? If the big bomb with a conscience showed him what happened, how can #9, #10 and #11 even exist, or have their memories of destroying galifrey. IT MAKES NO SENSE.

I don't see how this is such a huge issue. Hurt's Doctor said himself, that he (and Tennant's Doctor) would forget everything that ever happened during the events of the Special. That accounts for pretty much everything. Once Hurt went back, he'd forget he ever made that painting, and continue to live on, believing himself to have committed genocide. To that extent, the 9th and 10th Doctor would continue to live with that same sadness and regret. Tennant also forgot (hence him asking Smith about Trenzalore). Smith wouldn't know or remember anything until he did it (he wouldn't remember because he hadn't done it till now) and even then, there is a chance that he too would forget those events.

WHY THE HECK IS #4 HERE? How? When? Why?

Fanservice and some quite nice foreshadowing about the Regeneration problems.

And more importantly, why he hell didn't he say "Would you like a jelly baby?

I really don't know....would have been funny though.

By now, the entity of Russel T Davies work and continuity has now been officially pissed on.

Which part? All I can think of, which was properly damaged, was The End of Time (even that can be accommodated for if necessary).

None of the alive doctors who were willing to join in were used, instead they used stock footage.

Really? It was probably was done for visual consistency. You saw how old Baker looked at the end. If they did use the living Doctors, they would have looked far older than they should have.

What was the conclusion to the Zygon plot? You never bothered to tell us.

Don't think that was the point of that side-story. As far as I was concerned the point wasn't the resolution (which probably did end successfully) but more to do with what Tennant and Smith ended up being like. Hurt realised that him destroying everything, resulted in "great men being forged in fire". Those two wouldn't have been able to draw on their personal experience of Genocide, and help the Earth, if he didn't go through with the destruction of everything.

Can I go on to say that I never imagined that the doctor would use some kind of superweapon to destroy Galifrey. I imagined him pulling a big lever or something and wiping them all from existence, whilst they were locked in the time-lock.

Doesn't that amount to the same thing?

Russel was purposely vague, and with good reason. Moffat has removed one of the best plot elements of the doctor, and part of his key pathos. He destroyed his own world, he's the last of his kind, he's special. Except now he's not. BLEH.

Not much has changed, given that the entirety of Gallifrey and everyone in it, are literally frozen in time and locked in a painting. The Doctor is still "the only one" cause the others are frozen in time. And his specialness isn't diminished with the existence of other Time Lords. The Doctor is defined by who he is as a character, not by the fact that he's a Timelord.

 

[Noir]

Copying a mini rant I posted on tumblr since it's relevant with Paradox's complaints:

 

People are getting really mad that the Doctor never actually killed the time lords, saying it basically robs him of his biggest flaw and right ok but he was going to do it. The War Doctor was set on it, even 10 accepted that they would do it. It was 11 - having lived with 400 years of regret and remorse and wishing he could have gone back and righted his wrong because he 

thought he did it - who stopped and said no, there had to be another way. For all that time he believed he pressed the button and committing that act turned him into the person he is now, the person who would put his foot down and save Gallifrey. The character development didn’t go anywhere, it’s all there. Making that mistake is the reason he was determined to change history.

 

So no, the episode didn’t throw that character trait out the window. Its whole purpose was to look at where it’s taken the Doctor.

 

 

As for Tom Baker, I'm almost certain it's been said or implied before that time lords can regenerate into their previous forms and that there are ways to decide what appearance they take. I personally like to think when the Doctor is old and tired he takes that form and settles down to be the great curator.

[Salamander]

My reaction to the day of the doctor was this: WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON?

 

It did not make one lick of sense to me, and I found it very hard to follow. What? How? When? Why?

 

If I had to give my list of problems and -My Name-s, it would be this:

• Tenth has an adventure that we've never seen before and apparently, he won't remember. When did this happen? After series 4?
• We never got to see John Hurt's "War Doctor" actually do any warring. More-so, he never committed the act of destroying Galifrey. If #9 "Watched it happen, Made it happen!", then how? If the big bomb with a conscience showed him what happened, how can #9, #10 and #11 even exist, or have their memories of destroying galifrey. IT MAKES NO SENSE.
• WHY THE HECK IS #4 HERE? How? When? Why? And more importantly, why he hell didn't he say "Would you like a jelly baby?
• By now, the entity of Russel T Davies work and continuity has now been officially pissed on.
• None of the alive doctors who were willing to join in were used, instead they used stock footage.
• What was the conclusion to the Zygon plot? You never bothered to tell us.

 

• We already knew that Ten had unseen adventures between The Waters Of Mars and The End Of Time; in fact, near the start of The End Of Time, when he's talking to the Ood, he makes direct reference to having been spending time with Elizabeth I.  Moffat isn't making up a new adventure for Ten here, he's expanding an existing plot hook.
• The warring is the War Doctor's backstory.  It's what he did before The Day Of The Doctor (and after The Night Of The Doctor), and we got told about it - that he "had more blood on his hands than any other" - in TDOTD itself.  The first time we see him in TDOTD it's in some flaming ruins in a warzone and shortly afterwards he blasts his TARDIS through a bunch of Daleks.  As to the act of destroying Gallifrey and the Daleks, TDOTD explains what numerous other multi-Doctor stories have previously assumed, that only the most recent Doctor remembers the multi-Doctor elements and the past Doctors all forget it.  So the War Doctor will remember stealing the Moment, carting it off to the back of beyond, and standing before a big red button about to push it, and then the next thing he knows he's in his TARDIS regenerating and the Time Lords and Daleks are nowhere to be seen when he goes looking.  What's a man to assume - especially given that regeneration trauma has caused him amnesia before.  It doesn't quite sit easily with the statement that you quote, but again, it's an expansion of previously given hints.  When you do that, you pick up all the details and you explain them as best you can, but you can't always account for them entirely if they describe a story that nobody at the time intended to tell.
• It's not the Fourth Doctor, it's a future Doctor who took on the same appearance as the Fourth Doctor.  He says as much.  Right there on-screen.  As for the jelly-baby line... well, you can't necessarily fit all the mannerisms into a short scene, and it's kind of a dated reference now.  Verging on product placement.
• No more than RTD disrespected the canon of the classic series by wiping out the Time Lords - which is not at all.  I can guarantee you that Russell T. Davies will have approved entirely of everything that was shown on-screen, because he understands, like Moffat, that it's important to keep on moving the story forward and keep the character changing.  You don't idolise the canon as an unchangeable monolith, you add to it.  And that's what Moffat's done - he's added to the story, not changed it.  The Time War storyline, as time went by - and this was under RTD as much as anyone else - became increasingly unlike something the Doctor would ever be involved in, and TDOTD not only accounts for that, it redeems the Doctor from it and makes his actions in the Time War worthy of the Doctor's identity.  And it all happened entirely within the boundaries of everything RTD ever wrote.  If Moffat was really attempting to undermine RTD, he'd never have even touched anything RTD wrote - instead, he took RTD's work as his rules and told a story all about RTD's version of Doctor Who!  It was the ultimate act of respect for RTD's vision a showrunner!  To claim that Moffat has in any way insulted RTD's legacy is frankly ignorant.
• McGann got The Night Of The Doctor, and Tom Baker was in the special!  And the Fourth through Seventh Doctors look so different that Baker had to be introduced as an entirely separate incarnation!  This was always a silly criticism.  It would have been ludicrous to ask the past Doctors to get into their old costumes and pretend they looked, what, twenty, thirty years younger, and they understand this - Colin Baker is on record saying that he never expected to be asked to be in the special.  You have to tell a story that's relevant to the audiences now, and TDOTD asked back the most recent Doctors available, the ones the majority of the audience would recognise, and recognise as the Doctor rather than as the Doctor but considerably older and fatter.  It would have been a farce to have the previous Doctors back as their old selves.
• We saw the resolution to the plotline right there on-screen.  Ten and Eleven modified the memory filters to prevent the assembled UNIT members and Zygons from remembering whether they were humans or Zygons, they were instructed to negotiate a peace treaty based on their mutual need to have a happy future no matter what they really were, and then we saw them negotiating and saw the human and Zygon versions of Osgood smile and help each other out.  That's your resolution, right there: Peace between UNIT and the Zygons.  All 100% shown on-screen.

 

I don't think the special was perfect, but I don't agree with these criticisms at all.  Moffat got the story right.

[Patticus]

The Christmas Special is called The Time of The Doctor:

 

Synopsis:

Orbiting a quiet backwater planet, the massed forces of the universe’s deadliest species gather, drawn to a mysterious message that echoes out to the stars.  And amongst them – the Doctor.  Rescuing Clara from a family Christmas dinner, the Time Lord and his best friend must learn what this enigmatic signal means for his own fate and that of the universe.

 

Poster:

[Brad]

For all your friends who say "Doctor Who is dead, Strictly got better ratings", tell them the special made £1.8 million at UK Box Office and placed #3. Hell yes.

[Patticus]

Questions about this episode:

1. If Gallifrey was hidden away in a painting or something, how do the events that would lead to Rassilon and the Master trying to have Gallifrey escape the war make sense?

2. Aren't there a fuckton of Daleks still on this hidden away Gallifrey?

3. Was the Time War even Time Locked at all?

[Mauro Fonseca]

Patticus-

 

1. Because those events happened before. What we saw here was literally the last day.

 

2. Presumably, although it seemed the majority of them were in orbit.

 

3. Apparently not, and everyone just thought it was? That DOES bring in some plot holes.

[Brad]

3. Was the Time War even Time Locked at all?

I'll quote this, I think it explains it:

So if Gallifrey was whisked away to heaven knows where, how did Rassilon and company escape and confront the Tenth Doctor. Again, this is rather easy to explain and a little bit silly once you’ve read it. The escape takes place on the last day of the war, but it most likely took place sometime during this episode while the Hurt Doctor was with the other Doctors away from Gallifrey. If you want a timeline, then: The War Doctor messages the Time Lords before joining his future selves on Earth. Rassilon, fearing the worst, escapes to Earth on Christmas 2009. Tenth Doctor sends them right back into the war. Doctors Assemble saves Gallifrey. This is the order in which the events take place.

 

[Patticus]

That... actually makes a good deal of sense. I wish we had seen Rassilon again though, he was a great character who was desperately under-used.

 

That's something I don't like about Doctor Who - all the great actors and characters they get on are badly under-used.

[Jeffhog]

I think it also mentioned that the Time Lord High Council, where Rassilon was, was holding an emergency session of their own once they have heard that the Doctor got ahold of The Moment in The End of Time, and began making their own plans in order to escape the Time War.

 

Here, the High Commanders we see in The Day of the Doctor were made aware that the High Council is making its own plan, but ignored them out of the belief that "they have already failed [Gallifrey]". Essentially, we got two different groups going about their own way of dealing with the War -- one political group hoping to escape the event by bringing about the Ultimate Sanction across all of creation, the other being more militaristic and trying to last against the warring Daleks and the inevitability of The Moment.

 

On that note, is this poster for The Christmas Special real?

 

[Salamander]

BlizzardJeffhog, I believe that that poster's unofficial.  Would've been a great teaser, though - better than the fairly awkward-looking Photoshop we got officially.

 

Regarding the actual promo image, though, Handles the Cyberman there confirms something regrettable, which is that there appear to already be complete and detailed spoilers for the Christmas episode floating around the web.  Be aware.

[Jeffhog]

On a side note... When you think about it and put both specials together, don't The End of Time and The Day of the Doctor possibly imply that...

 

...The Master could still be alive?

[Salamander]

On a side note... When you think about it and put both specials together, don't The End of Time and The Day of the Doctor possibly imply that...

 

...The Master could still be alive?

 

The stage is now 100% set for the Master to come back in any number of ways, to the extent that I would be surprised if we didn't see him again in, let's say... the next three years?

[Doctor MK]

They really do like their "...of the Doctor" titles lately, don't they? I was expecting something like "The Fall of the Eleventh" or "Silence Falls", or even "Silent Night" or "Twelfth Night"... so the title is actually a bit of a surprise to me. And yet it's a bit underwhelming too. We'll see. Hopefully it'll be like "The Name of the Doctor" in that its meaning isn't quite as obvious as it first seems.

 

Here's some possible spoiler teases for the Christmas special - I say possible because there's no hard evidence, but the website does specialise in Doctor Who spoilers so maybe there's a grain of truth in them...

1. The Doctor wont only be seeing Christmas CRACKers this episode
2. The Doctor is going to age many years (maybe a few 100)
3. Those pesky time war enemies are back and may be connected to his regeneration

and finally....

 

One of the final words the current Doctor says begins with a G

 

http://www.doctorwhospoilers.com/2013/11/christmas-2013-first-set-of-teasers.html

 

Sounds like the crack from Series 5 will be returning, as will the Daleks - but we already knew about them. Will they be the ones to toll the bell for The Doctor though?

 

Also, regarding the chronology of The End of Time/The Day of the Doctor seeing as it seems to be a hot topic of debate...

 

Both stories can still co-exist perfectly fine. The End of Time takes place during the final days of the Time War, where The War Doctor has the Moment but is yet to do anything with it (perhaps even while he's stood in the abandoned shack deliberating what to do). The Time Lords devise the plan to create the link which grants them passage to Earth, but The Doctor interferes on the other end and they are thrown back into the Time War. At some point during or following this, the events of The Day of the Doctor happen and eventually result in all of The Doctors teaming up to freeze Gallifrey in a single instant of time instead of using the Moment. So, in a sense, The End of Time is going on off-screen while we're watching the three Doctors hopping between Gallifrey and Elizabethan times and present day London.

[Emperor Robrainiac]

Got to watch the special in theaters yesterday with some old high school buddies. It was great experience, definitely worth all the hype.

 

 

 

That scene with all the Doctors, (including 12 even!) saving Gallefrey, man. So much awesome. And I dunno why, but the reference to "I don't want to go" cracked me up, considering I how much I hated that line during 10's regeneration.

 

Not to mention Tom Baker's cameo put a smile on my face.

 

So overall I enjoyed it. If I had to say one thing that I didn't like about the experence, was that everyone in the audience reminded me of how overrated as fuck the 10th is. I mean, I like 10, and I was happy to hear that he was coming back to the special... But even so, I think he is overhyped. But I think we already went through all that.

 

So I'll just say that seeing it on the big screen was a kick ass experience. 

[Patticus]

New posters for the Christmas special and the new Doctor:

Can't find anything bigger yet. Not sure if they're real yet, either.

[Doctor MK]

New posters for the Christmas special and the new Doctor:

Can't find anything bigger yet. Not sure if they're real yet, either.

 

I'm pretty sure they're fake. Good fakes, but fakes nonetheless.

[Patticus]

Does anyone else think it strange that we had a bunch of Daleks "fall through time" and escape the Time War, but not once did a Time Lord do the same? I mean, we did have the Master running about for a couple of episodes, but that wasn't related to the war, and Rassilon and co tried to escape the war with his help, but the Daleks in general got a lot more exposure. Things would've been a lot more interesting if they had replaced one of the worse Dalek stories with a Time Lord one.

[Stacy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnTSbFeWwro

 

Anybody heard this before? I think it did more harm than good.