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Doctor Who II


AncalagonTheBlack

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Is the Time Lord Council all in on the whole conspiracy then? Or is it more an inner cabal of conspirators? Maybe the originators burned through all their regenerations and are dead now. But that would seem strange for Tectuan, who’s so obsessed with immortality she’d torture a child for it.

I still can’t quite believe that the Council, or whatever secret part of it, would control and use the Child for who knows how long (at least 9 regenerations from what I’ve read, 8 shown in Brain of Morbius plus Angela Martin) and then just wash their hands of it, leaving the Doctor to do whatever she wants including burn down their civilisation/imprison them in a pocket universe/banish them to the void or whatever Tenth Doctor did.

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24 minutes ago, john said:

Is the Time Lord Council all in on the whole conspiracy then? Or is it more an inner cabal of conspirators? Maybe the originators burned through all their regenerations and are dead now. But that would seem strange for Tectuan, who’s so obsessed with immortality she’d torture a child for it.

I still can’t quite believe that the Council, or whatever secret part of it, would control and use the Child for who knows how long (at least 9 regenerations from what I’ve read, 8 shown in Brain of Morbius plus Angela Martin) and then just wash their hands of it, leaving the Doctor to do whatever she wants including burn down their civilisation/imprison them in a pocket universe/banish them to the void or whatever Tenth Doctor did.

Those who knew are probably long dead; the Doctor is billions of years old i think? Certainly Time Lords have had time travel for that long (Wert will probably know) and regeneration preceded that.

So safe to assume the original time lords are gone (except Rassilon, and we don’t know how much time passed between regeneration being rolled out to him setting up the eye of harmony).

The knowledge may have been passed down or maybe not, given the Matrix has little of it. And it gets updated with the knowledge of dying time lords. The Master has experience hacking it (Trial of a Time Lord, it was he who revealed the valeyard’s identity).

My guess is few if any know. And not much they can do to stop the doctor; he/she is involved in too many fixed events. Did Five not prevent the big bang from being undone or re-done in Terminus? (Been a while).

 

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And here’s another thing that occurred to me. :P River Song got her Time Lord powers because she was conceived on the Tardis, right? That fits with the previous conception that regenerating is an offshoot of time travel but doesn’t make much sense if it’s just a dna thing. Unless the Tardis beamed the genetic code into her system. Maybe all time lords are conceived on Tardises. 

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8 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Those who knew are probably long dead; the Doctor is billions of years old i think? Certainly Time Lords have had time travel for that long (Wert will probably know) and regeneration preceded that.

So safe to assume the original time lords are gone (except Rassilon, and we don’t know how much time passed between regeneration being rolled out to him setting up the eye of harmony).

The knowledge may have been passed down or maybe not, given the Matrix has little of it. And it gets updated with the knowledge of dying time lords. The Master has experience hacking it (Trial of a Time Lord, it was he who revealed the valeyard’s identity).

My guess is few if any know. And not much they can do to stop the doctor; he/she is involved in too many fixed events. Did Five not prevent the big bang from being undone or re-done in Terminus? (Been a while).

 

The age of Time Lord civilisation is completely unknown. The Time Lords have said things like they were fighting aliens (like the Racnoss) and doing crazy things "when the universe was half its current size," which puts the age of their civilisation at 6.5 billion years. However, they never really specified what they were talking about and it may well have been that the Time Lords were fighting wars and engaging in activities at these other, different time periods, not that they'd physically existed for all that time. You'd assume that in 6.5 billion years their civilisation would have long transcended to another plane of existence or they would have naturally evolved into some unrecognisable form.

My guess is that the Division/CIA kept the information about the Timeless Child/Doctor out of the public eye and no-one, possibly not even the President, knew about it.

One issue in all of this is the Ruth Doctor. The Doctor being called "the Doctor" before he or she was the Doctor and being active on 20th/21st Century Earth seems to be a major security flaw, as the Doctor would run the risk of bumping into people who'd already encountered them in incarnations they should have no memories of. There's also the thing of her having a TARDIS in the shape of a police box.

One possibility is that Ruth is the last of the Division Timeless Child incarnations. She'd been an operative for the Division in say 1950s or 1960s London so her TARDIS had disguised itself as a police box; she picked the name "the Doctor" almost as a random bit of cover. She then retired, had her memory wiped etc and was rest to young Hartnell. When he fled Gallifrey, he was directed back to his old TARDIS (by Clara, no less!) which then headed for its previous location and get stuck in the police box form permanently, maybe as part of an attempt to remind him of his true identity.

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3 hours ago, Spaßvogel said:

 

My only conclusion is that Chibnall didn't really want the job and so he's systematically destroyed the show out of spite. 

He made the best season of the show for ten years out of spite? Weird accusation that.

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Best season in 10 years?  Hahahahahahaha.  Wow.  I can't believe there are people who are defending this season.   It is a blueprint to how to destroy a character piece by piece.  I've long been thankful that the Cartmel Masterplan never was fully realised, it was at best silly fanwank, but Chibnall took that idea and made it much much worse.  The whole concept of the Timeless Child is indefensible.  It makes zero sense.  The sheer amount of hand-waving about things that have been a part of the show for 50 years is mind boggling.  There's a reason the viewing figures are cratering.  

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I mean, you're entitled to your opinion about the Timeless Child idea, of course. I quite like it: I think it's clever, original, absolutely makes sense, fits well with existing canon and offers a range of interesting story ideas moving forward. If you think it was shit, that's fine. No idea is universally liked, is it?

As for the ratings, they are poorer for season 12 than for 11 - but 11 was better than 10, and 11 was Chibnall's first season. So, maybe Chibnall isn't necessarily the problem. 

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17 minutes ago, mormont said:

I mean, you're entitled to your opinion about the Timeless Child idea, of course. I quite like it: I think it's clever, original, absolutely makes sense, fits well with existing canon and offers a range of interesting story ideas moving forward. If you think it was shit, that's fine. No idea is universally liked, is it?

As for the ratings, they are poorer for season 12 than for 11 - but 11 was better than 10, and 11 was Chibnall's first season. So, maybe Chibnall isn't necessarily the problem. 

As I've said before, people screaming that this "destroys canon" don't seem to have the faintest clue about Doctor Who's canon in the first place.

Interesting observation: Russell T. Davies' novelisation of Rose expands on the scenes where the Ninth Doctor is seen appearing through history. Now fifteen incarnations of the Doctor are listed, including Whittaker and a "bald black woman wielding a flaming sword" and a young man in a wheelchair accompanied by a robot dog. The first has some similarities to Ruth, although she's not bald. It's worth noting that this novelisation was published in 2018, so Chibnall might have taken inspiration from it or RTD had something of an idea what Chibnall was planning. Either way, it seems to have been at least a few months before Jo Martin was cast.

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14 hours ago, Werthead said:

When he fled Gallifrey, he was directed back to his old TARDIS (by Clara, no less!which then headed for its previous location and get stuck in the police box form permanently, maybe as part of an attempt to remind him of his true identity.

Hmm, the Clara thing doesn’t make much sense either. Or at least it’s rather curious that she ignored the Doctor’s inter dimensional origins and secret past to focus on one single incarnation that he blocked out.

I might’ve said this already, but I like the Timeless Child as an idea, I just think it would be better if it was somebody else other than the Doctor. Instead of a chosen one dynamic we’d have the Doctor’s guilt over exploiting a child for thousands of years.

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5 hours ago, john said:

Hmm, the Clara thing doesn’t make much sense either. Or at least it’s rather curious that she ignored the Doctor’s inter dimensional origins and secret past to focus on one single incarnation that he blocked out. 

 

Nothing about Clara makes sense really but tbqh given the nature of the show it would be unreasonable for all future showrunners to have to account for her presence in theoretically every single adventure the Doctor ever had that he might lose or have lost just because Moffatt had an idea he didn't think through properly. It's best to just pretend Impossible Clara never happened, especially since that's what Moffatt did literally immediately after she revealed the War Doctor.

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5 hours ago, john said:

Hmm, the Clara thing doesn’t make much sense either. Or at least it’s rather curious that she ignored the Doctor’s inter dimensional origins and secret past to focus on one single incarnation that he blocked out.

I might’ve said this already, but I like the Timeless Child as an idea, I just think it would be better if it was somebody else other than the Doctor. Instead of a chosen one dynamic we’d have the Doctor’s guilt over exploiting a child for thousands of years.

I think Clara’s copies only went where the GI had changed things to ensure the Doctor’s death, to correct them. If the GI’s research only revealed the ‘official’ Doctors then maybe it only manifested during their regenerations? Remember, Clara never saw the War doctor, so it stands the GI was unaware of him.(or maybe his life was all timelocked away).

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  • 3 weeks later...

You’d think all those other Doctors turning up would be a bit of a clue about the Timeless Child thing. I’m surprised they even managed to get that much of Whittaker, she’s hardly ever in the bloody Tardis.

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4 hours ago, john said:

You’d think all those other Doctors turning up would be a bit of a clue about the Timeless Child thing. I’m surprised they even managed to get that much of Whittaker, she’s hardly ever in the bloody Tardis.

That was created last year, before the Timeless Child thing. I think the creator just assumed that the Time Lords had given Eleven infinite regenerations so they were all future Doctors.

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  • 8 months later...

That was a reasonable special. Lots of running around and exploding Daleks, with a few good character beats. Giving Ryan some much-needed character development 5 seconds before he leaves feels a bit late in the day though.

One key weakness is that Chibnall seems to think that Jack Robertson is a far more charismatic and interesting villain than, well, anyone else on Earth. 

Spoiler

John Bishop as the new companion? Could be fun. He's done some serious acting roles before, including in a gritty Jimmy McGovern drama where he acquitted himself well. It does feel a bit "we need someone to replace Bradley Walsh, quick who else is funny that a grandma might recognise?"

 

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4 hours ago, Werthead said:

That was a reasonable special. Lots of running around and exploding Daleks, with a few good character beats. Giving Ryan some much-needed character development 5 seconds before he leaves feels a bit late in the day though.

One key weakness is that Chibnall seems to think that Jack Robertson is a far more charismatic and interesting villain than, well, anyone else on Earth. 

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John Bishop as the new companion? Could be fun. He's done some serious acting roles before, including in a gritty Jimmy McGovern drama where he acquitted himself well. It does feel a bit "we need someone to replace Bradley Walsh, quick who else is funny that a grandma might recognise?"

 

I agree with that assessment. It did feel a bit like a remix of previous episodes and didn't really bring anything new but it was a fairly solid episode even if Jack Robertson is a villian-of-the-week who didn't need to be revisited.

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I liked the Graham and Ryan bit at the end. The rest of it was a bit dull, I thought. It’s nice to see Captain Jack and the Doctor talking about the past, mentioning mutual friends, albeit briefly. I doubt Moffat or RTD would have bothered including that.

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