Doctor Who II

[Werthead]

19 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

I like that the Doctor basically no-sold the shatteringness of the reaction too. Like it's often a problem with this sort of thing that the revelation is never as vast or horrible as hinted, and that would have been the case here, so the Doctor going 'well it's a lot but why would it break me? I'm not you, Master' just made that work.

What's the deal with Brendan though? Was that entire plotline essentially just a metaphor with her mind/the Master's messages trying to tell her the real story through the filter?

Eta: also worth noting that unless I missed something the question of where the previous humans who went through the boundary disappeared to was never answered so it's still not impossible that, in a roundabout way, the Time Lords are still descendants of humanity as it was speculated/feared before this episode- if those guys went into another universe, developed the regeneration stuff, then she came back through another rift.

Brendan was just a metaphor for the Doctor's time in the Division. As noted on Twitter, this rolls back last week's episode, so, once again, Doctor Who has never had a TV episode taking place in Ireland.

The question is now if they're going to do anything to explain the origin through the rift. I hope not, or if they do it's another showrunner doing stuff for the 100th anniversary in 2063.

[john]

Yeah, good episode, decent fulfilment of all the setup. It did rely a lot on big info dumps despite its longer run time.

Agreed that Sacha Dhawan really upped his game. Wasn’t sure he could do the Master going off on one as well as John Simm but he was even better if anything. And the Lone Cyberman was indeed disposed of too easily, although the Death Particle was a pretty lame plot device too I thought.

The companion subplot was good too. Dressing up as Cybermen is such a Doctor Who solution, but it worked.

As for all the Doctor/Gallifrey revelations, they’re fine in principle but I’d much rather it wasn’t the Doctor and she just had to face being lied to by the Time Lords. A lot of stuff is left unanswered, I guess they can explore it later but you’d think there would be ramifications for being the purest Time Lord and for coming from another universe.

3 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Does it explain why Ruth’s tardis appears as a police box? Surely if she predates Hartnell, its a different tardis? And would she even be calling herself the Doctor?

It doesn’t explain. You could handwave that though, Hartnell Doctor was subconsciously drawn to his old Tardis with the dodgy chameleon circuit. It doesn’t go into any details of the retcon though. I’d like to know how they made her regenerate into a child and how they imposed a genetic limit of 12 regenerations into this functionality immortal body. Just SF science, I guess.

And why the hell would they let the Doctor, the fount of their civilisation, run around the universe like a crazy weirdo.
 

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

What's the deal with Brendan though? Was that entire plotline essentially just a metaphor with her mind/the Master's messages trying to tell her the real story through the filter?

That’s what I gathered. It certainly wasn’t clear to me that the Doctor was supposed to be seeing visions of that. I thought it was just for us viewers.

[Denvek]

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Eta: also worth noting that unless I missed something the question of where the previous humans who went through the boundary disappeared to was never answered so it's still not impossible that, in a roundabout way, the Time Lords are still descendants of humanity as it was speculated/feared before this episode- if those guys went into another universe, developed the regeneration stuff, then she came back through another rift.

I got the impression from last week's episode that the Boundary doesn't always lead to the same place, and that it was the Master who made it link to Gallifrey at this point in time.

[john]

Also, this retcon now establishes the basic function of a Time Lord as a regenerator, rather than a time traveller. That’s a shame, since regeneration always seemed like a neat extrapolation from time travel.

I’d also like to know how the Judoon Cold Case Unit caught up with the Doctor at this point in time? The current Doctor (Hartnell et al) is more than 2000 years old and obviously has travelled all throughout the age of the universe, yet its only now at plot convenience o’clock the Judoon catch up with her. Are they time travellers? Is the Child’s dodgy covert activities taking place along the same timeline as the regular non-division Doctor lifespan?

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, john said:

Also, this retcon now establishes the basic function of a Time Lord as a regenerator, rather than a time traveller. That’s a shame, since regeneration always seemed like a neat extrapolation from time travel.

One possibility is that the infinite regenerations is a function of the Timeless Child being born or produced from the time vortex (sort of how River Song acquired her ability to semi-regenerate), and they extrapolated time travel tech from regeneration. Same principle, just reversed.

Quote

 

I’d also like to know how the Judoon Cold Case Unit caught up with the Doctor at this point in time? The current Doctor (Hartnell et al) is more than 2000 years old and obviously has travelled all throughout the age of the universe, yet its only now at plot convenience o’clock the Judoon catch up with her. Are they time travellers? Is the Child’s dodgy covert activities taking place along the same timeline as the regular non-division Doctor lifespan?

 

I think it's probably because the Doctor met the Judoon just a few weeks ago from their own mutual POV and the Judoon decided to pursue the Doctor at this point in time (probably getting the arrest paperwork in order).

Quote

And why the hell would they let the Doctor, the fount of their civilisation, run around the universe like a crazy weirdo.

It seemed to me that they'd spent centuries or millennia trying to find out the origin of the Timeless Child and gotten nowhere: they didn't know where she'd come from, who her people were etc so they just gave up at a certain point and let them become an ordinary Time Lord.

[polishgenius]

10 hours ago, Denvek said:

I got the impression from last week's episode that the Boundary doesn't always lead to the same place, and that it was the Master who made it link to Gallifrey at this point in time. 

Yeah what I mean is that before it linked to Gallifrey it led somewhere else. And the Timeless Child also came through a rift (I think the Master might even have used the word boundary? Not sure though) from somewhere else. So it's possible that where they went is where she came from, long in that place's past via timey wimey magic.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Yeah what I mean is that before it linked to Gallifrey it led somewhere else. And the Timeless Child also came through a rift (I think the Master might even have used the word boundary? Not sure though) from somewhere else. So it's possible that where they went is where she came from, long in that place's past via timey wimey magic.

If Chibnall went all-in on reconciling some minor lines of dialogue from episodes that aired almost 50 years ago (The Mind of Evil in 1971 was the first story which hinted that the Doctor had a past that didn't align with what we thought we knew), it's quite probable he'll try to explain the Eighth Doctor's "I'm half-human" line at the same time. The Doctor originating from the humans who went through the rift, so is part-human (and so are all the Time Lords, although more from a genetic inheritance, not literally being descended from humans), would resolve that not-really dangling plot thread.

[polishgenius]

5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Doctor originating from the humans who went through the rift, so is part-human (and so are all the Time Lords, although more from a genetic inheritance, not literally being descended from humans), would resolve that not-really dangling plot thread.

 

Aye though it would raise the question about why he knew this when this is all a secret. 

[williamjm]

I thought the finale was a good episode, although perhaps not a great one. It did mostly seem to make sense and build on what had happened in previous episodes, which hasn't always been the case for past finales. If there is one area where Chibnall has really improved the series during his tenure it is remembering that stories work best when they have a coherent plot. I liked the way the Doctor dealt with the revelations, initially understandably a bit stunned by realising their entire life had been a lie, but then decides there are most pressing matters to focus on. Sacha Dhawan's Master was a lot of fun, although I agree it was a shame the Lone Cyberman was written out so easily.

One minor irritation is that we're meant to believe that the genius of The Doctor with a Tardis at her disposal can't figure out a way to rig a remote trigger on the bomb.

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Aye though it would raise the question about why he knew this when this is all a secret. 

Difference incarnations having their memories jolted and subconsciously letting out information they wouldn't otherwise have access to.

Handy-wavey time-wimey wibbly-wobbly. The standard.

[red snow]

It sounds like the last season has a strong story overall but i gave up mid last season, largely due to the realisation the show wasn't that great for me for a while (besides liking capaldi i think it's been poor since he got the part). Is this season a highlight or is it still essentially a fun romp that relies on strong leads and that you are cool to roll with the flaws?

It's definitely a case of me changing than the show getting worse as it has had the same approach since it reappeared. But if the tone has changed and it's a great series I'll give it another try.

[Werthead]

I do prefer Chibnall's approach of having comprehensible, streamlined storylines and less hand-wavey conclusions (although Spyfall's resolution was fairly nonsensical), and I liked last season (not this) not having an overall storyline at all. He's also definitely massively rowed back on the RTD/Moffat thing of having the Doctor as a superhuman god running around solving problems without thinking about it. I also think he's a touch darker; the bad guys in his story do sometimes just straight up murder the guest characters with much less pathos than in the previous era.

That said, I do think his two seasons in charge have been variable and not necessarily better than the previous era. It's still all a bit of a forgettable panto romp, which the show has really been since 2005.

[red snow]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I do prefer Chibnall's approach of having comprehensible, streamlined storylines and less hand-wavey conclusions (although Spyfall's resolution was fairly nonsensical), and I liked last season (not this) not having an overall storyline at all. He's also definitely massively rowed back on the RTD/Moffat thing of having the Doctor as a superhuman god running around solving problems without thinking about it. I also think he's a touch darker; the bad guys in his story do sometimes just straight up murder the guest characters with much less pathos than in the previous era.

That said, I do think his two seasons in charge have been variable and not necessarily better than the previous era. It's still all a bit of a forgettable panto romp, which the show has really been since 2005.

It sounds like it's moving in a direction that would suit me better. I'll try and watch a couple.

To be fair the "forgettable panto romp" is probably key to its long term success

[Derfel Cadarn]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Difference incarnations having their memories jolted and subconsciously letting out information they wouldn't otherwise have access to.

Handy-wavey time-wimey wibbly-wobbly. The standard.

Explains Three (Pertwee) giving his age in the thousands, and other wildly contradicting ages.

My rationalisation is that timelords are trained to process a lot of stuff subconsciously, to avoid going mad from all the paradoxes of tine travel.

Like the doctor supressing the war doctor while banging on about his role ending the tine war every other episode.

[williamjm]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

I do prefer Chibnall's approach of having comprehensible, streamlined storylines and less hand-wavey conclusions (although Spyfall's resolution was fairly nonsensical), and I liked last season (not this) not having an overall storyline at all. He's also definitely massively rowed back on the RTD/Moffat thing of having the Doctor as a superhuman god running around solving problems without thinking about it. I also think he's a touch darker; the bad guys in his story do sometimes just straight up murder the guest characters with much less pathos than in the previous era.

That said, I do think his two seasons in charge have been variable and not necessarily better than the previous era.

I think maybe the average quality could be similar to the Davies/Moffat eras but the variation is different. I think the episode quality has been much more consistent and I've enjoyed almost all of them (the dire Orphan 44 notwithstanding). However, I'm not sure it has really had the peaks of the Davies/Moffat eras, while I particularly liked the Rosa Parks, Indian Partition and Mary Shelley episodes I'm not sure it's really had anything I've liked as much as Blink or Human Nature or Vincent and the Doctor.

[Derfel Cadarn]

23 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I think maybe the average quality could be similar to the Davies/Moffat eras but the variation is different. I think the episode quality has been much more consistent and I've enjoyed almost all of them (the dire Orphan 44 notwithstanding). However, I'm not sure it has really had the peaks of the Davies/Moffat eras, while I particularly liked the Rosa Parks, Indian Partition and Mary Shelley episodes I'm not sure it's really had anything I've liked as much as Blink or Human Nature or Vincent and the Doctor.

Agree; it’s been broadly consistent in quality. No Blinks but also no Love & Monsters

[Werthead]

17 hours ago, williamjm said:

I think maybe the average quality could be similar to the Davies/Moffat eras but the variation is different. I think the episode quality has been much more consistent and I've enjoyed almost all of them (the dire Orphan 44 notwithstanding). However, I'm not sure it has really had the peaks of the Davies/Moffat eras, while I particularly liked the Rosa Parks, Indian Partition and Mary Shelley episodes I'm not sure it's really had anything I've liked as much as Blink or Human Nature or Vincent and the Doctor.

I like this analysis, pretty much spot on.

[mormont]

On 3/2/2020 at 1:35 AM, john said:

 It doesn’t go into any details of the retcon though. I’d like to know how they made her regenerate into a child and how they imposed a genetic limit of 12 regenerations into this functionality immortal body. Just SF science, I guess.

Or (and this was my assumption watching the episode) the Time Lords lied about giving the Doctor more regenerations.

[Werthead]

I think it's more likely that - assuming they physically could - the Time Lords imposed the 12-limit on the Doctor when they regenerated him into Hartnell, the same as with the other Time Lords. It's possible that the Doctor could be captured, tortured, forced to regenerate several times to burn through the regenerations to die properly etc. If they didn't remove the limits, it'd be too easy for the Doctor to discover that something is very wrong and that'd blow their cover.

[Derfel Cadarn]

My take was the Time Lords didn’t/couldn’t limit the Doctor’s regenerations (and those who knew might want to keep subject zero around anyway). The Doctor could still die if they sustained too much damage to regenerate, or were simply disintegrated. That’s my guess on how 12 was originally killed on trenzalore. The daleks woukdnt want to take chances.

The Doctor getting extra (and unnecessary?) regens gave him the power to deal with the daleks, even if he didnt need it to regenerate after dying. Maybe it was a time lord intern who sent the regens, not knowing about the Doctor’s legacy? Most who did probably long since used all their regens or died in the time war.

 

I wonder if the woman commonly thought to be the Doctor’s mother in 10’s finale was either his adopted mother (from 1 onwards) or maybe Tectuan? She gave herself regeneration before the limit was imposed.

It would be good if they brought back Romana. Maybe even retcon Gallifrey-Clara to be Romana’s original generation?