Doctor Who: Regenerated discussion

[Werthead]

No. I think I get it:

The 11th Doctor is the Eleventh Doctor. However, he is the 12th incarnation of the Time Lord who calls himself 'the Doctor' in all of his other incarnations. He did something so heinous (during the Time War?) they he basically discounted himself from being the Doctor. Either that, or it's sort of a deal like the Valeyard. The fact that the Valeyard was mentioned may have been a clue to that.

[Faraday]

What wert said. That's what I got it. It seems like it'll be during the Time War, I'd think. (It makes sense)

I really fucking enjoyed the episode.

[Seli]

No. I think I get it:

The 11th Doctor is the Eleventh Doctor. However, he is the 12th incarnation of the Time Lord who calls himself 'the Doctor' in all of his other incarnations. He did something so heinous (during the Time War?) they he basically discounted himself from being the Doctor. Either that, or it's sort of a deal like the Valeyard. The fact that the Valeyard was mentioned may have been a clue to that.

Yes that seems to have been the clear implication. Going by the spoilery set photographs of the anniversary episode

it would seem it was the incarnation before the ninth Doctor (Eccleston), and since the 8th (McGann) is still in the sequence probably a different incarnation from him

[Faraday]

Yeah it can't be an Old McGann or anything - since Mcgann counts towards the 11 in the current canon, it seems.

[Derfel Cadarn]

I liked seeing the 1st Doctor steal the TARDIS.

I suspect the Valeyard mention might be a red herring. Interesting how one of the Doctor's names is The Beast. A possibility that the Doctor ends up as the Beast who inspired the various Satan legends and was confronted by the 10th Doctor?

[Seli]

Perhaps it was Peter Cushing ;)

[john]

I thought it was kind of uninteresting. :P

There wasn't exactly much jeopardy. Oh a big whirly timestream that we must never ever go in, oh well, lets go in anyway and what do you know turns out we're just fine.

And no mention whatsoever of the Silence. Fall of the eleventh? Silence will fall? Maybe in the special.

Two quibbles - That seems to be the end of River and we never found out onscreen how she knows the Doctor's name. When they got married he just told her he was in a tesselecta, or whatever.

And 11 seems well aware that there is an extra incarnation of him knocking around. I'd assumed that would be the catalyst for him finding the 10th Doctor and launching into the special. There doesn't seem any particular urgency after all.

oh the video Moffat promised is up on the DW facebook. It's a behind the scenes chat with Smith and Tennant where they infer John Hurt is often bemused, both on and offscreen.

[Lord Toblerone]

I thought it was a pretty good episode.

It didn't feel like a cop out, which is great.

Liked River here, she was very well used.

Hadn't considered that John Hurt might not be the Doctor who dies at Trenzalore, but some of what 11 said could suggest this was from his past not his future.

[Poobah]

I kinda felt like the episode was all hype and no payoff really, and now the waiting begins.

[williamjm]

I thought it was a good episode for the most part, although the climax fell a bit flat (until John Hurt appeared). I never really felt that Clara was in any danger and it was so easy to rescue her that it felt a bit anti-climatic, I think Jenny earlier in the episode felt in more peril. The bit where Clara has apparently been helping him throughout his incarnations but he's never noticed her was a bit unconvincing, I think it would have worked better if they'd just focused on her helping him as Dalek-Clara and Victorian-Clara.

I think using Vastra, Jenny and Strax in multiple episodes beforehand did work well, since it avoids having to introduce characters in the finale and they're fun characters so the storyline is more compelling when they are threatened and its plausible that the Doctor would be willing to do a lot to try to save them, even if he seemed reluctant to open the door. I think I liked the build-up with the conference call more than the bit on Trenzalore itself.

And no mention whatsoever of the Silence. Fall of the eleventh? Silence will fall? Maybe in the special.

Maybe 'silence will fall' is meant to refer to the star systems Vastra sees disappearing due to the Doctor having failed to save them? Of course, that doesn't do anything to explain the Silence aliens, but it does help explain why answering the question 'Doctor Who?' would have bad consequences.

I think it's one of those episodes that doesn't really answer much, and adds even more questions, although at least some of those questions are interesting, I'm interested to see what they're going to do with John Hurt's character.

[polishgenius]

Maybe 'silence will fall' is meant to refer to the star systems Vastra sees disappearing due to the Doctor having failed to save them? Of course, that doesn't do anything to explain the Silence aliens, but it does help explain why answering the question 'Doctor Who?' would have bad consequences.

On the other hand it makes their plot make no sense whatsoever, because killing the Doctor to prevent The Doctor dying is... silly? Also they were scared of him and hated him, which doesn't tally with making sure he can save the universe in his past. I guess the whole Treznolor thing isn't finished yet and we'll find out more in November. I hope so.

But then, the Silence have never really made sense- first time we meet them, they're trying to bring the Silence about, the second time, they're apparently trying to stop it.

All in all, that was a good episode in its own right but, so far, a terrible resolution to the Treznolor hype.

[Derfel Cadarn]

It does seem to suggest that they're going back to how the Valeyard from Trial of a Timelord was originally meant to be; a dark incarnation of the Doctor. This was felt to be too dark and it was rewritten so that the Valeyard was an amalgamation of the darker parts of the Doctor between his 11th and 12 regenerations, similar to the Watcher who was an echo of the 5th Doctor. But it may be that they're retconning it so that in fact the Valeyard is a future Doctor. The Valeyard's end was never seen on TV...

[Faraday]

But then, the Silence have never really made sense- first time we meet them, they're trying to bring the Silence about, the second time, they're apparently trying to stop it..

Yeah. I always felt the Silence stuff was kind of weird/overly convoluted never made much sense.

I almost wish they'd just pulled the trigger and Clara had stayed dead. It'd have been a great way to go out - where does she go from here now her myster has been resolved? It feels like if they ever wanted to properly kill of a companion this was a good way to do it.

[john]

I thought it was a good episode for the most part, although the climax fell a bit flat (until John Hurt appeared). I never really felt that Clara was in any danger and it was so easy to rescue her that it felt a bit anti-climatic, I think Jenny earlier in the episode felt in more peril.

...

I think using Vastra, Jenny and Strax in multiple episodes beforehand did work well, since it avoids having to introduce characters in the finale and they're fun characters so the storyline is more compelling when they are threatened and its plausible that the Doctor would be willing to do a lot to try to save them, even if he seemed reluctant to open the door. I think I liked the build-up with the conference call more than the bit on Trenzalore.

Yeah, I liked the bit when Jenny died and Strax went bad. There was far more tension there than there was in the Doctor/Clara thing. I enjoyed the scene with River too.

[williamjm]

On the other hand it makes their plot make no sense whatsoever, because killing the Doctor to prevent The Doctor dying is... silly? Also they were scared of him and hated him, which doesn't tally with making sure he can save the universe in his past. I guess the whole Treznolor thing isn't finished yet and we'll find out more in November. I hope so.

I think someone wanting to kill the Doctor after he had saved the world (a lot) but before he had allowed the Great Intelligence to gain entry to his tomb and undo the Doctor's past actions could potentially make sense (for one thing, it would probably mean the Time War was no longer over), but you're right that it doesn't seem consistent with what else we see of the Silence.

I wonder if the Doctor's battle at Treznolor in which he died was meant to be against the forces who were waging war against him in When a Good Man Goes To War?

[Werthead]

I wonder if the Doctor's battle at Treznolor in which he died was meant to be against the forces who were waging war against him in When a Good Man Goes To War?

I don't think so. That was on Earth, wasn't it? This is the first time we've visited Treznolor. The question will arise is if Treznolor is the place where the Doctor will 'definitely' die or if it will be undone or revamped in the special.

[williamjm]

I don't think so. That was on Earth, wasn't it?

Was it? I don't remember a location being mentioned for the war, although given that both sides have spaceships and it is referred to as being a long-running conflict it needn't be confined to any one planet anyway.

[john]

But then, the Silence have never really made sense- first time we meet them, they're trying to bring the Silence about, the second time, they're apparently trying to stop it.

They definitely don't make sense. I'm not sure that they were ever trying to stop the silence though. The line is "silence will fall," which I always took to mean they will cease to exist.

In the fifth series "the Silence" seems to be an event, the result of the TARDIS exploding and drying up the whole universe. The Fish Vampires from Vampires in Venice fled their planet from something they called the silence, when all the nearby stars started going out. We don't know whether the Silence were involved in the big plot by all the Doctor's enemies involving the Pandorica, or why exactly the TARDIS blew up.

Then in the opener to series six the Silence are memory proof aliens who've apparently occupied earth for countless centuries mostly to bring to fruition their plot to kill the Doctor. They organise the space programme just because they want a spacesuit which they can then heavily modify and drop in a human/time vortex baby who's also been modified and trained in psychopathy but can't actually control the spacesuit in the first place. Then they place this concoction in an inland lake 50 years later just where the Doctor is having a picnic??????? #wtfnonsense

Then the Silence are a religious order that wants to kill the Doctor before he answers the "Doctor who" question cos shit will go down after that. All we've seen is that there's another "Doctor" who apparently did something bad in the past. There better be some kind of Silence-referenced consequences.

The stars going out thing makes sense but I would have appreciated some kind of explanation.

[Jon AS]

I think the Silence can still make sense, apart from the overcomplicated plot to assassinate the Doctor.

Going by the assumption that the Silence wants to make sure the Doctor doesn't get to Treznolor (is that really how it's spelled? Where did I get "Trenzalore" from, then?) but only after he's accomplished his countless good deeds:

-They team up with everyone to lock him in the Pandorica, maybe they're even the main instigators of the plot

-To facilitate the plot they somehow block the TARDIS, underestimating, not for the last time, the lengths River will go to to not lose the Doctor, which leads to the TARDIS blowing up and the whole universe being destroyed. Oops.

-After the Doctor has fixed that little problem, they go to plan b: kill the Doctor. To make sure this succeeds they plan to create a quasi-Timelord super assassin. Overcomplicated plotting ensues and is defeated by the Doctor faking his own death

They don't get to try again because the Doctor uses the respite his faked death gives him to erase evidence of his own existence from every place he can get to. Clara helps him by additionally making even the Daleks forget about him.

Was it? I don't remember a location being mentioned for the war, although given that both sides have spaceships and it is referred to as being a long-running conflict it needn't be confined to any one planet anyway.

Was that an actual large-scale war? I took it more as some powerful people (i.e. the Silence) working against the Doctor out of fear, assembling larger military forces only when they deemed it necessary. The soldiers we got a closer look at in A Good Man goes to War seemed pretty mercenary. Though the Colonel in charge appeared to be a true believer and presumably "the Papal Mainframe herself" (one of the things I love about the show are these small throwaway, evokative terms) is too.

[Lady Octarina]

I think this episode doesn't work as an adequate conclusion to the "Silence will fall" thing, but it's a fitting explanation for Clara, though this would have been the perfect way to say goodbye to her, or at least to that version of her. Whatever else comes next won’t be half as good as the moment she jumps into the Doctor’s timestream. It would give us closure, instead, it just felt like a wasted opportunity.

Of course, I knew Jenna-Louise Coleman would continue as Clara for a while, since she’s on the 50th and everything, but why not have the Doctor go on random adventures with her echoes, maybe they could even last longer than an episode, until he accepts her fate, why not? It would make as much sense as anything else on this show. And it would be much more satisfying than having the boring Clara around. Oh well...

I agree that John Hurt is probably the Time War Doctor, and it will be such a pity if this is River's last episode, when we could have a bit more of mature!River. Yeah, I know the character got annoying recently, but I think it would be nice to see her unrelated to the Ponds a bit more.

It's still probably the best Moffat episode since Eleventh Hour.