Doctor Who: Grand Theft TARDIS

[red snow]

I wondered what they were going for with that. I suppose it makes sense for the Warrior to be a young man but otherwise it's a bit weird since, given Smith Doctor's aging rate, he'd presumably have to have lived thousands of years to apparently age like that. And we saw in the trailer that it's old Hurt who gets a hold of the Moment, so does that mean he spends thousands of years fighting the war before he decides to end it?

Is it even possible to guage the length of a time war? Makes my head hurt contemplating it. Thankfully it's doctor who time so a waste of time to think about it. It'd make more sense if the timelords were fixed points or a constant that time can be measured against.

Anyhow I guess the war doctor (wish they'd called him the surgeon) could have easily spent a long time fighting in the war. That or he existed for a long time after the war? Guess we'll have some clues next week.

Does anyone know if bbc can still broadcast in 3d?

[felice]

Plus it looked like Hurt has aged 40 years at the point we saw him from his regeneration. That could be a long time in Timelord years given how Matt Smith's Doctor is already really old and hasn't aged.

He could have been prematurely aged by the effects of weaponry used in the Time War. We've seen such things before in The Sound of Drums and The Daleks' Master Plan.

[john]

The 'first Time War' thing in the books has never been canonised, as indeed the novels have not (though RTD did throw fans of the books a bone by calling the war in the TV show the 'Last' Time War). The minisode only canonises - or at least increases the canonicity of - the Big Finish Audios, where the first Time War never happened (or at least was not referenced). I could be wrong, but I believe the Eighth has different companions in the novels and the audio dramas, and the only non-TV companion shared between the two formats is Bernice Summerfield for the Seventh.

That's interesting, I never realised they had different continuities but, now that I've looked it up, apparently there's even direct references to different timelines for the 8th Doctor in both the books and the audio. Although it seems Big Finish did confuse the issue with a more recent play where his companions are listed in order, books followed by audio dramas.

He could have been prematurely aged by the effects of weaponry used in the Time War. We've seen such things before in The Sound of Drums and The Daleks' Master Plan.

But then why would they bother with that at all, rather than just make him old to start with?

[The Marquis de Leech]

But then why would they bother with that at all, rather than just make him old to start with?

He wanted to be a warrior. Making him old from the get-go would contradict that.

[Brendan Moody]

There is no such thing as "canon" in Doctor Who, as no one with the power to enforce them has ever made any pronouncements about what is and isn't binding on future stories. The new TV series has always used and ignored different elements of the tie-ins (and the classic series, for that matter) as suits the stories at hand, and unless someone with a fetish for dreary rules takes over, it probably always will.

I would imagine that the War Doctor's post-regenerative youth was just a way to underline that he's meant to have lived a long time, rather than being a short-term Doctor. As Moffat put it in an interview: "he’s not a fresh-born Doctor. We didn’t want to imply that he’d just been around for a little while. There’s a whole lot of stuff you missed! It’s a nice thing to be able to say in the show, and for no one to be able to contradict you, that there were years that you didn’t know about." Whether that means decades or centuries... well, I doubt Moffat meant to imply anything one way or the other, but we'll know more in five days.

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

I must say that I really dislike and idea that Eight had to take some gizmo potion to become a warrior persona. I would really like it more if Warrior was an effect of personal evolution. Just sayin'

[john]

But then why would they bother with that at all, rather than just make him old to start with?

He wanted to be a warrior. Making him old from the get-go would contradict that.

Not necessarily, he could be a wise and experienced general. But anyway, my issue is more with the fact that we're supposed to believe that he was pissing about for who knows how long after being created specifically to end the Time War.

I must say that I really dislike and idea that Eight had to take some gizmo potion to become a warrior persona. I would really like it more if Warrior was an effect of personal evolution. Just sayin'

Well, it was a personal choice but I know what you mean, it would have been better if he was gradually involved in the war and got to the point where he stopped being a "good man." Which, prior to the Name of the Doctor, is how we all presumed it had happened anyway.

[felice]

But then why would they bother with that at all, rather than just make him old to start with?

If he was already old he'd be more vulnerable to Time War weaponry. Being aged 40 human year equivalents is a much bigger problem for someone with an equivalent age of 70 than 30.

Not necessarily, he could be a wise and experienced general. But anyway, my issue is more with the fact that we're supposed to believe that he was pissing about for who knows how long after being created specifically to end the Time War.

He was created with the goal of ending the Time War; that doesn't automatically give him the ability to end it instantly. However long that incarnation lasted, I doubt he did much pissing around.

Well, it was a personal choice but I know what you mean, it would have been better if he was gradually involved in the war and got to the point where he stopped being a "good man."

Yeah, the horrors of the War and having to be involved in it is quite enough to change him; the potion is an unnecessary magic explanation for something that already made perfect sense.

[polishgenius]

The thing about the potion is that it actually means that the person who 'broke the promise' or whatever is McGann's Eighth Doctor, given that he consciously made that decision to change.

[Penguin king]

The thing about the potion is that it actually means that the person who 'broke the promise' or whatever is McGann's Eighth Doctor, given that he consciously made that decision to change.

But 8th doctor, 9th doctor or Warrior, they're still all the same person. Different personas sure, but fundamentally the same being.

[Werthead]

Does anyone know if bbc can still broadcast in 3d?

The dedicated channel never took off, but in theory any HD channel can output a 3D image. I don't think they're doing that though. You'll only be able to see it in 3D at the cinema or on the 3D Blu-Ray release.

There is no such thing as "canon" in Doctor Who,

Yes and no. There are no strict 'canon guidelines' as there are for Star Wars and Star Trek (though Star Wars's are about to go out the window anyway), but there are things that are definitely not formally part of the continuity: Dimensions in Time (thankfully), Scream of the Shalka and the 1960s movies and comics which feature the Doctor as a human inventor.

Pretty much anything else is on the table, and Paul Cornell has suggested using the Time War to explain shifts in continuity: The Ark, which featured the Sun exploding just a few million years from now, is supersceded by the Ninth Doctor story in which the Sun explodes, billions of years in the future. That doesn't mean that The Ark never had an impact on the Doctor's life and he didn't experience those moments, but that the universe has shifted around it. The same thing happened in the original series: the Dalek Invasion of Earth was unwritten by the Daleks chaning history Day of the Daleks, but at the end of that story the Doctor changed time so Day of the Daleks never happened but The Dalek Invasion of Earth still did.

So the 'Time Loom' explanation for the Doctor's origins is no longer canon right now because the new series has contradicted it, but it could have been true in the past before being unwritten and rewritten in the Time War or something else.

the person who 'broke the promise' or whatever is McGann's Eighth Doctor, given that he consciously made that decision to change

We still don't know what promise was broken. The Doctor has not been above killing people directly under dire circumstances: the Third Doctor gunned down Ogrons in Day of the Daleks, whilst the Fifth and Sixth Doctors occasionally gunned down Cybermen under duress, so it's not that. But I think the promise is more to do with massive genocidal events like killing off all the Time Lords and Daleks (the Doctor did destroy Skaro in Remembrance of the Daleks using the Hand of Omega, but fans have pointed out he could have done so in the far future when Skaro had already been depopulated by the Time War or the events of Evil of the Daleks, effectively blowing up an uninhabited rock to just freak out Davros; of course, blowing up Skaro is pointless when the Daleks have become an interstellar, trans-temporal civilisation anyway but whatever).

Or to put it another way, the Eighth was thinking of becoming a 'Warrior' to fight in the war would not mean turning into Time Lord Stalin and killing billions of people. The Eighth may have made it possible for Hurt to break the promise, but he didn't do it himself and didn't appreciate that would happen.

We also need to remember that the Doctor began the Time War in the first place (in Genesis of the Daleks, at the Time Lords' behest, but he still took responsibility for it), and probably the guilt of that meant he wanted to end it, but knew his Eighth incarnation could not do it.

[Brendan Moody]

Yes and no.

Just yes, actually. "Canon" in the context of fictional universes refers to authoritative guidelines about what past stories are binding on future ones. To my knowledge none exist for Doctor Who, and none ever have. What's your source for the notion that there are things that are "definitely" and "formally" not part of the continuity (which is a slightly different concept than canon anyway)? Shalka is an oddity since it was announced as an official continuation and then ignored subsequently, but I don't think anyone has flat-out said that it doesn't count in any sense, because that's not how the programme has ever operated. Dimensions in Time is widely reviled for obvious reasons, and many individual fans make a point of pronouncing that it's not "real" to them, but that's a different sort of thing entirely.

no longer canon right now because the new series has contradicted it,

That isn't how fictional canons have tended to work. If it was, half of TV Star Trek would have been "no longer canon" at any given moment because it contradicted the other half. One of the uses of a fictional canon is that it can minimize contradictions, but if they occur anyway, that doesn't make the contradicted material non-canon unless the people who define these things say as much. Fans who are trying to build a coherent continuity despite the contradictions will, of course, decide to "count" some things and not others, usually preferring material in the primary medium over tie-ins, but that has nowt to do with canon.

[Derfel Cadarn]

I like to reconcile the Earth being destroyed twice by placing The Ark centuries before the starter serial of Trial of a Time Lord where the Time Lords move Earth in the year 2 million or so, which saw flares wipe out most of the planet. So basically the Time Lords moved Earth at the last moment, and were later forced to move it back.

[Werthead]

That isn't how fictional canons have tended to work.

That's because most shows don't have the freedom Doctor Who has to rewrite its own canon and continuity. Of course everything is 'canon', but when the events of previous episodes can be rewritten, negated or undone by events like the Time War, you also have a built-in explanation for the inconsistencies.

[red snow]

The dedicated channel never took off, but in theory any HD channel can output a 3D image. I don't think they're doing that though. You'll only be able to see it in 3D at the cinema or on the 3D Blu-Ray release.

It would be nice to have a rerun in 3D on their HD channel if that's the case. Then again it's not like I'm expecting "gravity" from the BBC

[Arataniello]

This would be great - a web series of Eighth Doctor adventures -

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news/29763/petition-for-more-mcgann-era-doctor-who

[Werthead]

Major spoiler.

Tom Baker confirms that he's done a voice-over and some old footage has been manipulated to make it appear that he's talking or doing something in the special.

David Tennant introduces the special with a note on budget limitations :)

[Werthead]

This will freak the shit out of all of you. ALL OF YOU.

Here's how you can do it yourself.

And yes, you could put pictures in of GoT characters/pets/Jesus/Stanek/crocodiles and have them appear in the opening title sequence of Doctor Who. The mind boggles.

[red snow]

Major spoiler.

Tom Baker confirms that he's done a voice-over and some old footage has been manipulated to make it appear that he's talking or doing something in the special.

David Tennant introduces the special with a note on budget limitations :)

I'm starting to wonder (it's speculation based on Wert's spoiler)

whether all the Doctors are going to appear in some form or other. It' s not the first time I've thought this but with McGann's appearance and now Baker's along with the fact that they all appear in the teaser just makes it all the more likely. It is the 50th too. I wouldn't even rule eccleston out at this point although he's most likely to be a body double (weird given several doctors are dead). I think it would be fitting if the time war requires all of his regenerations to end it. Yes. I'm also not ruling out an appearance by Capaldi either. Something massive and timey-wimey like that could easily be used to increase or reset the Doctor's lives. I've also joined those who think the +1 regeneration Doctor has to be female - it just seems like the best opportunity. The Doctor may think it's a good time to try something different.

Getting more excited about this now. Shame I'm away at the weekend.

[Igziabeher]

This will freak the shit out of all of you. ALL OF YOU.

Here's how you can do it yourself.

And yes, you could put pictures in of GoT characters/pets/Jesus/Stanek/crocodiles and have them appear in the opening title sequence of Doctor Who. The mind boggles.

this is way too fun.

so many ways to go with it: http://www.savethedaywhoiscoming.com/invite/31ff4b