Ok. So I am thoroughly stoked for the 50th special, and there were some wonderful moments in the episode. But I can't decide whether it was good or not. For one thing, for all that was set up for the future, not an awful lot actually happened, really. Might need a rewatch before I give a proper opinion on it.

Edit: Here's the link for that clip we were promised if there weren't any spoilers. Turns out to be behind the scenes interview, not actual footage, but hey ho.

 

Motherfucking John Hurt. He's either

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The Valeyard or the rumoured true 9th Doctor with Eccleston being the 10th, Tennant the 11th and Smith the 12th. The line "I did it in the name of peace" could totally be a reference to the Time War.

 

O.O November. Seriously :*(

I really do feel that not much happened this episode. I was very sad that River made an appearance and I so wish she would just die already. The ending was such a surprise. They introduced him as The Doctor, so I don't know about the first possibility Jjf88.

There was also some repetition in the episode... so the already short episode felt even shorter.

 

Eh, I'm with him. The entire thing was pretty formulaic: introduce villain/monster, go to planet, resolve villain/monster. And

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I actually like River Song, but that was some really contrived bullshit. She's a digital memory attached to Clara's brain by a chronologically challenged seance, yet somehow the Doctor can not only see/hear her but touch her? The fuck's that supposed to be?

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That said, formulaic doesn't really mean bad, normally. There have been some awesome episodes that can all be boiled down to 'find planet, stumble over monster, defeat monster.' That's cool. But number 1, I expected a bit more from all the '50th anniversary' hype. And more importantly, number 2:

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everything from the moment the Intelligence entered the Doctor's timeline was disgustingly predictable. The instant he went in, everybody knew where that was going.

Again, that's not necessarily bad, but holy shit did they milk that. The last third of the show could've been condensed into about 3 minutes and absolutely nothing would have been lost. They showed all of the same badly edited bullshit flashbacks three times over. Why? The entire thing just felt like somebody in the office said "hey, I've got an idea, let's have the doctor visit his own grave, and... uhh, fuck it, yeah. That'll be enough for 45 minutes."

And then they got to filming, realized they had 30 minutes of show tops and, rather than figure out something to do with their time, just threw in a load of old footage under the guise of 'reliving the show's history'.

Fuck that. That was 30 minutes of show squeezed into a 45 minute slot.

I'm reserving judgement on John Hurt until I figure out what they're actually doing with that.

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Whatever name they call him by, he didn't feature enough in this episode to even be considered an impact. Call that another disappointment.

 

Some people on Gallifrey Base suggested he is

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A future Doctor, or a Doctor between 2-3 since we never saw that regen OR the first incarnation of The Doctor but he wasn't called "The Doctor" but since he "broke the promise" that suggests there have been others before him

 

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I don't think it can be a future doctor since he knows about him already - and what he did.

I agree with your number 2 point Marsupial completely except when you're referring to the older footage+Clara, that was still something new and actually gave us something. (Although not with the repetition part.)

I remember reading something like Moffat saying we had seen Clara before - before Darlek Asylum. Am I misremembering this, or is he using a character in the previous seasons who appeared (however minorly) and is now supposed to be Clara?

Edit: Also, those monsters appearing alongside the GI. Are they supposed to be the ones that you forget after looking away from them...? I can't really remember where they're from but they seem familiar.

 

Ok, so I've watched it again, and I'm a bit happier with it now. There are still problems, but watching it in the knowledge that it's so clearly the first part of (at least) two makes those problems much easier to forgive, and there's a hell of a lot to like.

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The Hurt Doctor being the one to end the Time War does seem the most likely, now, but it's not a given, and Moffat rarely goes for the obvious conclusion. Being a future incarnation does raise the question of how the Doctor knows about him, but it is a show about time travel, and of course, the only time the Doctor really talks about him is when they're standing in the middle of his time stream. He can be forgiven a bit of future knowledge in that scenario, I think.

 

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I don't know if this is really accurate, but here (SPOILER!) is a claim of who John Hurt is playing as exactly.

 

The Sun has had a lot of exclusives about the show over the last few years, and while a couple have been spot on, most of them have been bollocks. That said, that article (which has been doing the rounds for a week or so at least) does fit the most likely explanation. I wouldn't say it spoils anything beyond what's been in the episode tonight, unless it does turn out to be true of course. And there's at least one statement in there that I don't think will be true, based on tonight.

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“Tennant and Smith’s Doctors will at first refuse to accept Hurt is them — until their sonic screwdrivers confirm it and announce, ‘He’s us. He’s the ninth us’. Smith knew exactly who he was tonight.

 

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This episode just reaffirms what I thought before, that John Hurt will be playing the Valeyard, who has been established in pseudo-canon not just as a regeneration of the Doctor, but as the Doctor's alter ego, something he becomes after sinking into a darker side of himself. Perhaps he HAD to become the Valeyard in order to make himself activate the Moment, and only took up the name Doctor again after regenerating into Nine. Sounds like Moffat logic to me; that the Valeyard doesn't 'count' as a numbered 'Doctor' because his terrible deeds didn't conform to the name of Doctor. This theory sort of holds in that Hurt is wearing 8's clothes underneath 9's jacket.

 

Was anyone else disappointed he didn't say allons-y near the end? Cheap call back to earlier it would have been, but it would have made it perfect for me.

 

Disappointed? No, I was relieved. I liked Ten and all, but we're going to get enough of his bullshit in the 50th.

 

I was expecting him to say Geronimo

 

Can't be sure what he is exactly, but he can't be both a previous incarnation and the Valeyard because the Great Intelligence listed the Valeyard as a name that the Doctor gains in the future.

 

I've stayed out of the back and forth over series 7, because aside from a few things I have really enjoyed it. And I have to say I loved the finale. I enjoyed River's return. I have always enjoyed the different ways she has been portrayed, because she grows as she ages. People seem to forget that she isn't all that old, in time lord terms, by the time of Let's kill hitler and the wedding of river song.

The final two minutes were amazing, wasn't expecting that at all.

 

Most moment's involving River these days are over long.

Some things that come to mind,

1) How did GI transport himself along with a few other people and monsters across space and TIME to Trenzalore?

2) Who were the monsters with GI?

3) How did this episode relate to the prophecy involving "the fall of the eleventh", "silence must fall" and "no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer"? It seems like it was unrelated, in which case, is it still to come?

4) Most importantly, after such a huge deal being made with Trenzalore being the one place the doctor cannot ever go. He goes there and, on top of that enters his own time stream and there doesn't seem to be any consequences at all. What gives...

 

Darth
you make very good points and i agree with you. But as to point 4 it is possible that there are going to be consequences and it's just that they haven't been shown yet... huh it's possible that's what they are going to do with 2 as well but i doubt it.

here's hoping that the special in November is going to be better.