Just a question, but ... what about the Daleks on Gallifrey itself?

 

Either frozen in a moment or Gallifrey popo fucking them up something fierce.

 

That cyberman head is grinning at me. Also good to see they got rid of the stupid new design.

 

I concur.


On another note, The Radio Times reported that Moffat considers Matt Smith's Doctor to be the character's thirteenth incarnation.

I'm curious as to how things'll be handled in terms of how the Doctor would get his hands on more regenerations than he's originally been allotted - RTD wrote a scene in the Sarah Jane Adventures episode Death of the Doctor where Eleven jokingly states that he can regenerate over five hundred times. Considering that there's also past precedent as well for Time Lords gaining (and for that matter losing) regenerations or regeneration cycles, there's plenty of wiggle room for the Doctor to gain a thirteenth regeneration and subsequently a fourteenth body.

Although with Moffat's hardcore Whovian tendency (despite the Silence and Cybermen's apparent involvement in the Time of the Doctor), I wouldn't be too surprised if he brought elements of Classic Who lore back into the mix.

I for one would love to see the Doctor delving into Rassilon's shenanigans, as, well. He's fucking Rassilon - and in The Five Doctors, it was heavily implied that he had discovered a means to immortality beyond that of the other Time Lords' regenerative process. That'd be hella interesting.

Also of interest: The potential involvement of the Valeyard. The Great Intelligence namedropped him in Name of the Doctor, but in essence, he is a potential amalgamation of the darker side of the Doctor between his Twelfth and final incarnations. If Tennant counts as one regeneration despite what the article above says, then the Valeyard could come about between Smith's and Capaldi's Doctors. And that's worth looking into seriously as well.

SO MANY DIRECTIONS MOFFAT COULD TAKE THIS. SO EXCITE.

 

That doesn't explain why he didn't seem to surprised that he was regenerating at lake Scilencio or why he though he could regenerate in Lets Kill Hitler.

 

I'm not taking a second-hand source at its word, man. For all we know, Jefferies could've been mistaken. Or lying. Or an idiot.

The fact remains that tor all intents and purposes, the Doctor's still in his twelfth body - the article assumes that the Tenth Doctor burned through two regenerations. It's still established lore that Time Lords come with twelve regenerations per cycle - thirteen bodies. Since the Doctor's never been canonically confirmed to have had more regenerations added to his cycle, gained a new cycle, or otherwise extended his lifespan.

 

I'm guessing they'll just explain the Doctor's extra regens away by saying River gave him her remaining ones when she healed him in Let's Kill Hitler.

 

Maaayybe, but they explained it as River burning all her future regenerations simply to heal him--so unless it was a 'perfect' heal and reset him to zero regens (unlikely, as we've never heard mention or speculation of it and the poison was specifically targeted at a Time Lord's regeneration process), she likely didn't do more than heal his ailment at the time.

 

Well, for a start, there's this quote:

So that would make Capaldi 13.

But as far as continued regenerations go, we're all assuming of course that they'll explain it before it happens. Moffat's a troll; how likely would it be that he'd leave it until Capaldi leaves, making us wonder if they have changed it or if it's going to be cancelled, and then there's a shock regeneration that even the Doctor isn't expecting, making that the arc plot for at least the next season? It's what I'd do...

 

So long as Doctor Who is making the BBC plenty of profit then the Doctor will have as many regenerations as possible.

 

I don't know why I felt the need to post this. But I did.

 

I know it's for the behind the scenes comedy, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me if that's how he plans his stories.

 

I've been stewing about this for a bit. Day of the Doctor spoilers below, if you care.

The Day of the Doctor irritated me for a lot of reasons. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved some parts of it. Hurt was fantastic, Tennant's return was done really well, the spacemagic - while not making much more sense than usual - at least pretended to be logical enough to not completely throw me out of immersion. Matt Smith was very Matt Smithlike.

Although I realize the studio was backed into a corner by the fact that Eccleston refused to come back and a desire to go into detail about the Time War, the addition of the War Doctor was very frustrating, particularly the way he was introduced (in the mini episode where Eight gets to choose a regeneration).

I started watching Doctor Who with the new series, and so all that was presented to me was the new character of the Doctor. One of the things that particularly drew me in and made me feel invested in the character was this concept of the Time War, a conflict so massive and so horrific that it had driven this man - who seemed to be the best of men - to commit genocide twice over, among other terrible implied actions. This made the whole conflict seem immeasurably more terrible than could have ever been accomplished with any other method of exposition I can think of. To think that the Doctor had been the only one to live through all that, forced to make a decision that ended the lives of two races, and yet had only been made by the experience, as Amelia Pond might say, 'kinder', was particularly inspiring.

Returning to why the introduction of the War Doctor irritated me - well, to be frank, it just completely invalidated everything I had built up in my mind. The fact that the Doctor 'chose' to regenerate into someone who was 'capable' of doing these terrible things destroys not only the imaginary character development I had envisioned, but completely casts all true responsibility from the character's shoulders, since it was never he that committed these crimes, but the 'War Doctor'. It takes all the sense of weight away from the Doctor's choices, and this is before all of the retconning fuckery that's about to come up.

So once the War Doctor is introduced and the episode starts some shit with Zygons happens, but more importantly the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor are drawn back in time to help John Hurt decide to blow up Gallifrey. At first they convince him not to, but he realizes that this is the only way to save the entire galaxy and that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. He goes to press the button, and they all come to press it with him, and at this point I was nodding along, because it made perfect sense to me: this was how Moffat confirmed that the War Doctor wasn't just an attempt to shift blame away from the Doctor.

Oh, except fuck that, because the Eleventh Doctor pulls some science magic bullshit out of his asshole that fixes everything in the last five minutes of the show. I don't think I can even express how completely cheated by this ending I felt. I've really enjoyed Doctor Who, but with that ending, an entire massive plot arc was relegated to, "Surprise, it was just a dream!" Sure, the Doctor doesn't know that it was just a dream... yet. So he gets to angst through another half season or so, except there will be absolutely no weight to any of it because we all know he didn't blow up Gallifrey.

As I read through this thread I saw a post a bit back that mentioned how the Doctor was Britain's version of Superman, and I see now why that makes sense. It was something I'd never really gotten from the new series before, but this episode really hammers it home. There are no consequences in the Doctor Who universe, because if the Doctor wants, he will simply change things, and it'll all work the way he wanted it to in the first place.

No consequences, no sense of weight to any action, and nothing at all interesting going on anymore. If SuperDoctor is what you expected going into this episode then I suppose you're probably not nearly as bothered as I am. Then again, I suppose it was just my own incomplete perception of the show which caused me to interpret the Doctor as a character instead of as a deus ex machina.

I'm really annoyed and honestly am finding it hard to have any interest in the next season anymore. Sigh.

 

Well, I kind of saw it as he saved the day by being the Doctor. Not a murderer.

Also, he didn't really change anything. Yes, there's a chance that Gallifrey is still out there (and will most likely be found) but he still slaughtered the Daleks. A different flavour of genocide, but genocide just the same.

And this isn't the first species he's ended. Racnoss, those fish-vampires, he destroyed Skaro around his sixth/seventh regeneration. A few more I'm forgetting.

He's still responsible for ending the Time War which, from all accounts, was burning the entirety of creation.

 

Oh, it was him. It was absolutely him. Eight made the choice to regenerate into the War Doctor. That makes him responsible for everything that incarnation did - just like every other Doctor is responsible for all of their past and future actions. They may not look, think or act identically, but throughout all his different incarnations the Doctor is still fundamentally the same person. They're all responsible.

If the Doctor truly wasn't responsible for what the War Doctor did during the Time War then Nine, Ten and Eleven wouldn't have spent the last eight years telling us how terrible they felt about it.

Right up until the Day of the Doctor, everything is exactly the way it always was. There was no retcon, no great rewrite, no 'it was all a dream'. We only ever had pieces of the full story, just snippets of information from a man who was reluctant to talk about what he'd been through. We never saw the Moment used, we never saw the Doctor destroying Gallifrey. We never saw the end of the Time War.

At the end of this episode Gallifrey is still gone, the Daleks were all destroyed and the Doctor is the only survivor, the last of the Time Lords, completely alone in the universe and full of guilt over what his previous incarnation has done. Just like it was back in 2005.

The Time War still happened and the universe is still full of casualties. The Nestene consciousness and the Zygons still lost their homeworlds. The Gelth still turned into gas. The Ninth Doctor still has to come to terms with what he did to end it.

The only thing this changes is the future, and our perspective of the past.

But let's be honest, how much of that stuff was still true? The Doctor was the last of the Time Lords... except for the Master who was hiding as a human at the end of the universe in the year 100 trillion and Rassilon's batshit crazy faction trying to escape the Time Lock and destroy time itself. The Daleks were all completely annihilated... except for the Dalek in Salt Lake City, the fleet around Satellite 5, the Cult of Skaro (at Torchwood London and in '30s New York), the Daleks released from the Genesis Ark, the fleet around the Crucible, the Daleks in '40s London, the fleet at the Pandorica, the empire in charge of the Asylum and the inevitable army which will show up at Trenzalore. Even fucking Davros survived.

I can understand why you feel disappointed. If all you've ever seen is the new series then it must feel like a betrayal to the character you know. But the Doctor is so much more than that, there's forty years of history that you haven't seen. He's not just a war veteran who regrets what he did and is desperately trying to make up for it. He's an eternal wanderer who finds pure joy in experiencing something new. He's a renegade who fights against the establishment, breaks their rules and then deals with the consequences. He's a hero who steps in when all hope is lost, a healer who fixes things when nobody else dares try. He's a remorseless bastard who lies, cheats and schemes to manipulate people into doing what he wants. He's a man with countless secrets, a past he doesn't like to talk about and a name he can't allow anybody to know.

Above all of that, the Doctor is a man who always, always tries to do the right thing.

"Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up, never give in."

For those of us who knew the Doctor before 2005, it was the Time War that felt like a betrayal of who the Doctor was. The Doctor we knew would never have agreed to wipe out two species, he would've found another way because that's what he does. He always finds a way to do the right thing.

That's what we saw at the end of this episode. The Doctor finally finding a way to do the right thing. Finally stepping out of the shadow that the Time War cast over him and becoming the Doctor once again. Managing to save himself, just by being himself.

"So I won't remember that I tried to save Gallifrey, rather than burn it. I'll have to live with that. But for now, for this moment... I am the Doctor again. Thank you."

The only thing I didn't like about the ending is Tom Baker showing up. It made for a great moment, I loved seeing him again and the nostalgia trip was welcome... but a week on and I'm convinced that the episode would have meant more without him. We didn't need to know that the plan worked. It simply doesn't matter if the Doctor managed to save Gallifrey or not. Like the War Doctor said, the important thing is that they tried to save it.

"I don't suppose we'll ever know if we actually succeeded. But at worst, we failed doing the right thing, as opposed to succeeding in doing the wrong."

 

Same software, different case.

 

I've got like two minutes before I gotta leave, so I'll continue my points in a later post. For now, though...

As I posted before, the Doctor wasn't just some[/]i] Time Lord. He was by far, beyond the curve and beyond the cut - if not in sheer academic ability (he had horrible scores in school), then in his propensity to do good and above all get results that served the greater good. He was Lord President for two terms (although granted the circumstances of his taking up the position weren't the most auspicious), rediscovered the Key of Rassilon after... god, who even knows how many years, subsequently rediscovered the Eye of Harmony, fought the Daleks at every turn, destroyed Skaro, and on, and on, and on.

God-like status though these accomplishments may convey, he's more than earned it. Calling him just a soldier in the Time War where the only thing he could contribute were his services as a fighter is simply insulting to the character.

He wasn't just a soldier in the Time War. He was a front line general. The Time Lords were clamoring for him to come back when he was the Eighth Doctor - it's why he felt like he needed to be a quote-un-quote Warrior to fight. He didn't feel like he could do what was necessary to fight the Time War in a meaningful way. Hence the War Doctor.

What the Doctor couldn't do - the reason he was forced to use the Moment - was that the War wasn't going to end on its own, unless he ended it. The destruction of Gallifrey wouldn't have stopped Rassilon and his ilk, unless they were destroyed along with it - they were hardcore insane. And nothing short of complete annihilation of the Time Lords and all of their works would have ended the War.

So I really don't see how any of his recent character development has been invalidated at all. If anything, there's more context from which to understand the character, because... looking only at 8 years of the character when there's 50 years of development would most definitely give a limited perspective of him, though it's certainly understandable not wanting to slog through all of the content. I haven't watched it all either, content to read through wikis and lore for the most part.

The point is, I'll rephrase my earlier argument about the Doctor being able to fix anything and everything. That's just the way he's written a lot of the time. The point behind the Doctor is that he always tries, and he always tries to do good. And I just don't understand why a lot of fans are angry that the Doctor finally found some redemption by being true to his name, when nothing has really changed in the universe other than the Doctor's understanding of it.

Shit. I'm late.

 

The Doctor slowly becoming just some Time Lord was why Cartmel Masterplan was proposed.

 

The Doctor has committed genocide on a lot of occasions and I've heard that the Time lords giving the Doctor more regenerations will be the work around the 13 regeneration limit but according to Time Lord laws committing genocide will lead to the removal of any remaining regenerations a time lord has, so I wonder how they'll handle that.

Reading the Tardis wikia has been very illuminating. I'm discovering so much I didn't know about Doctor Who.