7X13 The Name Of The Doctor(Grading/Discussion)(SPOILERS!)

Without getting into a paradox - how does he have the secret *before* he actually travels into his own time-line? That would be a fairly lousy cop-out for the audience.

It doesn't really work either for dramatic purposes because something the Doctor has done in his past and is ashamed of is more powerful than something he could do in the future because that just becomes another version of the Valyard - of interest to spotters but not particularly satisfying as an arc.

 

I think that whatever the Doctor did to break his promise, it happened at Trenzalore.

 

Here's one weird observation: when the Tardis crash-landed on Trenzalore, one of the window panes cracked, as the Doctor duly noted upon exiting. This exact same window pane crack appears on the large future dead Tardis when Vastra looks up after first waking up on Trenzalore. Kind of strange; wouldn't that get repaired somehow between now and the Tardis' future (which I assume would be hundreds or thousands of years long)? Was this just artistic license by the FX folks? Or was this a subtle yet intentional hint of some sort?

Hey, I said it was a weird observation....

 

This.

I finally got to see this last night around 10:30 once we got home. Totally exceeded my expectations, and the explanation for why Clara is 'The Impossible Girl' was bloody brilliant, really.

I have to be honest, I was actually expecting this to be a total timey-whimey cluster-fuck, but it was great. I'm still not at all sure that Grand Moff Steven really has any idea where he's going with this, but for now I'm willing to go along for the ride. The fan-wank with the images of the previous Doctors was great, though I never did spot McGann or Tennant (and I was looking for them). It was a nice homage to the source material.

John Hurt. I wasn't sure if we'd really get to see him in this ep or had to wait until November. After reading some of the above and thinking about what the Doctor said to Clara, I'm convinced that Hurt is actually the Doctor before he became William Hartnell, rather than a future regeneration. I mean, if he was a future regeneration, how could the Doctor know who he was now?

Then again, the implication was that crossing paths with his future was dangerous, and he seemed to think that about the Hurt-Doctor.

I can't wait to watch it again.

 

I'd love Hurt to be The Other but I assume he's a Doctor between 8 and 9. The way he was described as breaking the promise, I'd assume he has to be after the original Doctor and the only place he'd fit in the timeline would be between McGann and Eccleston.

 

Hey, DJ! So are you saying that this terrible thing he did, this breaking of the promise, was related to the Time-War? I had always assumed that McGann's regeneration into Eccleston took place during, or at the climax of the war.

Intriguing to think that there might've been another version between them. I still think that he could be the original version, pre-Hartnell, but probably will be proven wrong.

Either way, it's great to see JH in this show.

 

As I mentioned in the finale thread, I am beginning to think Simeon is The Other. I think this whole thing will turn out to be something hidden in plain sight.

 

I haven't had the opportunity to read all of the various threads; just how is this Other? What have I missed?

 

Tom Baker's was Invasion of Time, I believe.

Mr Awe

 

I don't know Mr. A, I don't think you could get more fan-wanky than the 'The Stolen Earth/Journey's End', IMO.



And don't get me wrong, those are my two favorite nuWho eps ever.

 

I'm pretty sure that was Arc of Infinity for Davison. Didn't he enter the matrix while facing off against Omega?

Mr Awe

 

Hmmm, the Fall of the Eleventh happened at Trenzalore. Could that be the Hurt Doctor? Not sure if you could possibly shoe horn him in between Tennant and Smith though.

Mr Awe

 

Simeon is dead - he's been dead for a long time. Funny how every twist leads to a fixation with the unlikely - this time around it's The other rather than "it's omega! It's Susan!".

 

Not only that, but the 'tomb' version of the TARDIS control room is the same desktop theme as the one 'Eleven' recently got. Yeah, it IS a subtle, intentional hint. And a very heartbreaking one.

We're very near to THE END of the entire Doctor Who saga. 'Eleven' is Twelve, and they're sticking to the whole 13-incarnation lifecycle. When Matt Smith finally decides to leave, the next regeneration will be the LAST regeneration. The Last Doctor. An old man. Maybe ginger at last, maybe not. His birth will also see the birth of the fully-formed Dream Lord/Valeyard.

And his very last adventure, on Trenzalore, will be a 'relatively minor skirmish' as Doctor Who episodes go. The last will die as the first did - collapsing on the floor of the TARDIS from extreme old age and sheer exhaustion.

 

I can''t tell if you are being serious or not - if you are, drop me an email, I want to talk to you about the great investment opportunities in Nigeria.

 

Well, considering how deep that rule is burnt into the myth among fans, they'll probably address it and let the writers bullshit their way out of that corner.

 

Well River did give up all her regenerations to save the Doctor in "Let's Kill Hitler". That's likely a extra 9 or 10 lives right there.

 

Okay, I just watched the last five minutes again and after listening to the exchange between Doctor Hurt and Doctor Smith, now I'm not so sure that he's the Doctor in his original form, but rather the 9th. The dialogue does seem to point to an unseen regeneration where he had already taken the name 'The Doctor', but did things that were totally out of line with his moral compass. Perhaps he was so mortified by his actions that he even forced himself to regenerate after that, becoming Eccleston and trying to go back to the type of person he had been prior to the Time War.

I'm just guessing here, but now that I've watched that scene again, I think that perhaps it really does make more sense than an earlier version. And hey, 'The Ninth Doctor' would make a cool title for the November show.

 

But does that mean that he can really regenerate that many more times, or will he end up looking like The Master did in 'The Deadly Assassin'?

 

IIRC both Davies and Moffat said that if either had reached that point in their run they would find a way to deal with it. BBC will not kill the Doctor permanently for a reference that was made decades ago.

The 13 lives thing seems to be more of a restriction than a biological limit. The Master was offered a new set of regenerations in the classic era and was given some during the Time War. The Doctor could say that if he found some random Time Lord device he'd live or simply say that during the Time War all Time Lords were given a larger number of regenerations due to the threat of the Daleks. A single shot seems to either kill them completely or cause a regeneration, having extra lives makes sense with that kind of enemy.