I like the idea that an incarnation of the Doctor erased himself from existence when he ended the Time War.
Even if RTD did intend that the Ninth Doctor had fought the time war initially, it seems that by "Journey's End" he had changed his mind, given the talk about how the Ninth Doctor had been "born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge" like 10.5.
True, not to mention BBC tie-in material does suggest the Eighth Doctor was the one that fought the Time War. Still, the question of whether the line implying a recent regeneration in Rose was actually written by RTD or ad-libbed by Eccleston is a legitimate one all the same. If for no other reason than simple curiosity.
I tend to lean towards Eight was the Doctor who fought the Time War, but, Eccelston seeing his face for the first time in Rose, doesn't necessarily mean he just regenerated right before meeting Rose. He was messed up with Guilt and so many other conflicting feelings, and travelling alone. The Doctor gets wrapped up in his travels and pushed from one life threatening situation to the next, under the best of circumstances, so, add in the Guilt and all the other stuff, and it's certainly possble it's been a long time since he's seen his own face. Maybe he'd been runnning from adventure to adventure for 50 years, without ever slowing down long enough to look at his own reflection. But, again, I lean towards it was 8 that fought the Tme War, and that 9 really was born in combat (IE: The Doctor's final acts in the Time War killed 8 and resulted in his Regeneration into 9)
My personal 'fanon' is that 'The Moment' required so much energy that, with an adequate power supply unavailable, The Doctor actually had to unleash his regeneration energy to fuel it (essentially committing suicide). Doing so 'blew the cap' on whatever normally keeps regeneration under such tight control, which is why his last couple have been so much flashier and violent than the old ones ever were.
Violent? One tries to smash a man's head in, two was happy to blow up ships with bombs, three was happy to work for an organisation that committed genocide and five was tasty with a pistol - that's just off the top of my head.
I think he's referring to regenerations. The fireworks we have now are quite destructive, unlike the old series which didn't have the flash and boom of current regenerations.
I've skimmed a couple pages. This is troubling. This is the End of Who. AGAIN! Now for a real question... Did Catrin Stewart show any boob on Misfits?
That moment struck me as being a reference to the similar one in Tom Baker's debut story, Robot, so it's either a coincidence or more likely it was scripted. The line about the 9th Doctor being born in battle could mean he regenerated at any point during the war, really, so it could've been both the 8th and 9th Doctors who fought, with a regeneration happening halfway through.
^^Possible, but you'd think the final act of the Time War which results in the erradication of the Time Lords of and Daleks would not have left the Doctor unscathed.
Maybe something like this was used http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Temporal_shield http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Krenim_weapon_ship The combination of the two would actually allow responsible time travel. Send something like Kilm people/probes back in time to rescue a few dinosarurs and early mammals. Now wait, you say--we might take the early mammal that evolved into us. The solution, take the mammals scan when the probe returns--protect the data in a shield, and hit the probe with the weapon ships beam. Time line restored, and the info is still there. Something similar is how the Doctor escaped--but he is forever locked out...
Despite my initial misgivings, I think with the little we now know so far, it just about gets away with it.
Posting this here as it's about BBc politics and bureaucracy, so this seems like the best place... The BBC announced today that it is to close its Digital Media Initiative (DMI). http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2013/digital-media-initiative.html Relevance to us is that the BBC budget had been drawn up on the assumption that this would succeed, and deliver substantial savings. So there's going to be a hole in the budget for the next few years which will probably have to be filled with cuts in budgets across the board. Oh dear.
Well they could always cut down on the number of Eastenders episodes per week in order to save money. Never happen I know.
Wouldn't save money. It would cost them more to get more shows up and running to fill those gaps in the schedule.
Yep. Once a standing-set soap is up and running, it's far cheaper than any alternative.. at least any drama alternative. Of course, it costs a lot up front to start it in the first place, but they did that for EastEnders back in 1985. Ummh, wonder if they had to make any cuts elsewhere in the drama budget that year? Nothing comes to mind, but I'm sure there was something that got dropped...