Random, possibly noncanon, Who musings...

[Volpone]

The Tom Baker serial, "Face of Evil", introducing Leela, was on recently. I hadn't really thought about it before, but that story really illustrates the concept of "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" and the Sevateem wasn't really wrong in calling the Doctor "the Evil One." It also nicely illustrates the value of Time Lord non-interference.

[SPOILERS (if you can be spoiled on a plot of a show that aired in the 1970s)] The Doctor lands on a planet where he encounters a primitive tribe, struggling against an enemy they've never seen and beset by invisible (but real) monsters. It turns out the primitive tribe and their enemies, the Tesh, are two parts of an spaceship crew (the survey team and the techs). The ship's computer, who became self-aware long ago, has been carrying out eugenics experiments with the humans--in much the way a small child with a magnifying glass carries out "experiments" on ants.

The reason their computer is coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs is, in the distant past, the Doctor showed up there to "fix" it. Turns out, if he'd just left the computer alone everything would have been fine. But in fixing it, he drove it insane. By the end of the story he's undid the insanity and forced the Sevateem and the Tesh back together. At that point he just says "OK. Not my problem anymore," and zips off again. What could possibly go wrong?!

One of the regrets I've had with Dr. Who is that they've tended to treat the Master as MWUAHAHAHAHA Eeeevil. (Or driven insane in the nu-series.) One of the interesting things about Khan, from an old Ricardo Montlban interview about TWOK is that he said he played Khan as the hero. I mean, when you think about it, even Hitler wasn't like "I'm going to be evil." He really thought he was helping the world. Imagine you're the Master--incredibly smart, possibly exiled from your home over some misunderstandings, frustrated by the stupid, backwards, and dangerous things lesser beings do. It only makes sense to make yourself their ruler. I mean, shoot, the Master isn't trying to take over the galaxy because he wants to, he's doing it because it's the right thing to do. He's making a sacrifice for the good of everyone. Now that's a much more interesting character, IMO.

For that matter, when you compare the Master, the Meddling Monk (I've only seen the first story with him, where he tries to stop the Norman Invasion and is foiled by the First Doctor), and even the change in the Doctor from his first incarnation, where he'd often go "Well, sorry you're stranded on this spaceship. I wish we could do something, but we've got to be going," until he wound up having to help in order to leave, to his present form, where he meddles in all manner of things. Really, evil is a matter of viewpoint. :marathon:

 

[DWF]

The backstory in The Face Of Evil according to the novel is that the Doctor left UNIT headquarters right after his regeneration when Sarah Jane stopped aparently stopped him from leaving, he was gone long enough to try to fix Xoanon. And the Master really has never seen himself as the hero and with ever incarnation he now she has become increasingly insane, in the Deadly Assassin he was perfectly willing to destory a solar system as long as he survived and gained more lives. And finally there's no offical canon for Doctor Who.

 

[Ithekro]

I seem to recall that the Doctor fixed that computer, but forgot to remove the engram of himself he used to fix it. The extra personality caused the troubles.

I mean, what computer could hope to cope with the ego of the Fourth Doctor?

 

[DWF]

I seem to recall that the Doctor fixed that computer, but forgot to remove the engram of himself he used to fix it. The extra personality caused the troubles.

I mean, what computer could hope to cope with the ego of the Fourth Doctor?

Xoanon became an AI and developed other personalities, the Doctor didn't realize the compute was a living being.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Yeah, sometimes the Doctor sort of makes things a bit worse. Ninth was partially responsible for the state of Earth in Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways in part due to his actions in Long Game; and it's possible the Tenth, by getting Harriet Jones kicked out, helped the Master gain power in his "Saxon" persona.

 

[Volpone]

Yeah, the common opinion sets the initial events from "Face of Evil" at "Robot," when the TARDIS partly dematerializes before Sarah's banging on it and yelling brings the Doctor back. I prefer to think it took place after "The Deadly Assassin."

What's that you say? The episode before "Face of Evil" was "The Deadly Assassin"? Why yes, yes it was. But who's to say how much time passed between the end of "The Deadly Assassin" and "Face of Evil." Maybe The Doctor had hundreds of years of solo adventures before eventually winding up back on Leela's homeworld.

I had a tangent I wanted to go off on, but I forget what it was now.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

One time the Doctor certainly made things worse was in "Partners in Crime." Had he not interfered, the Adipose would have continued slowly reproducing using people's unwanted fat, the people would have lost weight, and no one would have died. Unfortunately, thanks to his meddling, they decided to accelerate their plans and start turning whole people into Adipose simultaneously.

 

[DWF]

One time the Doctor certainly made things worse was in "Partners in Crime." Had he not interfered, the Adipose would have continued slowly reproducing using people's unwanted fat, the people would have lost weight, and no one would have died. Unfortunately, thanks to his meddling, they decided to accelerate their plans and start turning whole people into Adipose simultaneously.

It was Donna who activated the Adipose and made Foster rush her plans forward. And we saw what happened to America in Turn Left had the Doctor not been there to solve the problem in Britain.

 

[Volpone]

During my journey through the classic series, I'm simultaneously overdosing and going into withdrawal. They're in the middle of "The Horror of Fang Rock" right now. But I've been going on Wiki to read articles on the episodes to get ready for the night's episode and am now up to the second season of Davison. Meanwhile I'm like "gahhhhg. I'd like to go out with friends Friday night, but I've got to be home at 8pm (or find someone who sells blank videotapes so I can record it).

Anyway, from reading the articles, I've decided "...Fang Rock" is the height of the classic series. From there on Tom Baker gets too powerful and hard to manage. Then they add K9. And for as much as I love "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Douglas Adams' run as script editor, the stories get too slapstick (although that was also a factor of the era). But on the other hand, you've got that run of home runs--"Robots of Death," "The Talons of Weng Chiang," and "The Horror of Fang Rock"---some of the best episodes of the series. So it is hard to say that's the time Baker should have stepped down.

...

And I'm-a start a separate thread for my next thought.

 

[DWF]

Tom Baker asked three times to leave the show and finally when JNT took over the show they agreed to it. The highest ratigns peak though came from City Of Death's secxond ep. with some 16 million viewers. Creatively though the Williams' era is all over the place. Horror Of Fang Rock was rushed into production, the planned vampire storry was nixed by the BBC and it was a totally studio bound story.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Fang Rock was sort of a holdover I think from the previous Hinchcliffe and Holmes stuff. I think it was the last script Holmes edited. It's also the time I think that Tom started to become a problem on set. Although he eventually made amends to Louise Jameson at least, I heard he had problems with Mary Tamm (I'm not sure if things worked out before her death), there's the Lalla Ward thing of course, and although he only worked briefly with Waterhouse and Felding, they had problems with him as well.


Sort of like how Tom's debut, Robot, was pretty much a Barry Lett production, with the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era truly starting with Ark In Space.


BTW shifting the topic a bit, what's up with Tom's appearences in the first couple of Key To Time stories and in Keeper of Traaken? I heard he got attacked by a dog or got into a fight, explaining why his lip looked a bit messed up...and in Keeper of Traaken something's up with his nose...(without going into detail).

 

[DWF]

Fang Rock was sort of a holdover I think from the previous Hinchcliffe and Holmes stuff. I think it was the last script Holmes edited. It's also the time I think that Tom started to become a problem on set. Although he eventually made amends to Louise Jameson at least, I heard he had problems with Mary Tamm (I'm not sure if things worked out before her death), there's the Lalla Ward thing of course, and although he only worked briefly with Waterhouse and Felding, they had problems with him as well.


Sort of like how Tom's debut, Robot, was pretty much a Barry Lett production, with the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era truly starting with Ark In Space.


BTW shifting the topic a bit, what's up with Tom's appearences in the first couple of Key To Time stories and in Keeper of Traaken? I heard he got attacked by a dog or got into a fight, explaining why his lip looked a bit messed up...and in Keeper of Traaken something's up with his nose...(without going into detail).

Hinchcliffe was long gone by the time The Horror Of Fang Rock was written and I think The Image Of The Fandahl was the last script Holmes' touched as a script editor. Tom Baker was bitten on his lip by a dog and that was reason for his appearance at the start of the Key To Time season. Tom Baker had gotten rather ill during teh filming of The State Of Decay and was pretty much recovered by the time of The Keeper Of Traken, but he was starting to age and it showed in the new opening credits.

 

[Volpone]

"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
"You mean besides two chicks at the same time? Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

For the longest time, I've shared Peter's view from "Office Space." If I had a million dollars, I could put it into a no load indexed mutual fund and live nicely off the 7% or so interest it pulled in.

Actually I'd still do that. But if I had two million dollars, I'd be tempted to do a "Star Trek: Phase 2" on "Doctor Who"--take all the old stories, update them, adapt them to a 45 minute format and such. Even on a shoestring budget you could do a lot on what the BBC was doing in the '60s. And it would be a further interesting challenge because, for example, the Master was a totally cardboard "MUWHAHAHAHAHA!" eeeevil villain early on. Why did he want to wipe out all life on Earth? No idea. But he did. And I'd throw out the silly "driven insane by the Drums of Rasillon" from nuWho too. Do up The Master as more the way Montlebahn played Khan--from Khan's perspective, he's the hero. I mean, really, the Master is insanely smart. At some point he gets tired of stupid people and decides everyone is better off with him in charge. Shoot, he isn't doing it because he craves power, he's making a sacrifice for the greater good.

Well, I should be going. Lots to do, not a lot of time. Was close to getting everything done this weekend when I got an unexpected call from an old friend that ran a lot longer than I expected.

 

[Volpone]

OK. Since you all were good enough to help me find this thread back, I'll stick this here, instead of starting a thread for a random musing.

The real answer to this is, of course, like the "why did Romana regenerate?" question--because they needed to do it to keep the show going--but the 2nd Doctor's punishment by the Time Lords makes no sense.

Why exile him on Earth? Why let him keep a stolen TARDIS, instead of returning it to its rightful owner?

Sure, I think even Terrance Dicks covered it--that the Doctor's defense at his trial and his intervention to stop the War Games convinced the Time Lords that sometimes intervention is a good thing; that they knew that late 20th century Earth, England would be the site of increased crises; maybe by the time they recovered the TARDIS, Gallifrey Standard and Life had already written her off and paid off the policy on her (and she was in such poor repair and so obsolete that she wasn't worth taking back). And of course The Doctor makes a handy tool for when you want to get involved but maintain deniability...

OK. Never mind. I answered my own question--you can actually make a pretty good case for exiling the Doctor on Earth--AND for letting him keep the TARDIS he stole.

 

[Volpone]

I had an "ah-ha" moment in my understanding how how the TARDIS "works." Of course I've got to explain my initial thesis before getting to my latest thoughts:

I've had a largely noncanon but practical take on its functioning. As the Doctor explains dimensional transcendentalism to Leela by hiding a big box, far away, behind a small box, up close, I viewed the inside of the TARDIS as being only related to its exterior as a doorway. It's almost like the interior is on some planet someplace elsewhere that remains stationary. When the TARDIS dematerializes, the exterior literally ceases to exist in spacetime and is then reassembled at its destination.

Of course if that's the case, the TARDIS exterior doesn't get increasingly battered as it travels. I mean, apart from the file maybe being corrupted like when you leave an older operating system on too long without a reboot. But if someone shot an arrow into it, the arrow would fall to the ground when the TARDIS dematerializes. It certainly wouldn't be there at the destination. And there'd be no way you could ride somewhere by clinging to the outside. Also, if you painted it pink, it wouldn't need to be repainted. The next time it materialized, it would look like it did in 1963.

And when the exterior gets hot or hit with objects; when the TARDIS falls off a cliff or gets miniaturized and carried around in someone's pocket, the passengers wouldn't be jostled around--they're in a different dimension. But I assumed this was just a storytelling convention to make the stories more dramatic and relateable to us mere mortals.

Then I realized I was looking at things from a 3D perspective. From that perspective, it makes perfect sense that the interior exists in a different dimension, completely outside of spacetime, that the exterior only exists when it is at a coordinate system in spacetime. You want to go somewhere? You pull up the data. You dematerialize the physical exterior at your starting point and you reassemble it at the destination. Of course it all takes a butt-ton of processing power and the energy-matter conversion and transdimensional stuff isn't trivial either--to say nothing of the food machines, lights, and plumbing.

But then I realized one could also look at spacetime travel from a more analog viewpoint--more akin to a sailing ship. We're all anchored in the 4th dimension--our consciousness and ability to interact with it travels along at (relativity notwithstanding) a more or less constant rate. If you've got a ship that sails in time as well as space, you could pull up your anchor to time just as easily as you can pull up your anchor from the sea floor and sail forwards or backwards through time just as easily as you can sail up and down a river.

If a TARDIS travels this way, then all the things like when the TARDIS is banged around or spinning in a time vortex or shot with an arrow hold up like they do onscreen. Oh, it still breaks down in that the TARDIS can be moved from time to time like it was a common cabinet...or does it? It isn't perfectly anchored in time. Because if it was, once people stepped out of it, the TARDIS would disappear into the past, stuck at the moment it materialized. That wouldn't be very helpful.

So it needs to be able to move forward in time at a normal rate while it is materialized. And if it can move forward in time like a normal object, then it might not be so odd that the Animus could drag it across a planet's surface. Or the local police could find it "delivered" at the railway station and load it up to bring back to the station. Or, for that matter, the boys from UNIT could load it on a lorry to drive it somewhere during the period back in the 70s, when it was "up on blocks in the front yard."

 

[DWF]

OK. Since you all were good enough to help me find this thread back, I'll stick this here, instead of starting a thread for a random musing.

The real answer to this is, of course, like the "why did Romana regenerate?" question--because they needed to do it to keep the show going--but the 2nd Doctor's punishment by the Time Lords makes no sense.

Why exile him on Earth? Why let him keep a stolen TARDIS, instead of returning it to its rightful owner?

I don't think TARDISes have owners, we saw in The War Games that they're stored in rows. I suspect that Time Lord travel off world is highly regulated, unless a Time Lord steals a TARDIS and leaves on their own.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Why let him keep a stolen TARDIS, instead of returning it to its rightful owner?

Since we now know that the TARDIS "stole" the Doctor as much as vice versa, perhaps they were punishing her by exiling her along with him. By the time the Doctor regained his freedom, the Type 40 would seem to have been de-registered (certainly by the time of "The Deadly Assassin").

 

[DWF]

Why let him keep a stolen TARDIS, instead of returning it to its rightful owner?

Since we now know that the TARDIS "stole" the Doctor as much as vice versa, perhaps they were punishing her by exiling her along with him. By the time the Doctor regained his freedom, the Type 40 would seem to have been de-registered (certainly by the time of "The Deadly Assassin").

It is hard to accept the idea that the TARDIS choose the Doctor after seeing Clara tell the Doctor to take it in The Name Of The Doctor.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Why let him keep a stolen TARDIS, instead of returning it to its rightful owner?

Since we now know that the TARDIS "stole" the Doctor as much as vice versa, perhaps they were punishing her by exiling her along with him. By the time the Doctor regained his freedom, the Type 40 would seem to have been de-registered (certainly by the time of "The Deadly Assassin").

It is hard to accept the idea that the TARDIS choose the Doctor after seeing Clara tell the Doctor to take it in The Name Of The Doctor.

It's a sloppy contradiction, yes, but it can be reconciled if one considers that the Clara echo was putting right something that the Great Intelligence altered. "The Doctor's Wife" came first, after all;

IDRIS: Do you ever wonder why I chose you all those years ago?
DOCTOR: I chose you. You were unlocked.
IDRIS: Of course I was. I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away. And you were the only one mad enough.

 

[Volpone]

I choose not to believe a lot of things after 1989. For instance, TARDISes are certainly not grown. When Romana stays in e-space, K-9 says he has the plans to build a TARDIS, should they want one. Omega says the 5th Doctor has destroyed his TARDIS but he'll build a new one. And regularly parts break and are replaced or even interchanged on TARDISes.