Instead of the Hybrid...

[Emperor-Tiberius]

... which, we don't even know WHAT it is, or why should we bother (thank you Moff for forcing a generation of writers to accept this vague BS as part of the Doctor canon).....

... what if, what the First Doctor saw that prompted him to leave Gallifrey and start exploring, was himself fighting in the Time War? What if he saw himself as a Warrior, having renounced his title and his nature in order to fight in a needless conflict, and decided to go out and start exploring the universe, in a vain effort to rewrite his future and avoid becoming a fighter?

Honestly, I still think that was the implication of that 50th anniversary trailer, three years ago. A fantastic trailer that had little to no bearing to the actual special's story (which was otherwise fairly predictable, all things considered).

Anywho, I just find the idea more alluring, as it gives the Doctor a personal incentive to leave and basically divulge in his desires after a lifetime of repressed living. And makes more sense than whatever the stupid Hybrid is.

What do you think?

 

[matthunter]

Umm. We DO know what the hybrid is.

The Doctor and Clara had become inseperable, almost one being in two bodies, to the point that the Doctor would rip universes apart if if meant saving Clara (even from death). Thus the prophecies of the Hybrid being a destroyer.

Although "Hell Bent" (among other Series 9 episodes) offered multiple possibilities as to the identity/nature of the Hybrid, showrunner Steven Moffat, in an interview for Doctor Who Magazine #504, confirmed that the Hybrid referred to the pairing of the Doctor and Clara, and retroactively linked this fact to the reason why the Doctor's TARDIS exhibited some hostility towards Clara during Series 7.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The Hybrid was Clara and the Doctor? So.. thats, like, the biggest Mary Sue-ing that ANY writer has ever achieved on the show since its returned. At least RTD's attempts weren't as intrusive to the Doctor's foundations as this NONSENSE is.

Regardless, I really wish some future showrunner will retroactively destroy it as a concept or make better sense of it, at least. As is, its... ugh.

 

[The Wormhole]

I ignore the Hybrid nonsense and just continue to assume the Doctor left Gallifrey as combined result of fed up with Time Lord aristocracy and other reasons which should remain mysterious.

 

[matthunter]

The Hybrid was Clara and the Doctor? So.. thats, like, the biggest Mary Sue-ing that ANY writer has ever achieved on the show since its returned. At least RTD's attempts weren't as intrusive to the Doctor's foundations as this NONSENSE is.

Regardless, I really wish some future showrunner will retroactively destroy it as a concept or make better sense of it, at least. As is, its... ugh.

Ok, you hate it. But there's no need to destroy it - it was given as the reason the Doctor and Clara can never interact again. They won't. Ergo, no need to ever mention the Hybrid again. Thus, you can safely forget about it and move on, which is the mature response, instead of hoping a future writer retcons the stuff you don't like out of existence, which is the response of a child.

 

[Mr Soak]

The point of the prophecy was that it was mundane. Everybody was nervous over nothing, and had over-thought the prophecy that the hybrid would bring destruction to Gallifrey. It was merely Me living in the ruins of Gallifrey at the end of time.

Or alternatively, the Doctor and Clara, also on Gallifrey at the end of time. The prophecy said nothing about the hybrid bringing destruction; that was just something everybody assumed. The prophecy was merely about the hybrid standing in the ruins of Gallifrey. It said nothing about the identity of the hybrid, nor the circumstances in which it would occur.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Consider the Hybrid prophecy to be similar to the Twilight of the Gods arc in Xena.

Zeus learns that Xena's child will bring about the end of the Gods. He decides to intervene and destroy Xena's child to prevent the end of the Gods. Xena is miffed and in the course of protecting her child from the Gods kills most of them, bringing them down. If Zeus had just gone "ah, screw it!" everything would have been fine!

Had Rassilon not stuck his gauntlet into things, then he'd still be in charge.

 

[The Wormhole]

The point of the prophecy was that it was mundane. Everybody was nervous over nothing, and had over-thought the prophecy that the hybrid would bring destruction to Gallifrey. It was merely Me living in the ruins of Gallifrey at the end of time.

Thing is, it makes no sense that this prophecy would have so much power over everyone. The Time Lords and the Doctor are supposed to be voices of reason, proponents of rationality. They would already know that the only prophecies that become 100% accurate are the self-fulfilling type and that there's nothing to worry about as long as you take a rational approach to things. Okay, it's not too much of a stretch to see the Time Lords overreacting to something that could mean their doom and hitting the panic button given they are rather paranoid to begin with. But, you'd think the far more tangible threat of everyone in the fucking universe wants them dead would be a higher priority than a prophecy which has apparently existed for ages and not bothered them until now. The Doctor on the other hand is not prone to paranoia or reacting ignorantly out of fear. He should not have any credence in this prophecy to begin with, and to suggest that it is the reason he left Gallifrey and began his adventure as chronicled in the show completely out of character for him it's ridiculous.

Besides, realistic though it might be, it is really anticlimactic to spend an entire season teasing out this Hybrid only to in the end say "no, no, this Hybrid wasn't as big a deal as we were making it out to be. It's just some abstract concept or something that Ashildr and the Doctor are going to spend 15 minutes delivering monologues before we spend the rest of the episode on Clara delivering a good-bye monologue because monologues are all this show is about anymore."

Chibnall can't take over soon enough.

 

[Sketcher]

The thing about the prophecy is that all three interpretations were in Gallifrey's ruins - Me, the Doctor, and the Doctor + Clara.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Thing is, it makes no sense that this prophecy would have so much power over everyone. The Time Lords and the Doctor are supposed to be voices of reason, proponents of rationality. They would already know that the only prophecies that become 100% accurate are the self-fulfilling type and that there's nothing to worry about as long as you take a rational approach to things. Okay, it's not too much of a stretch to see the Time Lords overreacting to something that could mean their doom and hitting the panic button given they are rather paranoid to begin with. But, you'd think the far more tangible threat of everyone in the fucking universe wants them dead would be a higher priority than a prophecy which has apparently existed for ages and not bothered them until now. The Doctor on the other hand is not prone to paranoia or reacting ignorantly out of fear. He should not have any credence in this prophecy to begin with, and to suggest that it is the reason he left Gallifrey and began his adventure as chronicled in the show completely out of character for him it's ridiculous.

Agreed. And I'm not even sure that what the finale said. And its not like the non-answer left behind a satisfying mystery with it.

Its like, to use a brute and crude manner of speaking, someone brought a huge bag of piss and shit and left it in your basement, saying it had gold in it. You can't get rid of it, because you don't want to soil yourself but its there now, blemishing the basement for however long it stays there. The Hybrid joined the pantheon of the Doctor's past (not long after Moff's other Mary Sue-ing, Clara scaring the kid First Doctor off to the barn that, again, Moff introduced in Day of the Doctor), forcing any future showrunner to account for it whenever the Doctor's reasons for leaving his home planet is concerned.

And I hate that. Not because it introduced the idea that there was a reason, but because this concept was a bad concept, unsatisfyingly presented. I mean, how can the Time Lords fear anything, much less the Hybrid, after the fucking Time War and the Daleks? It seems nuts to me.

Besides, realistic though it might be, it is really anticlimactic to spend an entire season teasing out this Hybrid only to in the end say "no, no, this Hybrid wasn't as big a deal as we were making it out to be. It's just some abstract concept or something that Ashildr and the Doctor are going to spend 15 minutes delivering monologues before we spend the rest of the episode on Clara delivering a good-bye monologue because monologues are all this show is about anymore."

Chibnall can't take over soon enough.

I really wish 9 had been Moff's last series. It was a terrible arc to end with, but at least the River Song special was a decent exit for him, and Capaldi could then flourish under a different showrunner with new ideas in mind.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Hybrid joined the pantheon of the Doctor's past (not long after Moff's other Mary Sue-ing, Clara scaring the kid First Doctor off to the barn that, again, Moff introduced in Day of the Doctor), forcing any future showrunner to account for it whenever the Doctor's reasons for leaving his home planet is concerned.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Doctor Who has always been fluid regarding its canon, EG the stuff from the TV movie about the Doctor being half-human has been virtually ignored with the exceptions of jokes or more recently vague implications. If Chibnall or whoever takes over after him wants to ignore the stuff about the Hybrid, they can and should. Then again, considering no one prior to Moffat in fifty years really explored the Doctor's reasons for leaving Gallifrey, it's very likely no one for the next fifty will feel a compelling need to touch the material either.

 

[matthunter]

As for the Time Lords fearing things after the Time War, I'd say they have MORE reason to worry. Prior to the Time War, they were at the top of the totem pole and and had six million years of absolute power. Then this bunch of tin cans rises out of the ashes of a nuclear war on a planet that hadn't even developed spaceflight and grows into a force that can even challenge them on a temporal level, and comes within a hairs-breadth of wiping them out.

Now remember that some Daleks have realised that HUMANITY are the ultimate survivors and warriors and think about where the Time Lords might be nervously planning to get their pre-emptive striking in...

Even if they aren't they now know that some very nasty threats might emerge if they content themselves to sit on their laurels with all that non-interfering stuff. We're bound to see them doing more of the dirty work they previously used the Doctor for, only now they won't be holding to the pretence that they maintain the timeline for anyone else's benefit...

 

[The Wormhole]

Again, the more tangible threat of every spacefaring race willing to work together to annihilate the Time Lords, including the non-cooperative ones like the Daleks and Cybermen and Sontarans should be a much higher priority for the Time Lords than an abstract concept that no one seems to properly understand.

 

[TommyR01D]

The more casual fans of Doctor Who (or any long running fiction series for that matter) insist that canon shouldn't matter (employing what at times borders on inverse snobbery against those who think it should) so long as there's a good story.

Here, though, I can think of no such justification. Series 8 and 9 saw an unbelievable level of constitutional vandalism and the "prize" at the end of it all basically amounted to some shrugging in a cave and some vacuous spin-doctoring.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Doctor Who has always been fluid regarding its canon, EG the stuff from the TV movie about the Doctor being half-human has been virtually ignored with the exceptions of jokes or more recently vague implications. If Chibnall or whoever takes over after him wants to ignore the stuff about the Hybrid, they can and should. Then again, considering no one prior to Moffat in fifty years really explored the Doctor's reasons for leaving Gallifrey, it's very likely no one for the next fifty will feel a compelling need to touch the material either.

I'd be happy for the whole business (Gallifrey, regeneration lore, the Doctor's childhood, the Time War, et al) never to be mentioned again. Sometimes a wound can never be repaired and you have to amputate rather than keep poking around and spread the infection.

 

[The Wormhole]

The more casual fans of Doctor Who (or any long running fiction series for that matter) insist that canon shouldn't matter (employing what at times borders on inverse snobbery against those who think it should) so long as there's a good story.

RTD himself also said that.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Its too bad, then, that the Hybrid WASN'T the vehicle for such a story (a good one, that is).

 

[The Wormhole]

Its too bad, then, that the Hybrid WASN'T the vehicle for such a story (a good one, that is).

On the plus side, it makes things easier for Chibnall or future writers to ignore the Hybrid. Likewise, they can always adopt the Terence Dicks attitude of "continuity is only what I remember" and conveniently forget about the Hybrid.

 

[Starkers]

Series 11. Episode 1.
"Let the Timelords think that's why I left Gallifrey." Winks at companion. "I know better."
Job done...

 

[Solid Snack]

Yeah, the Doctor's reasons for leaving Gallifrey have been repeatedly retconned or reinterpetated. Some versions I believe have him being exiled by the time lords instead of simply running away, The McCoy era also dropped hints about the Doctor leaving, and I think the Tennant era likewise implied that the untempered schism had a role in him leaving ("The ones that ran away...I never stopped.")

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Ah, but the schizm... it actually contributed, since it didn't state what the Doctor saw in it. Just that what he did see, helped his motivation to eventually leave the planet and explore. It was a welcome addition to the mythos, actually.