The Deadly Assassin and the 13th Doctor
- Thread starter Mr Light
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Neither of your points necessarily follows.
I have a funny feeling we are going to see Gallifrey and the Time Lords back just about the time the Dr comes to the end of his last regeneration, and they will somehow intervene in the Dr's last regen, i mean after all he has single handley been stopping all sorts of nasty stuff happening to earth for some time now, and has saved the entire universe on more than one occasion as well as helping out the time lords themselves more than once......if that don't merit another 13 regenerations i don't know what does.
Uh-huh. Sure.
Then there's the fact that the Doctor has consistently said that he's a Time Lord and not a Human, and that he's also said that the thing that made the ConsolationDoctor different from him was that he was part Human.
They really do. The episode's intended meaning is obvious because the producer has told us what it was. And the mind duel fatally injures the Doctor but only explodes Morbius' brain case; since it would be a funny sort of winning that killed you and not your opponent, it has to be that Morbius has, like he flat-out says, driven the Doctor back to his beginning. You can invent a convoluted alternative explanation, but at some point you're just writing your own episode, aren't you?
Edit: thinking in print here... A better workaround might be that the Doctor is somehow able to cheat at the mind duel, fabricating a false past to keep Morbius going long enough for his brain case to overload. That still leaves the question of how it's possible to cheat at an ancient, well-known mind game, but maybe it's something that's been discovered since Morbius was exiled from Gallifrey. It's still against the production's intention, but I'm not so fussed about that if what happens on screen still makes sense.
Just the sort of in-depth reply I'd expect from someone who's sure of his position.
Seriously, the episode says that there's never been any entity like the Consolation Doctor and that there's never been a Time Lord/human melding like that between the Doctor and Donna. Neither of these is the same as "no Time Lord/human hybrid EVER."Cause the Doctor is so naturally honest about his past- just ask Martha!
Actually, it was the Consolation Doctor who said "I look like him. I think like him. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything, except I've only got one heart... I'm part human. Specifically, the aging part." So he's biologically human in some ways, which (obviously) the proper Doctor isn't, but this being wacky sci-fi there are still presumably ways for the Doctor to be "half-human" with a human mother without being a one-hearted biological metacrisis product who will age and die. It's all in how you choose to look at these things. Those of us who aren't invested in finding distance between the new and classic series will naturally look at it differently than those who prefer to emphasize the break.
That said, I find it hard to believe that a retcon was explicitly intended, since the episode (and 54 others before it) fail to provide an inescapable one when all it would have taken was a single emphatic line of dialogue.
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They really do. The episode's intended meaning is obvious because the producer has told us what it was. And the mind duel fatally injures the Doctor but only explodes Morbius' brain case; since it would be a funny sort of winning that killed you and not your opponent, it has to be that Morbius has, like he flat-out says, driven the Doctor back to his beginning. You can invent a convoluted alternative explanation, but at some point you're just writing your own episode, aren't you?
Edit: thinking in print here... A better workaround might be that the Doctor is somehow able to cheat at the mind duel, fabricating a false past to keep Morbius going long enough for his brain case to overload. That still leaves the question of how it's possible to cheat at an ancient, well-known mind game, but maybe it's something that's been discovered since Morbius was exiled from Gallifrey. It's still against the production's intention, but I'm not so fussed about that if what happens on screen still makes sense.
Just the sort of in-depth reply I'd expect from someone who's sure of his position.
Cause the Doctor is so naturally honest about his past- just ask Martha!
Actually, it was the Consolation Doctor who said "I look like him. I think like him. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything, except I've only got one heart... I'm part human. Specifically, the aging part." So he's biologically human in some ways, which (obviously) the proper Doctor isn't, but this being wacky sci-fi there are still presumably ways for the Doctor to be "half-human" with a human mother without being a one-hearted biological metacrisis product who will age and die. It's all in how you choose to look at these things. Those of us who aren't invested in finding distance between the new and classic series will naturally look at it differently than those who prefer to emphasize the break.
What, the numerous times the Doctor has referred to himself as a Time Lord aren't enough? The interviews where RTD and others have said that they don't think the Doctor is half-Human aren't enough?
I don't really care about the old series enough to even want there to be distance. I just dislike the idea of the Doctor as anything other than a Time Lord and see plenty of evidence to think that that's all he is in the current series.
There is also the notion that this the Doctor's second time around - that originally he lived in the time of Rassilon and Omega (the one's name is lost).
We know that a Timeload can be endowed with an new set of regenerations so it could of well been that the original "Doctor" used up his 12 lives and recieved more (along with a pretty good mind wipe in the process).
If the Doctor having a human mother was just a throwaway line, I might be inclined to agree with you; it's just another instance of the Doctor saying something nonsensical, fantastic, and absurd.
But as the plot of the film actually depends upon the Doctor being half-human (because it takes a human's eyes to open the Eye of Harmony), I have to disagree. It's clearly not just a throwaway.
And yet, for 99.5% of Doctor Who, the Doctor's parentages matters not at all. So why even get exercised over the mere thought?
We can argue all day about what Morbius means in the greater continuity of the series, but it's well established by many more sources that the William Hatnell Doctor was, in fact, the First and original Doctor.
Let's next argue about what the REAL fate of Atlantis was. We only have three conflicting reports about that.
Let's next argue about what the REAL fate of Atlantis was. We only have three conflicting reports about that.
The first thing that comesto mind is his line in the Five Doctors saying he is the Original. Ironically, not played by Hartnell.
No mention of the evil-Doctor in Trials so far, thankfully.
Yeah, then there is Mawdryn Undead in which it is made abundantly clear that the Doctor has regenerated a total of four times, leaving eight to go.
Good catch - haven't seen that for years... most of my classic eps are on a dead hard drive
Though not as solid, theres the nuWho line where he tells SJ he's regenerated half a dozen times since they last met. Which a few folk on other forums have decided to twist in many ways to cancel out McGann but it gave a good link of continuity between old and new.
Well, I can see that argument, even if I don't buy into it. After all, the last SJS saw the Doctor was the THIRD Doctor in The Five Doctors, but the last time THE DOCTOR saw SJS was obviously the FOURTH Doctor in The Hand of Fear. (I don't think that Five actually interacted with SJS in T5Ds, did he?)
I don't. I just say bullocks to the TV movie and refuse to accept it into my person Doctor Who continuity. You'll notice I didn't mount a particularly long or impassioned defense of the idea that the Doctor's not half-Human -- I just cited "Journey's End" and said, "Uh-huh. Sure." to a counter-argument.
I don't think that anyone would argue that that was not the case. But that does not change the fact that The Brain of Morbius clearly presents a different and contradictory interpretation of the facts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIKf3MORmm4
"Back, back to your beginnings, Doctor!" Morbius shouts as the images flash on the screen.
Morbius's braincase then overheats from the stress, but the Doctor loses, indicating it is his incarnations that have been regressed through.
We don't know what the rules of their little game was. Those could very well have been faces shown by Morbius of his own past incarnations. I see no reason to assume that just because Morbius won that those faces belonged to the Doctor. Maybe instead of Morbius "dragging" out the Doctor's memories, he was in fact "pushing" his own?
I don't think Morbius won for that matter, the Doctor said that sometimes the game can end with both players dead and I think it came pretty close to that.