Bring them Back! Moffat Style..
- Thread starter starsuperion
- Start date
Well, if the show is just about the Doctor and his companions, time to save some serious money... no guest stars, no baddies, no f/x, just a cheap talk show set and the Doctor and his companions sitting around doing... well, something gosh darned interesting.
As stated a few times up thread, just because something is there, in the universe somewhere, doesn't mean you have to use it every time. I just personally prefer "on the run" to "last of".
Isn't that what super powers do?
While I appreciate the tragic angle of the Doctor being the lone survivor of his people I also loved the idea of him being an outlaw
Actually, that makes even less sense. If there's an entire society that has so mastered the art of time travel that they've renamed themselves "the Time Lords," sure one guy flying around in an outdated TARDIS should be easy to find and capture.
You mean the one where the Time Lords are all dead and he fails to rescue any? 
That's the point. They don't care, they don't even care about the Daleks or the Cybermen destroying whole civilisations. I think the comparison to the Q continuum is rather apt.
Also, later they decide the Doctor could be useful to them and he gets small missions from time to time, but that's after they agree to some degree with his speech at his trial.
Which, again, makes no sense, because why would the Doctor be on the run, then? Why'd they punish him at the end of The War Games if they just don't care?
It does, if the Time Lords are so much more powerful that those forces are a nuisance to them rather than a danger. They may look on them, as the Doctor says of the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks, something which indirectly also causes good.
In the end, they don't need explanation, if the show runners don't want to use them, just don't. It's removing them as an option for future writers that doesn't make sense. Now if someone wants to use them, one needs a convoluted story to bring them back, or just ignore the continuity all together. (Which wouldn't really be a first for this or any show, really.)
The Doctor called them for help in The War Games and basically gave himself up that way. What I meant to say is that normally, the Timelords don't care enough about their renegades that they would hunt them down.
I don't think the Timelords being there but mainly keeping to themselves is such a difficult concept to grasp. I'm fine with both concepts, although the myriad ways of Daleks surviving the Time War got a bit silly. On the other hand, it just goes to show that the Timelords were as incompetent as I always suspected them to be since The Three Doctors. That they didn't manage to take all Daleks down with them after all fits the picture.
I don't think the Timelords being there but mainly keeping to themselves is such a difficult concept to grasp. I'm fine with both concepts, although the myriad ways of Daleks surviving the Time War got a bit silly. On the other hand, it just goes to show that the Timelords were as incompetent as I always suspected them to be since The Three Doctors. That they didn't manage to take all Daleks down with them after all fits the picture.
If that was all there was to it, sure, that'd be fine.
But then we find out that they do things like, arrest people for running away and doing their own thing.
Which makes no sense. Either they don't care or they do; if they care, it would be child's play to catch the Doctor. If they don't, then why bother arresting him, trying him, and exiling him?
The Doctor was the one who destroyed (almost) all the Daleks, not the Time Lords.
Then why need the Doctor fear them? Why is he on the run? Why would they bother arresting him and exiling him, if he's so unimportant?
That just makes them an arbitrary plot device.
No. All-power figures who can intervene as a deus-ex-machina every now and then but don't unless the writer feels like it are arbitrary plot devices; a madman who wanders the universe is a character.
No, removing them makes perfect sense. It avoids the problem of their being an arbitrary plot device, it avoids the "Old Men In Silly Hats Talking Sternly" cliche that so befuddles many sci-fi shows, it adds a layer of mystique to the Time Lords that they would lack in life, and it adds interesting new background and motivations to the Doctor.
the doctor went on the run from his duties as a timelord and to mingle in the affairs of others..a running away from timelord doctrine
Which, again, doesn't explain why they didn't capture him. He was one guy running around in an obsolete TARDIS.
if he is going to run around doing things, then he might as well do what they want on occasion, hence they let him do this thing..
plus after the war games he made the case for them to release him, after doing time in prison err... earth in the 1970's..
they did capture him, in the war games..
after that, he got to be free, but under the understanding that he had to work for them on occasion..
I've not watched much of the old series (basically a couple of serials), so I don't have much of an impression of the Time Lords themselves, but I will share a similar experience.
The Stargate franchise. Early in SG-1, the Ancients were all cool and mysterious and what-have-you: there's no way of knowing what they looked like or what they thinked like, and their technology seemed marvelous and advanced.
Later on, they're a bunch of honky humans who accidentally unleashed apocalypse after apocalypse on the universe. I liked the glimpses of Gallifrey in the current series of Doc Who; the peeks, the teases, but there's no way that the production is going to live up to the promise of splendor and grandeur they've created. There's not going to be a lot of ways to effectivley convey how incredibly advanced the Time Lords are.
It's not crucially important that the Time Lords be around. Because they're just part of the justification behind The Doctor doing what he does, like the Federation and Starfleet existing to prop up the Enterprise and its voyage. If the Federation vanished out of time with the exception of the Enterprise, it'd be a big change, but honestly wouldn't effect much (except there'd maybe be less lame filler episodes in TNG).
I just don't feel like there's an empty void where the Time Lords should be. Therefore, I don't see a pressing need to fill it.
YMMV, but that's how I feel about it.
The Stargate franchise. Early in SG-1, the Ancients were all cool and mysterious and what-have-you: there's no way of knowing what they looked like or what they thinked like, and their technology seemed marvelous and advanced.
Later on, they're a bunch of honky humans who accidentally unleashed apocalypse after apocalypse on the universe. I liked the glimpses of Gallifrey in the current series of Doc Who; the peeks, the teases, but there's no way that the production is going to live up to the promise of splendor and grandeur they've created. There's not going to be a lot of ways to effectivley convey how incredibly advanced the Time Lords are.
It's not crucially important that the Time Lords be around. Because they're just part of the justification behind The Doctor doing what he does, like the Federation and Starfleet existing to prop up the Enterprise and its voyage. If the Federation vanished out of time with the exception of the Enterprise, it'd be a big change, but honestly wouldn't effect much (except there'd maybe be less lame filler episodes in TNG).
I just don't feel like there's an empty void where the Time Lords should be. Therefore, I don't see a pressing need to fill it.
YMMV, but that's how I feel about it.
Those ideas are just half baked.
Because they're peaceful to the point of indolence. And it's possible he wasn't easy to find. Or simply not worth the effort. Think of it as someone who has a mass of unpaid parking tickets and a warrant for their arrest. The cops don't conduct a manhunt for such a nuisance, they just wait until his next traffic citation and haul him off then. And that's what happened in "The War Games", although on that occasion, the scofflaw walked into the police station and reported a much larger crime and hoped to sneak away unnoticed.
After that, the Doctor became a useful tool of plausible deniability. They could direct him to meddle in things the Time Lords couldn't overtly interfere with. And if he got caught, they'd simply point out that the man stole his TARDIS and is a fugitive from Gallifreyan justice himself.
Something which isn't uncommon with a post by Sci. On a fair few occasions he'll post an opinion but the way he'll say it, it's the fact of the matter and what he says is the only thing you need to listen to.
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