The Night Of The Doctor
- Thread starter Lonemagpie
- Start date
My own little thought on this is that maybe 10 seemed more comfortable talking about it because until Donna was able to snap himself out of it, he was becoming more comfortable with violence in general, against anyone threatening earth. He was becoming more reckless and "War Doctor-like" in his attitudes..
Donna was able to bring him around and back to square a little, I think..
I think there's a huge difference between wanting to avoid thinking or talking about the Time War and hiding away the incarnation that fought it and seeing it as not quite himself. The way the War Doctor was presented in the finale of the last series suggested he had done something so terrible that he wasn't even seen as a proper incarnation of himself by the Doctor. Something he didn't want anyone to know which is why he had this incarnation hidden away and didn't want Clara to see it.
However, he had stated on several occasions before that he had fought in the Time War and what's more, that he killed both the Daleks and the Timelords. Hell, Eleven even used that as something of a boast in one episode (I forget which one). It wasn't a secret and it wasn't something he thought of as having been done by anyone else than him.
That's why I thought at the time that John Hurt might not represent the Doctor during the Time War but a different incarnation. I'm not sure in how many different ways I can explain it.
Sorry for the double post!
Mmh, Ten was a pretty dark character from the start. We see that darker side in his first episode already ("No second chances"), then again in "School Reunion" ("I used to have so much mercy...") and so on.
The problem the Doctor was encountering was that he often couldn't protect the innocent without doing horrible things. "The Runaway Bride" is another good example of that. In order to save Donna and plenty of other humans he has to kill the Racnoss who are the last of their species. I always had the impression that he had a bit of a death wish then in that episode as well until Donna snapped him out of it.
It's a conundrum - to do good he sometimes has to do evil. Of course, that's one of the eternal ethical dilemmas of humanity. I guess it's what "The Day of the Doctor" will be about.
Mmh, Ten was a pretty dark character from the start. We see that darker side in his first episode already ("No second chances"), then again in "School Reunion" ("I used to have so much mercy...") and so on.
The problem the Doctor was encountering was that he often couldn't protect the innocent without doing horrible things. "The Runaway Bride" is another good example of that. In order to save Donna and plenty of other humans he has to kill the Racnoss who are the last of their species. I always had the impression that he had a bit of a death wish then in that episode as well until Donna snapped him out of it.
It's a conundrum - to do good he sometimes has to do evil. Of course, that's one of the eternal ethical dilemmas of humanity. I guess it's what "The Day of the Doctor" will be about.
"The Doctor's Wife"
HOUSE: Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords
DOCTOR: Fear me. I've killed all of them.
I don't know that it was a boast on the Doctor's part, as much as it was a statement of fact. House wanted to instill fear by boasting about kills, and the Doctor beat him at it.
Eleven is much more removed from the consequences of the Time War, probably was coming to terms with it.
Indeed. Eleven, I feel, was finally moving past it. He was settling into a new life (as much as the Doctor can settle) with Amy and Rory and River. He was a part of a family again, and was finally able to start moving on.
It was only when his family was threatened (A Good Man Goes to War) that we really started seeing glimpses of the old War Doctor.
Again, though -- and here I do have to get into semantics -- I'm not sure that "he doesn't count as a Doctor and thus I'm still the Eleventh so that we don't screw up the continuity" is the same thing as "I don't consider him the same person as me." I think we're so used to equating the title "Doctor" with the person that it's hard to realize that the Doctor himself doesn't necessarily do the same. He doesn't deny that he was the person who did these things, he just doesn't consider himself to have been playing the role of the Doctor at that point. Because "Doctor" isn't his name, it's his title, the role he's adopted for himself and the persona he chooses to present to the universe. That was the point of "The Name of the Doctor": That being "the Doctor" is a choice on his part. He calls himself the Doctor because he's there to help, to fix things, to make things better. But his ninth incarnation was tailored to be a warrior, and thus he wasn't being a doctor for that part of his life. It was his title that was on hold, not his core identity. We've always assumed those were the same thing, but Moffat has now revealed that our assumption was wrong, that there's a distinction between the Doctor role he adopts and the person he is at the core. So saying "this guy wasn't the Doctor" is not actually the same as saying "this guy wasn't me."
Yep...it IS pretty simple. You can actually do one yourself pretty easily with standard software.
To be fair though, credits aren't the best measure of anything, especially when it comes to Doctors. Else we'd have to accept the name of the lead character actually is Doctor Who (or, depending on the season, even Dr. Who) for close to half of his regenerations but not the other half.
Not to mention that, according to the credits the Brigadier spent most of the 70's changing the spelling of his name back and forth to add and remove the hyphen.
Whilst I've no problem with the Doctor shunniing this incarnation, I hope there's at least a semi-decent explanation (even if its throwaway) as to why the rest of the Universe seems to have gone along with it (well, except for Timothy Dalton who was all "Doctor" this and "Doctor" that when it seems he was talking about TWD). Especially as Hurt seems to have been around for ages and took part in a war that ranged all over the Universe.
I mean, when the Daleks from the void put together the handy Doctor montage that the Cybermen (somehow) got hold of in The Next Doctor that was stored on that handy tube that (for some reason) was designed to fit perfectly into a Cybusman chest... Why wouldn't they include Hurt? Would they even remotely give a fuck that he'd shunned the name they knew him best by?
"HAVE YOU FINISHED EDITING TOGETHER THAT IDENTIFICATION CLIP OF THE ONE THEY CALL DOCTOR?"
"YES, THOUGH I HAD TO HAVE A GOOD THINK ABOUT WHICH MCGANN COSTUME TO INCLUDE. AND WHAT ABOUT THE ONE THEY DO NOT CALL DOCTOR?"
"WELL, IT'S THE SAME BLOKE ISN'T IT? WE DON'T REALLY HAVE MUCH OF A REASON TO PAY ATTENTION TO THAT "CHANGE OF NAME" CARD HE SENT US, AND IF ANYTHING CONTINUING TO REFER TO HIM AS DOCTOR AND CONSTANTLY REMINDING HIM OF HIS PAST COULD BE A GREAT PSYCHOLOGICAL WEAPON"
"TRUE, BUT STEPHEN MOFFAT SAID HE WOULD ERASE US FROM DOCTOR WHO IF WE GAVE IT AWAY, AND WE DON'T HAVE THE EXCUSE OF BEING GREAT BRITISH ECCENTRICS WHO CAN SAY WHAT WE LIKE AND STILL BE LOVED, UNLIKE TOM BAKER".
"OH, OK THEN. BUT I'D TAKE OUT CARTOON RICHARD E. GRANT AND PETER CUSHING AS WELL WHILST YOUR AT IT, WE DON'T WANT TO MAKE THE FANS HEADS EXPLODE".
Seems simple enough to me. If that incarnation didn't call himself the Doctor, then most of the people he interacted with might not have been aware that he was the same guy. Rassilon would've known because he was the High President of the Time Lords, but that doesn't mean others would've known. Okay, if he traveled through space and time in a battered blue police box, that might've made some people suspect, but maybe he got the chameleon circuit working for a while.
I know it won't happen, but a cool scene I thought up involved the War Doctor finding the Moment, and then instantly being betrayed by an accompanying Time Lord who tries to kill him. War Doctor kills that Time Lord but is injured severely enough and regenerates into Eccleston, who upon regenerating has an epiphany. He then storms into the Lord President's chamber, furious, and declares to Rassilon that he's bringing an end to things. Rassilon, trying to persuade him addresses him as "Valeyard" (which I had assumed the War Doctor would be addressed as). Conversation then goes as follows:
Doctor: "You can stop calling me that. I am not the Valeyard any longer."
Rassilon: "Then how do you wish to be addressed?"
Doctor: "I am the Doctor."
An epic and over the top variation of theme "I am the Doctor" plays as the Doctor turns leaves the chamber, heads to a Gallifreyan scrap yard where the TARDIS sits. We can have a brief shot of the Ninth Doctor standing outside the TARDIS within a scrap yard before he enters and the TARDIS takes off, kind of showing the nu era began in a similar manner to the classic era.
I thought it would have been cool.
I'd always had the feeling all along that it was a new Nine, rather than an old Eight, who did whatever 'it' was. That seemed to fit better both with 'Parting of the Ways' and 'Journey's End.' Of course, with the advent of the War Doctor, bugger only knows anymore.
.
Whereas both "Rose" and "Journey's End" made it seem to me that 9 was freshly regenerated - 10's talk of how 9 had been "born in fire" sounded to me like talk of the circumstances of regeneration, not something he did afterwards.
After his adventure on the Titanic?
If the Doctor is so Hardcore... Why did Rassilon, on the last day of the Time War think that he was such a stupid immature child?
The last day?
If the War Doctor only lived for one day... His regeneration was therefore unstable and still in process... It's possible that the war Doctors death doesn't count as a regeneration because he still hadn't finished dying completely from last time.
If the Doctor is so Hardcore... Why did Rassilon, on the last day of the Time War think that he was such a stupid immature child?
The last day?
If the War Doctor only lived for one day... His regeneration was therefore unstable and still in process... It's possible that the war Doctors death doesn't count as a regeneration because he still hadn't finished dying completely from last time.
That's been some folks interpretation of the mirror scene, but it's also possible that after the events of the Time War, and his actions as Hurt, that he couldn't bear to look at himself for a long while, maybe fearing that he'd see some trace of Hurt's Doctor sill there.
Then why was he so casual about it when he looked in the mirror in Rose's place?
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