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Renumber The Doctors?

The timelord general and his staff sort of answered it towards the end.

"All twelve of them"
"No sir, all thirteen!"

At least for the Time Lords, Capaldi is the 13th.

Well only because Hurt identified himself as a Doctor on the viewscreen. With the war going on, I doubt they had much time to quibble over the details.
 
The issue will be is... who is Capaldi? Do we say 12 (cos there isn't one in the new sequence) or 13 (which he biologically is)?

The timelord general and his staff sort of answered it towards the end.

"All twelve of them"
"No sir, all thirteen!"

At least for the Time Lords, Capaldi is the 13th.

Depending on how you count, there have been either six or fifteen Assassin's Creed games. Yet the latest one is called Assassin's Creed IV. The novel The Three Musketeers tells the adventures of four musketeers. There were four people in Enid Blyton's The Famous Five. Numbering is not always straightforward.
 
The issue will be is... who is Capaldi? Do we say 12 (cos there isn't one in the new sequence) or 13 (which he biologically is)?

The timelord general and his staff sort of answered it towards the end.

"All twelve of them"
"No sir, all thirteen!"

At least for the Time Lords, Capaldi is the 13th.

Depending on how you count, there have been either six or fifteen Assassin's Creed games. Yet the latest one is called Assassin's Creed IV. The novel The Three Musketeers tells the adventures of four musketeers. There were four people in Enid Blyton's The Famous Five. Numbering is not always straightforward.

Duhz if counting were easy, we wouldn't be talking about it would we? Sometimes, I don't even know what 1+1 is equal to :lol:
 
Use zero-based numbering so that Eccleston, Tennant, Smith, and Capaldi can remain the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth Doctors:

0 - Hartnell
1 - Troughton
2 - Pertwee
3 - Baker
4 - Davison
5 - Baker
6 - McCoy
7 - McGann
8 - Hurt
9 - Eccleston
10 - Tennant
11 - Smith
12 - Capaldi

It worked for Thermodynamics.

Simples.
 
I've got a compromise.

Renumbering the current 9th, 10th and 11th Doctors would only cause confusion to viewers who have not watched Day of The Doctor. It would also be a serious spoiler leak of the 50th anniversary special if we started calling Matt Smith the 12th Doctor. So lets keep Eccelston as 9th, Tennant as 10th and Smith as 11th.

Capaldi however is the 13th Doctor because his regeneration happens after the events of Day of The Doctor.
 
Or we could renumber them individually in the order we saw them. My first Doctor was the third, so for me he would be the first, then the fourth would be the second, the fifth would be the third, the seventh would be the fourth, the sixth would be the fifth, the ninth would be the sixth, the seventh would be the seventh (yeah), the second would be the eighth, the first would be the ninth, the tenth would be the tenth (yeah), the eleventh would be the eleventh (yeah), the War Doctor would be the twelfth and the twelfth would be the thirteenth.
 
Granted we never see who Hurt regenerates into - we assume Eccleston -
Actually we do see him regenerate into Eccleston.
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For those who can't handle the fact that Hurt IS the 9th Doctor just count Hartnell-McGann in incarnation order, skip Hurt, and use regeneration order (which is one number lower) for Eccleston onward.
 
In the end who's numbering counts?

Eccleston's Doctor considered himself the 9th, as he'd rejected the war Doctor.
Tennant's Doctor likewise called himself the 10th. Both knew there was another regeneration in between, but refused to call him Doctor.

Smith considered himself the 11th until very shortly before his regeneration when he finally claimed and owned his 9th regeneration as Doctor. So Capaldi's Doctor will consider himself the 13th.

And now that he remembers what happened he'll set out to release Gallifrey, whereupon he'll be rewarded with more regenerations. And the internet will explode again.
 
Not only did he redeem himself, he was forgiven by his future incarnations and they called him "Doctor."

That's enough for me to renumber The Doctors. However, I know this will be hotly debated for years to come and there will always be confusion when talking about The Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, and upcoming Thirteenth Doctors (and all of the future incarnations).

I don't think there will be. Moffat has already stated that it doesn't change anything and that Smith still is the eleventh Doctor, so the point is moot and it's only really confusing for people who want it to be confusing.

With respect to Moffat, the next show runner of DW could disregard that and consider Smith to be the twelth Doctor. So the point is hardly moot.
 
More to the point, what matters is what we see on screen. What we see on screen in "The Day of the Doctor" strongly says Hurt is The Ninth Doctor and so on, as seen from the most current incarnation of The Doctor.
 
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They are perfectly numbered in base-11 with the extra between 8 and 9 instead of after 9.

1 - Hartnell
2 - Troughton
3 - Pertwee
4 - Baker
5 - Davison
6 - Baker
7 - McCoy
8 - McGann
Ɛ - Hurt
9 - Eccleston
10 - Tennant
11 - Smith
12 - Capaldi

I can't wait to see the 1Ɛth Doctor.
 
My view? The show had a 'get-out clause' in the sense of him being some kind of 'Doctor No More', but I see no reason (given on screen) why Hurt is not now officially the Ninth Doctor. Certainly the under-riding thematic arc of 'Day of the Doctor' is of the Tennant and Smith incarnations learning to finally 'accept' this part of who they are, after centuries of (implied) ignoring him.

Even more crucially, this is actually *confirmed* on screen when, in the climactic battle, the Capaldi incarnation is explicitly refered to as the thirteenth one. No ifs, no buts. Go back and watch it again. :)

Frankly I don't see that there's any ambiguity in it. Steven Moffat rewrote everything we thought we knew about the new series Doctors, so basically we do now have thirteen Doctors. Eccleston is 'Ten', Tennant is 'Eleven' and Smithy is 'Twelve'. People might find that hard to accept. But it's true. :D
 
Even more crucially, this is actually *confirmed* on screen when, in the climactic battle, the Capaldi incarnation is explicitly refered to as the thirteenth one. No ifs, no buts. Go back and watch it again. :)

No he's not. Go back and watch it again. The Time Lord says that there are 13 of them, he doesn't say anything about numeration or about the 12th Doctor.

But anyway, the point is moot. As has been said, the showrunner decides how these Doctors are supposed to be referred to, and whatever is decided is fine with me.
 
They are perfectly numbered in base-11 with the extra between 8 and 9 instead of after 9.

1 - Hartnell
2 - Troughton
3 - Pertwee
4 - Baker
5 - Davison
6 - Baker
7 - McCoy
8 - McGann
Ɛ - Hurt
9 - Eccleston
10 - Tennant
11 - Smith
12 - Capaldi

I can't wait to see the 1Ɛth Doctor.

Nope, in base 11, that would be:

1 - Hartnell
2 - Troughton
3 - Pertwee
4 - Baker
5 - Davison
6 - Baker
7 - McCoy
8 - McGann
9 - Hurt
a - Eccleston
10 - Tennant
11 - Smith
12 - Capaldi

So Eccleston is the "a" Doctor.
 
No he's not. Go back and watch it again. The Time Lord says that there are 13 of them, he doesn't say anything about numeration or about the 12th Doctor.

I agree, the line has potential ambiguities, but myself I think it states a plain case. Thirteen Doctors = thirteen Doctors, and the line is said when Capaldi makes his entrance.

But anyway, the point is moot. As has been said, the showrunner decides how these Doctors are supposed to be referred to, and whatever is decided is fine with me.

Totally agreed. If there are now 13 official Doctors, and like I say that seems to be the thematic thrust of the story, and if it is the intention then I welcome it with open arms. :)
 
You know, this is quite the legacy Moffat is leaving behind. It's already gotten to the point where we should essentially stop referring to the seasons by the # season and now we should probably stop referring to the Doctors by their numerical designation. You don't suppose Moffat hates numbers?

The ironic thing is it wasn't until Moffat took over that the Doctor's current numerical designation was even mentioned in the show itself.
 
^ It certainly causes a strange mess in the branding of the series. :lol: Every episode guide, every piece of merchandise (action figures etc) that have refered to the Doctor numerically, they've either all become instantly irrelevant, or else we are going to have to ignore the thrust of this script (which is, yes, that Hurt is a proper Doctor and he's simply one that the other new series Doctors have all been ignoring/repressing from their memory until now).

In my view it's actually easier to accept that we've all just been operating under wrong assumptions for the last seven years. To just accept at face value that Hurt was the ninth Doctor, Eccleston the tenth, Tennant the eleventh and so on. I'm still not convinced we've seen anything on screen which disproves this, but we've certainly seen plenty of evidence that seems to confirm it! :D
 
The main problem is that since Moffat took over he's been drilling it into our heads that Smith is the Eleventh Doctor. The premiere episode is titled "The Eleventh Hour." The Doctor refers to himself as "the Eleventh" in The Lodger, which also features him wearing a jersey with 11 on it during the football game. And then there's the whole "Fall of the Eleventh at Trenzalore," which is kind of an integral part of the overall arc of the Smith era. So Moffat has gone out of his way to make sure we think of Smith as the Eleventh Doctor just to reveal that he's actually the Twelfth.
 
The timelord general and his staff sort of answered it towards the end.

"All twelve of them"
"No sir, all thirteen!"

At least for the Time Lords, Capaldi is the 13th.

Well only because Hurt identified himself as a Doctor on the viewscreen. With the war going on, I doubt they had much time to quibble over the details.

But they were calling him the Doctor earlier in the Episode and so were the Daleks.
 
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