The Night Of The Doctor

[Csalem]

I have always felt the Ninth Doctor's regeneration was a bit like what we saw with Eleven in The Eleventh Hour. In that story he regenerates and has to deal with a crashing Tardis. He then meets young Amy and tries to deal with the crack and then he has to go stabilise the Tardis and returns to Amy and deal with Prison Zero. He only finds out what he looks like near end of story when Prisoner Zero copies his form.

For Nine he regenerates after 'destroying' Gallifrey and then when we meet him in Rose he is trying to deal with the Nestene who seem to have been on Earth for at least a few days. He may have been trying to find them from shortly after his regeneration and was too busy to look in a mirror until Rose's flat. Just like how busy Eleven was after his regeneration to stop and look in a mirror.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

since the Eleventh was 1200 years old by The Day of the Doctor.

IN that exact same scene, the Eleventh Doctor also says he's not sure how old he is, or he's lying about how old he is. He's so old that he doesn't even know the difference anymore.

Yeah, but the sonics know, and they say there's four hundred years between Hurt's and Smith's.

Smith's Doctor says, in comparison to Tennant's 904, that he's 12-something. Four hundred years back from that would be 8-something. In my mind I've pegged the regeneration to Eccleston at 50-80 years before "Rose," giving that Doctor a long time to pull himself together by the time he meets Rose Tyler.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, but the sonics know, and they say there's four hundred years between Hurt's and Smith's.

No, they don't. It's never actually stated that the calculation will take exactly 400 years to run, just that it will take hundreds of years. The fact that it's completed on Eleven's screwdriver only means that it took less than 400 years to complete. For all we know, it could've finished the computation a century or two earlier, since of course he never knew to look for it before. The only thing we can say for sure is that it finished up sometime between the late Tenth Doctor era and the Eleventh's "present."

 

[MacLeod]

Also when we start to talk periods of decades or centuries we tend to round out the figure.

So for example the Hurt Doctor could be 900 and Smith's could be 1270. We would probably say 400 years unless there was a need to be specific.

 

[Timewalker]

I wonder if the elixir thing officially explains the more violent regenerations we've seen in the new series.

Wouldn't explain River or the Master regenerating that way. We've just always seen the Doctor regenerate after losing the ability to stand- in Destiny Of The Daleks, Romana regenerates upright, so does Azmael (abortively) in The Twin Dilemma.

I think it's intended that generally regenerations are upright affairs, but the Doctor has just so often gone too far before and been too injured before letting the process happen - something he hasn't done in the new series.

We don't know how Romana regenerates, because it happened off-camera. She started her regeneration in a room offscreen and we only know it was happening because when the Doctor asked what she was doing, she said, "Regenerating." All the different temporary bodies she tried out were changed in that same off-screen area of the TARDIS until she finally settled on Princess Astra's form.

But didn't Romana at some random time decide to change (regenerate?) and was not dying. And she was trying different bodies to boot. Maybe a Timelord can control their regeneration energy and the 1st doctors hadn't mastered that yet.

It was made quite clear in The Ribos Operation that Romana was smarter and more capable than the Doctor in many ways, and it's possible she did better at whatever the Gallifreyan equivalent of health and Phys. Ed. classes were (presumably Gallifreyan students would have learned about regeneration and the biology and psychology of it).

As for why she regenerated... there's a scene in The Armageddon Factor where the First Romana is physically tortured, and I simply chalked her regeneration up to residual effects from that torture that didn't become evident until awhile later, after they'd dealt with the intact Key to Time and rescattered the pieces.

I never understand why people think Nine had just regenerated, just because he looks in a mirror and makes a comment about his appearance? I do that nearly everyday and I have had the same body for 43 years. If he had just regenerated I would have thought he would be suffering from post regeneration sickness, yet Nine has no such illness.

It was common for the newly-regenerated Doctors to make some kind of self-disparaging remark about their physical features. The Third Doctor commented on his nose, and it was the Fourth Doctor who was first obsessed about his ears. The Ninth Doctor's comment about his ears are perfectly in character for his newly-regenerated selves.

 

[Christopher]

Also when we start to talk periods of decades or centuries we tend to round out the figure.

So for example the Hurt Doctor could be 900 and Smith's could be 1270. We would probably say 400 years unless there was a need to be specific.

And why do we assume that everyone in the universe uses Earth years? Different planets have different year lengths. A habitable planet around a cool red dwarf could have a "year" that was only a few weeks long, due to its proximity to its star. Indeed, there's now reason to believe that the majority of habitable worlds in the galaxy could be around red dwarfs. Our definition of a year is anything but a universal default.

 

[ROBE]

It is also common for anybody to make a comment about their appearance without having just regenerated. It is stretching credibility that Nine had not seen a reflection of himself before visiting Rose Tyler's mother's flat.
Nine doesn't say "Ah! so that is what I look like now!"
So Nine didn't bother to look at his new appearance when dressing in new clothing or picking out a new TARDIS Desktop, he starts an adventure and avoids all reflective surfaces until the flats mirror?

 

[Aldo]

Also when we start to talk periods of decades or centuries we tend to round out the figure.

So for example the Hurt Doctor could be 900 and Smith's could be 1270. We would probably say 400 years unless there was a need to be specific.

And why do we assume that everyone in the universe uses Earth years?

It's fair to assume that they don't. But when dealing with the Doctor and how old he is it's clear the writers are intending for it to be Earth years. Otherwise don't you think the writer's would have specified that? As a writer yourself can you really sit there and say "Maybe they mean't something else." If they meant something else, they would have clarified.

 

[Christopher]

It is stretching credibility that Nine had not seen a reflection of himself before visiting Rose Tyler's mother's flat.
Nine doesn't say "Ah! so that is what I look like now!"
So Nine didn't bother to look at his new appearance when dressing in new clothing or picking out a new TARDIS Desktop, he starts an adventure and avoids all reflective surfaces until the flats mirror?

I think it obscures the issue to define things in absolutes. Maybe it's not literally the first time he's seen his reflection, but it seems early enough that he hasn't yet gotten used to his new face and is still a little preoccupied with the change. Like, after you get a new haircut and you're not sure you like it, you might spend days studying yourself on and off and trying to adjust to the sight.

The Doctor's actual line was, "Ah, could've been worse. Look at the ears." The "could've been worse" suggests the possibility that he's starting to come to terms with an appearance he wasn't crazy about at first. "I thought it was bad at first, but now I realize it could've been worse." But he's still having trouble getting past the ears.

So, again: Not immediately after regeneration, but not years after. Most likely in his first few weeks in this incarnation, at a point when he hasn't yet adjusted to his new face.

It's fair to assume that they don't. But when dealing with the Doctor and how old he is it's clear the writers are intending for it to be Earth years. Otherwise don't you think the writer's would have specified that? As a writer yourself can you really sit there and say "Maybe they mean't something else." If they meant something else, they would have clarified.

Obviously they intended Earth years, of course. But I'm not just a writer, I'm also an audience member. And audience members are allowed to invent explanations for inconsistencies in a work of fiction. As a writer, I do not expect or want my audience to be passive sponges who think they have to be slaves to the writer's intent. I want my audience to be able and willing to think for themselves and use their imaginations. I've spent most of my life as a Star Trek fan coming up with my own fudges and rationalizations for the inconsistencies in that franchise, and that was actually good training for becoming a professional Trek novelist. So I'm certainly not, as a writer, going to argue that fans are forbidden to come up with their own interpretations and fixes.

 

[MacLeod]

The Doctor's age is what it is, one of the mysteries of the character. You could just as easily say in the orginal era he was giving his age in Gallifrian years, and in the new series with Gallifrey (seemingly) lost. He started to use Human years as Earth is more or less his adoptive home planet.

 

[Aldo]

The Doctor's age is what it is, one of the mysteries of the character. You could just as easily say in the orginal era he was giving his age in Gallifrian years, and in the new series with Gallifrey (seemingly) lost. He started to use Human years as Earth is more or less his adoptive home planet.

Exactly, since he deals directly with humans for the most part, it would make sense for him to tell them his age in Earth years. If my cat were to talk I'm sure he would make the same concessions to me.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Yeah, but the sonics know, and they say there's four hundred years between Hurt's and Smith's.

No, they don't. It's never actually stated that the calculation will take exactly 400 years to run, just that it will take hundreds of years. The fact that it's completed on Eleven's screwdriver only means that it took less than 400 years to complete. For all we know, it could've finished the computation a century or two earlier, since of course he never knew to look for it before. The only thing we can say for sure is that it finished up sometime between the late Tenth Doctor era and the Eleventh's "present."

You're giving me a nosebleed here.

Where did the "400 years" number come from in the dialogue? I haven't rewatched it since Monday and won't until the DVD comes out, and you're making things unclear about something that seemed quite certain on my first and second viewings, that 400 years separated Hurt and Smith.

 

[MacLeod]

I think the inferrance comes from Hurt saying something like "You're only 400 years older than me", whilst in the Tower.

 

[The Wormhole]

There are all kinds of references to Smith being 400 years after Hurt in the Tower scene. "In 400 years you've never had the chance to find out how many children were on Gallifrey?" and stuff like that.

 

[Pauln6]

Troughton said he was about 450 in Earth years in the Tomb of the Cybermen so I think maybe suggesting 400 years had passed from the time of the destruction of Gallifrey if he's only 900+ now was a bit of a throwaway ball-park figure.

 

[DWF]

Troughton said he was about 450 in Earth years in the Tomb of the Cybermen so I think maybe suggesting 400 years had passed from the time of the destruction of Gallifrey if he's only 900+ now was a bit of a throwaway ball-park figure.

In Time And The Rani the Doctor said he was 953, but during the RTD years he was in his early 900s, but Smith's Doctor is now 1,200.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I'm honestly surprised he agreed to a video interview (especially one so impromptu as this one) considering he's typically interview shy, even with the Big Finish extras.

I get the impression that McGann is just super-shy in general. But if he's already out in public doing a convention anyway, I suppose doing a video interview isn't any more intrusive.

As a veteran of a campaign that actually DID directly save a show that was going to be cancelled ("Chuck"), I have to say that petitions and letters aren't enough. You have to show the network that it's worth the investment. We did that by patronizing the show's sponsor, Subway, and writing thank you's to Subway and NBC for the show. Every day.

But Doctor Who doesn't have sponsors. So I guess there's the "Jericho" approach: flood the network with foodstuffs.

Roswell did the same thing with bottles of tabasco sauce.

It's rather sweet he only thinks some of the companions mentioned came from the audios (I'm guessing the-longest absent-from-them C'Riss is the name he's most likely to have drawn a blank on) and shows how little the audio recording sinks in.

I thought it was interesting that he says he's the kind of actor who learns his lines quickly and then quickly forgets them after he's finished.

Sometimes I suspect that Tennant is the only Doctor that can really discuss the show on the kind of level that we do.

 

[Admiral_Young]

I'm guessing the 400 years line stems from after when 11 stated his age, and The War Doctor just did a rough bit of math to gauge their difference.

 

[RoJoHen]

since the Eleventh was 1200 years old by The Day of the Doctor.

IN that exact same scene, the Eleventh Doctor also says he's not sure how old he is, or he's lying about how old he is. He's so old that he doesn't even know the difference anymore.

Yeah, but the sonics know, and they say there's four hundred years between Hurt's and Smith's.

Ah, but the sonic is also telepathic, so maybe it only thinks there's 400 years because Smith thinks there's 400 years.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I'm guessing the 400 years line stems from after when 11 stated his age, and The War Doctor just did a rough bit of math to gauge their difference.

Yeah, I think it is.

It makes it all the more odd because they gave an out for the age inconsistency when he said "unless I'm lying about that." However, if he were lying, Hurt's Doctor wouldn't have been able to do that math properly.

Unless, of course, the number they started counting with is a number Hurt's Doctor picked. His number seems to be 800. Any writer ever hint at how long a Time Lord life is (ideally, a single regeneration).