The Doctor Who Mythos

Discussion in 'Doctor Who' started by The Mirrorball Man, Nov 30, 2013.

  1. Iamnotspock

    Iamnotspock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    As is Pertwee's Day of the Daleks, with an ontological paradox at the centre of the story. Moffat made it a regular thing.
     
  2. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    It's annoying that "timey-wimey" has become meaningless technobabble when the writers can't be bothered to come up with explanations that make sense.

    BTW, there should be an entry for companions killed while traveling with the Doctor, starting with the First Doctor (Sara Kingdom and Katerina), the Fifth Doctor (Adric and Kamelion), the Sixth Doctor (Peri, although if you believe the Time Lords, she wasn't really killed), and whoever else may have died in the modern era - I haven't seen all of them yet.
     
  3. Mr Awe

    Mr Awe Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You could say a similar thing about the sonic screwdriver! :p

    Mr Awe
     
  4. AgentCoop

    AgentCoop Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Admittedly, my knowledge of Dr. Who pre-2005 is limited, so I'm not sure when the concept first appeared, but shouldn't the chameleon arch/fob watch thing warrant a mention?

    Edit: Similarly, when was the idea of the broken chameleon circuit first introduced?
     
  5. Sindatur

    Sindatur The Gray Owl Wizard Admiral

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    In the very first Hartnell episode, when they landed in caveman times and it stayed a Police Call Box.
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    The chameleon arch originated in the Tenth Doctor storyline "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" by Paul Cornell. That 2-parter was based on Cornell's 1995 Seventh Doctor novel Human Nature, but in that book, the Doctor's transformation into a human was achieved by different means.


    True, except the actual name "chameleon circuit" wasn't coined until over 17 years later in "Logopolis," the Fourth Doctor's final story. The first episode merely described the TARDIS's ability to change appearance without naming the mechanism responsible. The first onscreen mention of such a mechanism was in the Third Doctor's "The Time Meddler," wherein it was called a "camouflage unit." However, an unproduced 1966 radio play referred to it as the "Electronic Chameleon System." (Whereas the 1996 movie cribbed the term "cloaking device" from Star Trek.)

    http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Chameleon_circuit
     
  7. UssGlenn

    UssGlenn Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That doesn't create a Time Lord, it just gives someone trying to create one artificialy a head start.
     
  8. diankra

    diankra Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Though Terrance Dicks' novelisations call it the Chameleon Circuit as far back as 1975. One of many details that start out in the Target books and later get confirmed onscreen having become fanon in the meantime.
     
  9. Thestral

    Thestral Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ah, ok. I was still a bit unclear on the specifics there.
     
  10. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    That's interesting. What are some of the others?

    Of course, since Dicks was the show's story editor for some time, these could be the kind of details that are part of the series bible or behind-the-scenes materials but only belatedly get mentioned onscreen.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Tom Baker's "City of Death" also does some interesting things with time and causality.
     
  12. The Mirrorball Man

    The Mirrorball Man Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It goes as far back as "The Space Museum", actually, which leads me to think that the timey-wimeyness started with the first Doctor.
     
  13. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Still, stories that made use of time travel as more than just a vehicle to get into and out of the story were extremely sparse in the original series, usually just a couple per Doctor. It's a much more dominant thread in Moffat's work, both as writer and showrunner.
     
  14. diankra

    diankra Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Ooh, you've caught me there. The inevitable problem is that having read and re-read those early novelisations in the days before I had a video, I tend to forget what's actually come from the books! Even though I've now seen them four or five times, I still get taken by surprise when the actual episodes don't include lines or scenes that were in the book...
    Pretty sure though that the Brigadier's middle name, Gordon, first turned up in the books. And a lot of the stuff about the Doctor's academy-era relationships with the Master and Borusa come more from Barry Letts and Malcolm Hulke's novelisations of the Delgado stories, and Terrance's novelisation of The Deadly Assassin (which would have just gone across Graham Williams and Anthony Read's desks for approval when they were rush-writing Invasion of Time) than the actual episodes.
    But to be strictly accurate, I just pulled a couple of the old books off the shelf, and Terrance doesn't actually use the words 'chameleon circuit' in Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons (published March 75). Instead, we get "The Doctor knew that the Master's TARDIS, unlike his own, still had its chameleon mechanism in working order." And then a bit later, "...on one of his visits to twentieth century London, the chameleon circuits had worn out, and he had been unable to replace them." (So close, but not quite there. Six pages later, the Doctor recognises a bomb as "a Sontaran fragmentation grenade" and he didn't say that in the original story!)
    Checking back a bit, Malcolm Hulke's April 1974 novelisation of Colony in Space, The Doomsday Weapon, has a Time Lord observe that one of the two defects to the Doctor's TARDIS is "that particular TARDIS had lost its chameleon-like quality. It was in for repairs..." Seeing as Hulke wrote that Cushing radio pilot, and he was Terrance Dicks' best friend and sometime landlord, it seems a fair bet that he actually came up with the phrase (in the same chapter, he also comes up with the title Keeper for the guardian of the Time Lords' files, though it's Keeper of the Files, not 'of the Matrix').
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2013
  15. Pindar

    Pindar Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Can't we give 7 Flying Daleks
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    If I understand the question correctly, then yes, "Remembrance of the Daleks" in the McCoy era was the first to explicitly show a Dalek levitating up a flight of stairs. However, "The Chase" back in Hartnell's second year shows Daleks on multiple decks of the Marie Celeste, implying that they had some means of moving between levels.
     
  17. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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    And we saw Daleks hover in Revelation of the Daleks.
     
  18. Lindley

    Lindley Moderator with a Soul Premium Member

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    Perhaps. The wristbands from The Keys of Marinus (Hartnell) look awefully similar, and are described as being similar to the principle powering the TARDIS, although those particular devices couldn't time travel.
     
  19. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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    To me, things like "vortex manipulator" (and a few other things on the list) are getting down in the weeds - its like transmats - handy bit of tech for the plot but hardly something I consider essential to the 'mythos'.
     
  20. Pindar

    Pindar Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I don't remember that. I remember transparent Dalek cases, when did they hover.