Well, we're talking about differences between what was intended in 76 and what was done in 81. New producers are free to do it their way, JNT wanted the clear visual link, rather than referring to the implications of a brief shot 4 years earlier.
Has the Doctor been a Woman before?
- Thread starter Jayson1
- Start date
Didn't Doctor Who's creator want a female doctor in the 80s, but the BBC were dead against the idea and even the then Doctor Tom Baker approved of the idea? I keep reading this story online that they have hinted at this since the mid 80s, that they wanted to do this.
Maybe she is having a dig at him for crying in the bed when he was a boy.
The Doctor was never a woman before Whitaker, it's well established Hartnell is Doc#1.
In doctor who and the curse of fatal death (a spoof comedy thing for red nose day from the nineties) the doctor, played by rowan atkinson, goes through about half a dozen regenerations including Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and Joanna Lumley. I got told ages ago, and I don't know quite how true this is, that each of the people who play the Doctor in this episode were at one point or another genuinely considered/ approached about playing the actual Doctor on T.V I assume that thus at some point they were not just considering hiring a woman but had at least one woman in mind for the role. Maybe they had more.
Last edited:
Sure, but again, the way the "riddle" works out over the season is that that one is still up in the air. As for Hartnell being the "first" Doctor. While I don't particularly like it, there are certainly enough points in the novels and the show itself that indicate this is an assumption more than a fact. Hell, we assume The Other is male.
So, this is one of those things that's sort of true, but in some cases retroactively true. Atkinson was considered for the role of the Eighth Doctor for the TV movie in 1996 but turned it down. Four years after Curse of Fatal Death, Richard E. Grant played the Doctor in the Scream of the Shalka animated web-isode. As far as I can tell, Broadbent was never considered for the role - though he may have auditioned and we don't know, but had done a Doctor Who sketch on a sketch comedy show before hand. Hugh Grant was offered the role of the Ninth Doctor in 2004 by RTD, but apparently he didn't remember being offered this - likely his agent(s) turned it down. Joanna Lumley was bandied about as a possible Seventh Doctor, but the BBC seems to have shot that down early in the casting process. (Dawn French was also thrown into the mix at same time, but again, dropped.) I also seem to recall some chatter from RTD about possibly getting Judi Dench for the reboot.
Of course, it is interesting to see that Curse of Fatal Death is something of a blue print for the RRD/Moffat era doctors. Not exactly but close enough to be of note.
Yes, I think it was during the Colin Baker era when the ratings were slipping, BBC approached Sydney Newman looking for ways to reinvigorate the show, and among his many suggestions (all of which ended up ignored) was making the next Doctor a woman.
Also, Curse of the Fatal Death was written by Moffat.
This doesn't seem to have been followed up on here... It turns out that what the Doctor actually said in "Arachnids in the UK" was that she "used to be a sister in an aqua-hospital." "Sister" is a British term for a nurse, especially a head nurse. I don't think male nurses are generally called sisters -- Rory wasn't -- but I suppose they could be.
That was exactly the point I was trying to make earlier, but I don't think I was clear enough.
Yeah, but people early in the thread (myself included) were vague in our recollection of what kind of "sister" the Doctor had claimed to be, and whether it was in the family sense or in the religious-order sense. It helps to have solid confirmation that it was neither of those, but was in fact a job title for a nurse. Having actual data is always preferable to vague impressions and speculation.
Its EU but...in the Thirteenth Doctor Comic Volume 0 there´s a story about the Doctor helping a renegade Time Lord scientist to create the technology/method that grants a new regeneration cycle. Which is subsequently used on the scientist who then regenerates into a woman. Hmm..maybe the gender change or a high probability of that is a side effect of the regeneration cycle reset?
Side note: One BigFinish audio..I think it was "Shada" implied that the 12 regeneration limit wasn´t actually a limit inherent to the process itself but something artificially created by Rassilion himself...who it seems changed Gallifreyan biology somehow to make regen possible in the first place. God...is there something on Gallifrey thats NOT in anyway created, invented or related to Rassilon? "The Sash Of Rassilon", "The Gauntlet Of Rassilon", "The Seal Of Rassilon", I guess there´s a "The Port-A-Potty Of Rassilon" too..
Last edited:
The TARDIS displays at some point list the Gallifreyan date as the "Year of Rassilon 10,???" implying he's been in charge for 10,000+ years before the Last Great Time War and made sure they measure time relative to his rule.
So yes, he's that full of himself.
Rassilon wasn't in charge during the classic series; he was portrayed there as a long-dead cultural founder, and indeed "The Five Doctors" revolved around his tomb (although his disembodied consciousness or something of the sort still resided there). The first portrayal of Rassilon alive in the present day was in "The End of Time." I think the idea was that the Time Lords had resurrected him to lead them in the war. (Maybe they went into their own past and brought him forward.)
So there's no reason to assume it was Rassilon himself who established a calendar based on him. It was probably later generations.
That's not what the Tennant era depicted, he didn't seem to have been gone any length of time.
I don't know what you're basing that on, but it hardly matters, because I'm talking about what was established before the new series. The "Rassilon Era" thing you're referring to was from the 1996 TV movie. Rassilon's resurrection was established in "The End of Time, Part 2" on New Year's Day 2010. The Time War may have changed history in-story, but it didn't change history in real life. The people behind the 1996 movie did not intend Rassilon to be alive in the present any more than the people behind "The Deadly Assassin" (which introduced the character) or "The Five Doctors" (which introduced his tomb) did. That was a later retcon.
Anyway, it was the 2014 novel Engines of War, featuring the War Doctor during the Time War, which established that Rassilon had been resurrected at the start of the war.
In the Eighth Doctor audios, a matrix projection of Rassilon still exists, but he can only act through others. I believe the Gallifrey audios posit that Rassilon's matrix project takes over a body shortly before the Time War.
TEOT did show us the Spit of Rassilon.
RTD explains in The Writer's Tale all dead Time Lords were resurrected to fight in the Time War, Rassilon and the Master among them.
Quite simply, it's equivalent to anno Domini on Earth, or in the "Nth Year of Kahless" in the Klingon Empire. Marking time from a certain starting point. Not like "in the twelfth year of the reign of King George."
So they were already zombies anyway, feel less bothered by the Dr sending them all back now.
Similar threads
