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I do not accept the Cartmel Masterplan

starsuperion

Commodore
Commodore
The Cartmel Masterplan

Cartmel Masterplan, what is it? see the copy article from wikipedia below..
Of the many, sometimes contradictory, accounts of Time Lord history, the most developed single vision may have been seen in the licensed spin-offs, in particular the Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Missing Adventures novels and, to a lesser degree of consistency, their successors, the BBC Books Doctor Who novels. Due to Virgin's low print runs, their general non-availability outside of Britain, and the fact that the vision has never been translated to screen, their influence is uneven within the global Doctor Who fan community.
The Virgin novels, and by extension the BBC novels, took heavily from the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan" devised by former Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel, which was supposed to explain the Doctor's origins and his ties to Gallifrey's ancient history. Elements of the Masterplan were supposed to be revealed over the course of Cartmel's tenure on the series, but ultimately, as the programme ceased production in 1989, only hints of it surfaced in Seasons 25 and 26 and were never made explicit.
According to the novels, some millions of years ago the planet Gallifrey is home to a civilisation that can see all of the past and future. Ancient Gallifrey is also a matriarchy, ruled over by a mystical religion consisting of a cult built around the Pythia, a great and powerful priestess. Among the ancient Gallifreyans are time-sensitives, marked by their red hair, who pilot early Gallifreyan time machines. Rassilon is rumoured to have been one of these time pilots, who are known as Heroes (as much a title as a term of adulation). Rassilon, as a scientist, opposes the religious and monarchical power wielded by the Pythia.
Gallifrey begins its wars against the Great Vampires during this period. Rassilon commands a fleet of Bowships that wins the first war and his rationalist movement gains popular and political support as a result.
The rule of the Pythia is finally overthrown by Rassilon and two other scientists, Omega and "the Other", a mysterious figure whose actual name has been lost to history. This marks the start of the Intuitive Revolution, turning Gallifrey into a society based on rationality and a republic with an elected President, although a caste system remains. The three are ultimately responsible for Gallifrey's move towards a purely scientific society.
However, when overthrown the Pythia curses the people with sterility before casting herself into an abyss. The curse results in the still birth that night of every unborn child on Gallifrey, including Rassilon's own son. Persecuted, her priestesses and acolytes flee to a nearby planet where they become the Sisterhood of Karn (The Brain of Morbius).
The Pythia's curse forces Rassilon to find a new way to reproduce, leading him to create the Looms, cloning machines that can create new Gallifreyans to replace the dead. The Looms are eventually incorporated into great Houses of Cousins, to regulate the population levels and organise the new society. Time Lords are born fully grown from the Looms, although they still need to be educated.
Rassilon, with the assistance of Omega and the Other, applies transdimensional engineering to the creation of TARDIS technology. Omega then proceeds to concentrate completely on his time travel experiments. The Other's role is unclear, but he seems to have held the alliance between Rassilon and Omega together, and is a part of the project that produces the Hand of Omega. Omega uses the Hand on the star Qqaba (named in the comic strip Star Death by Alan Moore, DWM #47 and the novel The Infinity Doctors by Lance Parkin), and vanishes, presumed dead, in the resulting supernova which creates the Eye of Harmony. Rassilon then takes control of both the Eye and Gallifreyan society, and the Time Lords are now able to live up to their name.
Eventually, Rassilon's rule becomes dictatorial and reaches the point where he becomes obsessed with implementing his reforms and preserving Gallifreyan society as he sees it before the end of his life. Despite the Other's protests, bloody purges begin, and Rassilon begins to dabble in immortality. Meanwhile, knowing that Rassilon will hold his family hostage to secure his cooperation, the Other tells his granddaughter Susan to go into hiding. He then literally throws himself into the Looms, disintegrating and spreading his genetic code into the machines.
A year later, the Doctor arrives in his "borrowed" TARDIS from Gallifrey's future and discovers Susan on the streets of the city, where she has been living since failing to make it off-world. Somehow, Susan recognises him as her grandfather and he also knows her name. The Doctor then leaves Gallifrey's past, taking Susan with him into his exile. (Many of the novels (especially Lungbarrow and The Infinity Doctors) have implied that the Doctor may be the Other, genetically reincarnated from the Looms, but the truth of the matter remains uncertain.[1])
Rassilon, now absolute ruler of Gallifrey, leads the Time Lords in further wars against the Great Vampires and other otherdimensional beings released because of the use of time travel, whom he considers dangerous to the universe. Aside from the Bowships, the Time Lords also use N-Forms, extra-dimensional war machines developed by the Patrexes chapter that attack planets where they detected the presence of vampires. The Doctor encounters a reactivated N-form in the Virgin New Adventures novel Damaged Goods, by Russell T Davies.
Eventually, the Pythia's curse is lifted with the arrival of the Fourth Doctor's companion Leela on Gallifrey. Leela falls in love and marries a Gallifreyan, Andred (The Invasion of Time), and at the conclusion of the novel Lungbarrow is pregnant — the first naturally conceived child on Gallifrey for millennia.
While this story history is intriguing, I just can't accept a few ideals put forth within this history.. the time lords being clones, is directly contradicted by the Master's recollection of his childhood on Gallifrey with the doctor in his father's field, and not to mention that until the Tardis technology could be developed, the time lords were not time travelers.. as the 2nd doctor has said, in order to make time travel a viable practice they needed a colossal source of energy..

The Pythia I thought were more then a single person, but rather a race of women who could see the future.. hence the pythia witch in the end of time..

I could be wrong, but my personal view is to not accept this story line, it is afterall, a spin off continuity..
 
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I like how you're complaining it doesn't fit with the new series or the movie when this came first.
Granted I don't like it either and view it as another way to enforce chastity on the doctor, not really his granddaughter.
 
The Cartmel Masterplan as conjured up during the McCoy era was never meant to have all its details revealed on screen; rather, just to hint at the Doctor being more mysterious, which is something I approve of.

Then all the fanhacks who wrote the NAs latched onto it as something to go into detail about, leading to lots of pretty daft things it's better to ignore. Of couse, Roberts and Cornell were as responsible as anyone, but they're exempt from criticism these days ('specially PC).
 
The Cartmel Masterplan as conjured up during the McCoy era was never meant to have all its details revealed on screen; rather, just to hint at the Doctor being more mysterious, which is something I approve of.

Then all the fanhacks who wrote the NAs latched onto it as something to go into detail about, leading to lots of pretty daft things it's better to ignore. Of couse, Roberts and Cornell were as responsible as anyone, but they're exempt from criticism these days ('specially PC).

Sorry. No one in Doctor Who is exempt form criticism, except Colin Baker.
 
That seems like a pretty unwieldy backstory.

Here's all I need: there's a strange man with a magical box that can go anywhere.

The more detail you deliver about Time Lord society, the more ridiculous it gets.
 
I do like the idea of the Soothsayer being a "Pythia witch" in The End of Time...specifically the notion that she's one of the Sisterhood of Karn. Yes, I can accept that.
 
The Cartmel Masterplan as conjured up during the McCoy era was never meant to have all its details revealed on screen; rather, just to hint at the Doctor being more mysterious, which is something I approve of.

Then all the fanhacks who wrote the NAs latched onto it as something to go into detail about, leading to lots of pretty daft things it's better to ignore. Of couse, Roberts and Cornell were as responsible as anyone, but they're exempt from criticism these days ('specially PC).

Sorry. No one in Doctor Who is exempt form criticism, except Colin Baker.
I agree. Many don't.
 
I'm kinda ambivalent about it. I agree with their intentions - that of returning an air of mystery to the character of the doctor. On the other hand, huge chunks of it are crap, imo. By making the doctor 'The Other' and part of the triumvirate of the founders of timelord society, you set him up to be as big a figure as Rassilon & Omega - part timelord, and almost part god. It's all a bit much.

I prefer to think of him as a fairly ordinary, if gifted, member of his race who happens to have gone rogue.

The Sisters of the Flame stuff is ok, but overall there is too much mysticism and gods and religious overtones, and too little science and common sense for my liking.
 
Part Time Lord, part god. You can tell some NA writers wrote for the RTD era. Cartmel could well be the origin of the lonely god bollocks.
 
The Cartmel Masterplan as conjured up during the McCoy era was never meant to have all its details revealed on screen; rather, just to hint at the Doctor being more mysterious, which is something I approve of.

Then all the fanhacks who wrote the NAs latched onto it as something to go into detail about, leading to lots of pretty daft things it's better to ignore. Of couse, Roberts and Cornell were as responsible as anyone, but they're exempt from criticism these days ('specially PC).

Sorry. No one in Doctor Who is exempt form criticism, except Colin Baker.
I agree. Many don't.

I'm one of the few that does.
 
I do like the idea of the Soothsayer being a "Pythia witch" in The End of Time...specifically the notion that she's one of the Sisterhood of Karn. Yes, I can accept that.


the only reason I see the soothsayer as a pythia, is because I do believe that there was once a race of women who could see into the future, psychically.. and that there are certain timelords who can also psychically see into time, a trait that was mention by the chancellor in the invasion of time, and was stated as a particularly "Prydonian" in nature..it is kind of a lore that seems to exist because of the cartmel masterplan junk.. and it is the only part that I can accept in some of the lungbarrow novels, it mentions the sisterhood, and how ancient Gallifrey was steeped in mysticism, due to the psychic powers of the pythia witches..

anyways, I can see that angle, but the rest is just too ridiculous.. the doctor as the other indeed.. and a reincarnation of the original other.. that is simply stupid..
 
Part Time Lord, part god. You can tell some NA writers wrote for the RTD era. Cartmel could well be the origin of the lonely god bollocks.

Given that JNT wanted out of the show but the BBC wouldn't let him leave some-one needed to come up with something to turn the show around.

After some of the stinkers of the last two seasons it can't of been any worse.
 
Interesting. I won't accept it as definitive but it's interesting. I like the way it ties into "The Brain of Morbius." But some of the stuff with the Doctor being a reincarnation of the Other reminds me of some of the weird reincarnation ideas Tim Burton was toying with on Superman Lives.

Still, someday I hope we do get at least some sort of more firm backstory regarding Susan.
 
Part Time Lord, part god. You can tell some NA writers wrote for the RTD era. Cartmel could well be the origin of the lonely god bollocks.

Given that JNT wanted out of the show but the BBC wouldn't let him leave some-one needed to come up with something to turn the show around.

After some of the stinkers of the last two seasons it can't of been any worse.
Do you mean the two pre-Cartmel (Saward/Colin) seasons, or do you mean the last two McCoy seasons?
 
Part Time Lord, part god. You can tell some NA writers wrote for the RTD era. Cartmel could well be the origin of the lonely god bollocks.

Given that JNT wanted out of the show but the BBC wouldn't let him leave some-one needed to come up with something to turn the show around.

After some of the stinkers of the last two seasons it can't of been any worse.
Do you mean the two pre-Cartmel (Saward/Colin) seasons, or do you mean the last two McCoy seasons?

Both.

Baker had some pretty bad stinkers starting witht the utterly abysmal The Twin Dilemma - and that's when the rating started to slide eventually giving the head of the BBC the chance to put it on hiatus for 18 months or whatever the time frame was.
 
That's not true that the ratings started to slide from Twin Dilemma onwards. The ratings for season 22 were just as good as those for the Davison seasons. It was after coming back from the 18 month hiatus that the ratings were much lower, and they stayed that way thoughout McCoy's era.
 
That's not true that the ratings started to slide from Twin Dilemma onwards. The ratings for season 22 were just as good as those for the Davison seasons. It was after coming back from the 18 month hiatus that the ratings were much lower, and they stayed that way thoughout McCoy's era.


If the rating were the strong before the haitus they wouldn't of put the show on ice.
 
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