^ "Sorry, deadlock, byyyyyyee"
Ncuti Gatwa is the 15th Doctor
- Thread starter StCoop
- Start date
It feels like a very Lawrence Miles thing to do. I'm not thinking so much of Sabbath, though there are elements of that, as I am IM Foreman. Weird things can happen with Gallifreyan biodata, and regeneration is a really really really complex biological space-time event.
Well, they borrowed Henrietta Street for the Doctors wedding to River Song. If these Doctors has got one heart each… or if we are still on time being broken like in the Flux (another borrow in a lot of ways from the War in the books) then I suppose there’s a hint of Sabbath, and the bootstrap paradox that is IM Foreman. But with none of the dominoes. Maybe even of that council of 8 thing I heard about but never got around to reading… and definite shades of Gallifrey Chronicles and ‘it’s all true and all happening’.
edit cos I posted without finishing the thought:
Problem is, like a lot of borrowed elements from the book, it’s often style over substance and no deeper meaning. At least they tried to set up the theme a little over the specials, and with Mel, but some of that should have been more explicit, and I think there’s something on the cutting room floor that explained 14 will still become 15 the normal way eventually.
"Why doesn't 14 do something?!" really isn't any different to why (and the show has never explained this) you can't have Three or Eight show up to save the day in an "unseen adventure".
I remember Torchwood: Children of Earth, and it was a terrible crisis Humanity was going through that the Doctor didn't get involved in. It was kind of implied at one point that there will be tough times that Humans will have to get through themselves without a guardian Time Lord to save them.
Honestly the whole thing of keeping the Fourteenth Doctor around is mostly a pragmatic thing. We know BBC insists on bringing Tennant back for the anniversaries, and they're likely to want to run to him in the event of a ratings emergency. Now they have a means of leaving him "on ice" so to speak without requiring too much exposition when he does show up or not having to worry about the fact he's visibly aged.
So they'll do what they did with the Brigadier and say he's stranded in Peru. And before anyone gets started about the implausibility of being stranded anywhere when you have a TARDIS, they can lampshade this by having Kate in the scene, when she hears "stranded in Peru" she would then snort and say something like "I know what that really means."
But there's no reason for that. We didn't need explanation for why The Second and Third Doctors looked older in The Five Doctors and The Second Doctor again in The Two Doctors. While I enjoyed the minor explanation in "Time Crash," the show has never needed an explanation for the older Doctors and doing what Davies has done in "The Giggle" is also unnecessary. Tennant has always had the means of returning and I think most fans wouldn't care if he looked older if and when he did.
True, but I have noticed the modern show has been inserting ways of being able to bring Doctors back without having to worry about age. Even before now, the option existed to bring Tennant back as the metacrisis hand job clone, and meanwhile aging Smith to elderly in his final episode certainly has the benefit of not having to worry about his age should he ever return for a multi Doctor team up. While fandom might not care that former Doctors look older when they show up for return appearances, I get the impression it is something that bothers RTD and Moffat for some reason. RTD originally wanted to age Tennant up for TEOT while Moffat actually gave the actors ages as a reason for not bringing any classic Doctors back in Day of the Doctor despite the excuse already given in Time Crash.
I think a subtle part of it is that of the Classic Doctors, the only one who went on to still have a successful small screen career was Davison. (And McGann to an extent, but he is sort of the inverse - his Who career was short) I can well imagine that *at that time* there would have been a question over getting them all back - and getting one or two back, and not the others, would be… impolite.
Ironically, the best thing in Chibnall’s entire run was bringing them back — though the Edge concept helped keep things fairly constrained. I also suspect that Davison, and particularly McCoy, actually gave the best portrayals of the actual Doctor in that era. Brief though they were. I would give Martin third, so poorly was Jodie written for. But Ho hum. That’s over now, and RTD is back. The budget has gone up at least, even if other decisions feel… questionable in my opinion.
I don't mind the Bi-Generation thing, but I do prefer the other thing I read that turned out not to be true, that 15 was pulled forward in the timeline from wherever he is by the Toymaker, there are two doctors in the episode, then at the end of the episode 15 goes off on his adventures and we follow him, while 14 goes off on his own adventures that we don't see. No regeneration, that happens at some point in 14s future that we don't ever have to see. Allows them to use Tennant whenever they want, gives a fresh new way to hand off to a new Doctor, and makes a future story to tell somewhere down the line of 14s regeneration into 15.
I feel like this is strongly alluded to be the case in dialogue, and even by the presence of Mel (introduced in the exact same fashion) in fact it’s so strongly alluded to, I think it was outright stated and then cut out when RTD had his ‘and they all lived happily ever after’ idea after watching Tales Of The Tardis come together.
I think that’s a mistake.
Like you, I prefer it, because somewhat like the Timeless Child it is robbing other characters, moments, and writers, of their weight. Caves Of Androzani, widely considered among the best of Who, is now rendered almost pointless.
It’s also something of an idea borrowed from the books… to a certain extent anyway. The Third Doctor having his regen changed affected the Doctors timeline way back. And to an extent, a very similar thing, insofar as regenerations not happening when they should, was also at the centre of the abandoned Dark Dimension thirtieth anniversary story.
But these were done with a thought as to where this goes, not simply to keep your favourite star available.
In terms of Ncuti… in the trailers and photos, we have a young actor playing a Doctor who acts like a young person. (Nightclub?) Which isn’t exactly how that usually, and in my opinion ideally, should work. Ten minutes in and he’s already the most sexualised Doctor in the history of the show. Pertwee may have had his shower scene, but he wasn’t taking part in some odd homage to Top Guns Volleyball scene (I jest, mostly) mere moments after an homage to Kevin Spacey in American Beauty (I jest… slightly less mostly) and now the Trailer makes him feel more like…. Jack Harkness, than the Doctor. He’s also getting a *lot* of high fashion outfits going on.
The Time Lord he’s actually reminding me of in that regard is actually a long and unpronounceable Time Lady.
Which means we got our wish — Romana is back.
Still. He could be good, and might be —it’s still insulting and clumsy to keep Tennant in the back pocket mind you, and this introduction has been unpleasantly clumsy.
Would they have done *any* of this to Jodie?
Would they have done *any* of this to any previous Doctor? (Rumours were once that Capaldi was going to hand back to Smith, mind you, and I was even pro that for a while, as an intended timey wimey story, that was utterly the kind of thing Moff would do. But in the end, a phone call appearance is hardly the same thing as what we end up with here.)
I wonder which accent he will stick with.
This is a new, rejuvenated Doctor with the stress and trauma of the past put to one side. After Jodie’s “socially awkward” Doctor, Capaldi’s abrasive Twelve, Smith’s idiosyncratic nerd, Tennant’s romantic hero and Eccleston’s tortured loner, I’m ready for this Doctor to be sexy and exuberant. But I doubt that’s all he’ll be.
Just wait, he’s going to be great.
Just wait, he’s going to be great.
When some people suggested that Jo Martin could carry on as the Doctor, before Gatwa was cast, I thought this would have been the way to go from Jodie to Jo. Don't have a regeneration. Have a multi-Doctor story with Jodie and Jo, and maybe for some reason Jodie's companion or a pre-established Jodie character continues on with Jo, and we simply follow Jo Martin's adventures for a time. It would leave Jodie open-ended so that, when the BBC decided to go forward, she could come back for a regeneration scene (if that were felt necessary), and it would open up a new era in the Doctor's adventures where different kinds of things could be done since Jo Martin's Doctor is the one that worked for the Time Lords at their behest.
I agree. And I actually found myself sitting next to Chibnall having drinks during a convention at one point. I sincerely thanked him for bringing them back!
I would've been ok with that. I'd also have been ok with the bigeneration as it happened onscreen.
The part I don't like is the bigeneration applying backwards. If they want to do it as a one time thing. Sure. But what RTD says happened is both a mess and takes a way from many dramatic regeneration scenes that we already watched but apparently didn't happen that way!
I agree that Ncuti appears like he'll be fantastic in the role!
But the idea of the bigeneration removing all that guilt doesn't make a lick of sense. After all, 15 has all the memories of past events. And those haven't changed. (Outside of the regenerations.) Notably the flux still occurred and destroyed much of the universe. 15 should be just as tired and worn out as 14 because 14 never actually did anything to resolve the guilt. Shoot, not even much time passed from 13 to 14 to 15!
In short, the guilt should be as fresh and present for 15 as it was for 14 and probably 13.
No, 15 still comes after 14 and has all his memories - including those that 14 has yet to experience at the point of the bi-generation.
This includes the years 14 spent working on his trauma in Time Lord therapy sessions with Donna.
"I'm fine because you fixed yourself. We're Time Lords. We're doing rehab out of order."
Timey-wimey.
This includes the years 14 spent working on his trauma in Time Lord therapy sessions with Donna.
"I'm fine because you fixed yourself. We're Time Lords. We're doing rehab out of order."
Timey-wimey.
I mean plenty of older people enjoy going to nightclubs/try to recapture their youth. We had Capaldi with his sunglasses and electric guitar playing the aging rock star, maybe Fifteen is just doing that?
I'm not going to say I'm not slightly concerned, one of the things I really had an issue with with Whittaker was that Thirteen didn't always come across as an incredibly old soul in a relatively young body the way the other modern Doctors did, and I'm slightly worried that Ncuti might continue that trend, though to be honest the spoiler free review the Radio Times did seem to suggest that despite his exuberance he's still the Doctor. Here's a snippet from the review. Not a spoiler but I've spoiler coded it in case people want to go in completely blind as it were.
Gatwa is everything that those familiar with his past work will expect – effortlessly cool, extraordinarily charismatic. But fear not – remaining very much in place are the characteristics that make the Doctor who they are: the oddball energy, the offbeat humour, the alienness, but with a melancholy and loneliness beneath the bravado.
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