Possibility of a sequel to "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood"?

It happened in Rose.

But you know, he's a time traveller...

 

If it was in 'Rose', then he had been wearing that face for a while at least...

I always figured the Doctor has a lot of off-screen travels- going to visit places just to see them instead of saving the planet from doom. He makes a lot of references to unusual planets and events which have never been seen in any of the different shows/incarnations. What we do see are the interesting ones, not the 'Doctor Who eats a ham sandwich while watching a flower sing' type adventures.

 

Not necessarily. It's certainly one option, but another is that the Doctor had some adventures without Rose after he met her, but which took place earlier in Earth time. So they would be in the relative past for the guy who was showing Rose those images, but still in the Doctor's relative future. The usual choice for that option is in that split second at the end of the ep when the Doctor leaves in his Tardis and then comes right back again to reiterate his offer to Rose.

Personally I prefer the idea of him cruising around on his own for a while before meeting someone who can bring him out of his funk, but the text is not definitive either way.

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I see what you mean-

"Temporal physics always gives me a headache"

 

In #9's personal timeline, when did he have time for solo adventures? Did Eccles travel without Rose for any obvious periods?

We know Rose was with him right up to the regen.

 

Some people speculate the Doctor had adventures in the period between Rose rejecting the offer to see space, the TARDIS leaves and comes back with the Doctor adding it's also a time machine. In fact, a few short stories written in recent years go with this idea. I personally don't like it, that's a pretty specific point for the Doctor to return to successfully given that a few episodes later he has trouble getting to twelve hours after that point. But then the TARDIS takes the Doctor to where he needs to be rather than where he wants to go.

Another alternative is he went on adventures while Rose was sleeping, the minisodes on the season six DVD set do indicate the Eleventh Doctor regularly went on adventures while Amy and Rory were sleeping. Hell, I keep hoping someday we'll find out the Doctor actually has two separate companions/TARDIS teams and he alternates adventures with one while the other is sleeping.

 

^ That's an awesome idea to maximize the usefulness of his time. Two sets of companions on different cycles!

 

Really not a bad idea. #9 (10) had a lot of energy after being "old", though not as much as #11 (13).

 

The notion that a companion spends every single second of every day with the Doctor is a slightly disturbing one. There's nothing to say Nine didn't drop Rose off to see her mum every now and again for a few days and go off adventuring himself. Hell he could drop her off for lunch, go adventuring for 10 years and still be back in time to pick her up again.

 

Some fans, myself included, have suggested that Tom Baker's Doctor reprogrammed the computer Xoanin when the "Survey Team" ship crashed (leading to Leela's birth centuries later) all during the split second when Sarah and the Brigadier find Harry Sullivan "trussed up like an old boot" in the cupboard. Sarah hears the TARDIS engine start to "wheeze" and "groan" and dashes to the craft, pounding upon the doors, begging the Doctor not to go. I'd like to think this was one of those rarest instances that the Doctor managed return within a pico-second of his departure, so that to an outside observer, it appears as though he never actually left.

Why don't I just assume it happens further down the line, at a more convenient "off camera" moment? Well, the Doctor admits his memories of his first visit to Leela's world are blurred, incomplete. Plus, his neural link reboot/programming of Xoanin resulted in a schizophrenic AI, leading to a twisted eugenics experiment. I'd say post regeneration dementia would account to those two issues.

There is at least one telltale flaw in this notion. The "Face of Evil" carved into the mountain appears to wear the fourth Doctor's iconic scarf. But the Doctor is still sporting his nightshirt/hospital gown in Harry's "trussed up" scene. He doesn't showcase his multiple wardrobe change until later.

Uh, I don't have a satisfactory answer for that.

 

Maybe Rose was present at the JFK adventure but was off on a subplot or something.

I figured she was just referring to the experience of having to get used to a new version of the Doctor, just as the Brigadier did, going from Troughton to Pertwee to T. Baker.

Assuming that that had even happened in this version of the timeline. The episode itself establishes that time is quite fluid, since both future Amy & Rory can be seen at the beginning but only future Amy can be seen at the end after Rory was erased from existence.

 

Of course, and that line is even a quote from the Brig. But how would she know about that if she hadn't witnessed one before?

As yet another divergence from the topic, I do sometimes think about how some companions only ever know one incarnation of the Doctor, and probably think that's all there is, just this one version. For example, Martha and Donna only ever thought the Doctor looked like David Tennant. Amy only ever thought he looked like Matt Smith. Ace only ever thought he looked like Sylvester McCoy. Do those companions even know he can regenerate and change his face? Does he only explain that that's a thing when he needs to, when it becomes relevant? Just idle ponderings.

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It winds up as something of a red herring anyway, given that they both get send back to the thirties.

 

But Martha and Amy were aware of regeneration. 10 mentions it to Martha in 42 I think, and obviously Amy had first hand experience of regeneration with River. And come to think of it Donna (and Martha?) witnessed a regeneration, it was just that in that instance he regenerated into David Tennant again!

I know it isn't held up as a great story, but I think Mawdryn Undead contained multiple interesting ideas, in particular the notion that Tegan, Nyssa and the Brigadier--all of whom had witnessed the Doctor regenerate before-- could be easily fooled into thinking Mawdryn was a newly regenerated Doctor.

Be an interesting hypothetical idea to determine which companions really had no idea he changed faces. Probably Ian, Barbara and any other pre Ben and Polly companion (aside from Susan) wouldn't have had a clue.

 

My point is that I don't think she was remarking on the Regeneration process itself, just to the fact that the Doctor has a new face again, a change that she has had to come to terms with before. This fits in with my theory that the Doctor she first met was Eccleston.

Now, what contradicts my theory is a line that the Doctor has in "The Hungry Earth" about how he's never seen this breed of Silurian before. This papers over the fact that the Silurians here look vastly different from the ones in the classic series. So, that means that he couldn't have encountered Vastra in an earlier incarnation. Which means that, for Vastra to have experience with multiple incarnations of the Doctor, she would need to have encountered another post-Capaldi Doctor some time after she first met Smith (which, from his perspective, occurred some time after "Cold Blood" but before "A Good Man Goes to War") but before she met Capaldi in "Deep Breath." (There's that timey-wimey again.)

Not really. You forget that, from Amy & Rory's perspective, their adventures with the Doctor during Season 7 occur during a long period of infrequent visits. In "The Angels Take Manhattan," I believe Amy tells the Doctor that it's been something like 10 years since she first met him. I assume this gap was put in at least partly to account for future Amy & Rory's appearance in "The Hungry Earth"/"Cold Blood."

Martha wasn't there in "The Stolen Earth." It was just Donna, Rose, & Jack.