Seasons of War

[Allyn Gibson]

The short film, Seasons of War, made to promote the War Doctor fanthology, has been released. It's short, just five minutes.

We see the War Doctor; and are given an account of the Time War, through the eyes of a Gallifreyan girl. (She has a connection to the Matt Smith era; I'm not going to spoil it, but you have to read the credits.)

[yt]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LO7Yi8bd95U&feature=youtu.be[/yt]

My major quibble -- why are families on Gallifrey living like they're fourteenth-century peasants?

 

[Mage]

Ok, no idea about the connection with the girl....

But a nice little short, that's for sure.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Ok, no idea about the connection with the girl....

But a nice little short, that's for sure.

Okay...

Spoiler: From the cast list

and assuming that's a family, her father is the Corsair.

 

[Joe Washington]

Great short film. It made my heart break for the War Doctor who had to do things the other Doctors would have been afraid to do to save countless lives from destruction. Each act left a stain on his weary soul.

 

[The Wormhole]

We see the War Doctor; and are given an account of the Time War, through the eyes of a Gallifreyan girl. (She has a connection to the Matt Smith era; I'm not going to spoil it, but you have to read the credits.)

I didn't even need to get to the credits, I had it figured out when I saw that guy's arm.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'm starting to wish that we had gotten to see more of the War Doctor. His story seems like one that could have easily taken up a whole show by itself.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

So, I must be the only one who doesn't want to see more of the Warrior?

(Or, for that matter, the only one who doesn't call him the War Doctor - a silly name, by design)

 

[The Nth Doctor]

(Or, for that matter, the only one who doesn't call him the War Doctor - a silly name, by design)

No more sillier than the titles of The Deadly Assassin, The Ambassadors of Death, The Carnival of Monsters, The Green Death...shall I go on? Silly comes with the territory.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

(Or, for that matter, the only one who doesn't call him the War Doctor - a silly name, by design)

No more sillier than the titles of The Deadly Assassin, The Ambassadors of Death, The Carnival of Monsters, The Green Death...shall I go on? Silly comes with the territory.

Those are episode titles. I was talking the official name given to the character narratively portrayed by John Hurt.

 

[kirk55555]

He was the version of the Doctor that fought in the war, and didn't count himself among his numbered incarnations. The War Doctor fits perfectly, at least for me. One of the plot points of Day of the Doctor was realizing that The War Doctor was always The Doctor, even if for awhile both himself and different incarnations didn't consider himself to be. So, he wasn't a warrior. He was The Doctor, fighting in a war. The War Doctor. That's my thinking on it, at least

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Thus, Moffat's "when Tennant was saying, as the Doctor, in the second season finale that he, the Doctor, fought in the War, I thought it didn't sound right. How could the Doctor fight in any war for that matter?" reasoning is both false and condescending.

Besides, the Eighth specifically said "make a Warrior." And he was "Doctor no more," immediately after.

 

[DrFrankhamstien]

And yet in pretty much every scene to feature him in Day of the Doctor, Hurt's incarnation was every bit the Doctor. We didn't see him fight a war, and we barely saw any reflection of the war on Hurt's Doctor. We were just told his deeds were so bad that he stopped calling himself the Doctor... Only, apparently, by the on screen evidence of Day, he didn't. Everybody called him the Doctor, including the Time Lords. It's a nice concept, a nice idea, but one with no practical use.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

(Or, for that matter, the only one who doesn't call him the War Doctor - a silly name, by design)

No more sillier than the titles of The Deadly Assassin, The Ambassadors of Death, The Carnival of Monsters, The Green Death...shall I go on? Silly comes with the territory.

Those are episode titles. I was talking the official name given to the character narratively portrayed by John Hurt.

I could be recalling incorrectly, but he was never actually called "The War Doctor" by anyone (including himself) in "The Day of the Doctor." Instead, the name comes from the closing credits, i.e. something only stated on screen as text, which ties back to my original point: they're all silly titles/names.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

No more sillier than the titles of The Deadly Assassin, The Ambassadors of Death, The Carnival of Monsters, The Green Death...shall I go on? Silly comes with the territory.

Those are episode titles. I was talking the official name given to the character narratively portrayed by John Hurt.

I could be recalling incorrectly, but he was never actually called "The War Doctor" by anyone (including himself) in "The Day of the Doctor." Instead, the name comes from the closing credits, i.e. something only stated on screen as text, which ties back to my original point: they're all silly titles/names.

You're willingly splitting heirs. The title of the narrative is not equal to the name of the character. When Clara calls the Eleventh Doctor "the Eleventh Doctor", she's not referencing an episode called "The Eleventh Doctor", but she's calling him by his name, and the number of times he was the Doctor.

The fact of the matter is, the Doctor wasn't the Doctor by himself, and if asked, he never responded "I'm the Doctor." More than likely, he responded as "I'm a Warrior." or added "of sorts".

It just makes more sense to call him The Warrior, because thats what he was meant to be from the minute he regenerated.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I think of Hurt's Doctor as the Doctor, which is the point of both "The Day of the Doctor" and Engines of War; his later incarnations may have rejected his memory to distance themselves from what they believe he did, but he's still the Doctor.

That's something that, in my opinion, Seasons of War gets wrong. The pitch document for the second anthology, for instance, stresses that he's not the Doctor and shouldn't be referred to as such. The story I pitched had an interesting approach to the terminology issue, but I've not heard anything, alas.

I generally only use the term "War Doctor" to make it clear which Doctor I'm talking about, same as I would use "the Camfield Doctor" or "the sixth Doctor" in instances where saying simply "the Doctor" would be unclear.

This, of course, raises an important question. Why and when did the ninth Doctor start referring to himself as "the Doctor" again? The post-regeneration period has a lot of interesting possibilities, and "The Day of the Doctor" poses questions that will probably never be answered.

 

[DrFrankhamstien]

This, of course, raises an important question. Why and when did the ninth Doctor start referring to himself as "the Doctor" again? The post-regeneration period has a lot of interesting possibilities, and "The Day of the Doctor" poses questions that will probably never be answered.

As soon as he met Rose, which, judging by everything seen in 'Rose', was pretty much the first thing he did after he regenerated. Saved Gallifrey, went to the under gallery, left, regenerated, went to Earth 2005 following his discovery of a Nestene signal.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

This, of course, raises an important question. Why and when did the ninth Doctor start referring to himself as "the Doctor" again? The post-regeneration period has a lot of interesting possibilities, and "The Day of the Doctor" poses questions that will probably never be answered.

As soon as he met Rose, which, judging by everything seen in 'Rose', was pretty much the first thing he did after he regenerated. Saved Gallifrey, went to the under gallery, left, regenerated, went to Earth 2005 following his discovery of a Nestene signal.

I could not disagree more with this.

 

[Ithekro]

We don't even know what we called himself during the war. The only references to that version of himself he calls grumpy.

Everyone else calls him the Doctor.

 

[The Wormhole]

This, of course, raises an important question. Why and when did the ninth Doctor start referring to himself as "the Doctor" again? The post-regeneration period has a lot of interesting possibilities, and "The Day of the Doctor" poses questions that will probably never be answered.

As soon as he met Rose, which, judging by everything seen in 'Rose', was pretty much the first thing he did after he regenerated. Saved Gallifrey, went to the under gallery, left, regenerated, went to Earth 2005 following his discovery of a Nestene signal.

I could not disagree more with this.

Indeed, I don't believe Rose to be a post-regeneration story, single throw-away line implying the Doctor had never seen this face before notwithstanding.

Of course, Moffat does go with this interpretation, it's his excuse for why Eccleston wouldn't have worked in Day of the Doctor. But we know RTD didn't intend Rose to be a post-regeneration story, it was RTD's intent that the Ninth Doctor was the one who fought the Time War, and at the time he was onboard for DWM doing a McGann-to-Eccleston regeneration in their comics.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

This, of course, raises an important question. Why and when did the ninth Doctor start referring to himself as "the Doctor" again? The post-regeneration period has a lot of interesting possibilities, and "The Day of the Doctor" poses questions that will probably never be answered.

As soon as he met Rose, which, judging by everything seen in 'Rose', was pretty much the first thing he did after he regenerated. Saved Gallifrey, went to the under gallery, left, regenerated, went to Earth 2005 following his discovery of a Nestene signal.

Going by the ages given for the War Doctor and the eleventh Doctor in "The Day of the Doctor," assuming consistency of New Series Doctor ages, then there's a few decades between "Body's wearing a bit thin" at the end of "Day" and the Doctor meeting Rose in "Rose." The tenth Doctor is roughly 906 at that point in time, the eleventh Doctor says he's 12-something, and the War Doctor says there's four hundred years between him and the eleventh Doctor. At a max, there's a century of pre-"Rose" life for the ninth Doctor. At a minimum, it's a few years.

I ballpark it at about fifty years, myself.