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The Doctor Who Mythos

I agree that the Seventh Doctor's era introduced some stylistic or conceptual things that have continued to be part of the character. The Tenth Doctor's "Don't you think she looks tired?" -- planting a seed to bring down a government whose actions he objected to -- is very much in the Seventh Doctor's spirit.

But in terms of actual things or concepts -- new aliens, new characters, new terminology, new devices -- there's very little from the Seventh Doctor's era that's been followed up on since.
 
Timelord telepathy was introduced with the First, though Susan was better at it.
They used it again in The Three Doctors and Eleven has as well. Possibly more instances that I haven't seen.
 
^Well, "The Girl in the Fireplace" had the Tenth Doctor essentially doing a Vulcan mind meld with Reinette.

"The War Games" had the Second Doctor send a telepathic message to the Time Lords.

Oh, speaking of telepathy, here's something from the Fourth Doctor era: "The Masque of Mandragora" introduced the concept that the Doctor's companions were endowed with the gift of understanding any language, an idea that was picked up on more aggressively by the modern series (most notably "The Fires of Pompeii"). "Mandragora" had the Doctor say "It's a Time Lord's gift I allow you to share," while the new series explained it as a function of the TARDIS telepathic circuits.
 
JoeZhang said:
I'd say Susan is important - but mainly because of how various strains of fandom have reacted to her - for example in the 1990s where there was all sorts of weird attempts to suggest was something entirely different because of course the Doctor would never have sex.
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Thousands of fanfic stories disagree with that! :D

MikeS said:
Eighth - kissing doctor/romance with Humans. It's like he reached sexual maturity and just carried on running with it through subsequent generations!

I don't mind if you ignore this. Just thought I'd point out a change in his character traits. (I was also thinking really hard to give Eight something!)
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Actually, there were other instances of flirty behavior... The First Doctor accidentally gets engaged to be married in The Aztecs, and you can't tell me there wasn't some kind of proto-romance going on between the Fourth Doctor and Romana II in City of Death and State of Decay (yes, I know Tom Baker and Lalla Ward were married at one point). And the Fifth Doctor seemed quite... appreciative of how good Tegan looked in her gown in Enlightenment.


For the Fourth Doctor, I would add the existence of female Time Lords (Time Ladies). I discount Susan, since we didn't know anything about Gallifreyan society when she was a Companion.

It was in the Fifth Doctor era that we started revisiting the regular Companions' lives at various times (unless you want to include Lethbridge-Stewart, in which case this started back with the Second Doctor). We don't get to know what Susan was doing before she got caught in the Timescoop in The Five Doctors, but it's clearly later in her life. We see Tegan pre-stewardess job and later on in her life after she gets fired and rejoins the Doctor and Nyssa. We find out what really happened to Peri at the end of Trial of a Timelord (Sixth Doctor), and there's a lot of focus on Ace at various stages of her life in the Seventh Doctor stories. Fast-forward to the Ninth Doctor, and companion-wise, the show turns into a damn soap opera.
 
Iamnotspock said:
Christopher said:
Surprisingly, no. The Second Doctor offers the Brigadier a jelly baby in "The Three Doctors." So it actually originated in the Third Doctor's era.
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Second. He eats them in The Dominators. It didn't become a regular thing until Tom though.
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Are you sure that was a jelly baby he was eating in The Dominators? I mean all I remember seeing was him crumbling up a paper bag, I don't recall seeing what he was eating.
 
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DWF said:
The first Doctor also gave us the IM Forman junkyard and the Coal Hill School.
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Yeah, but that's not an established Doctor Who thing. Every time you see it again, it's a reference to that moment. It never appears for independent plot reasons beyond nostalgia.

Anyway, if you're going to include Companions, there's a good argument that Rose Tyler should be added as well.
 
Alidar Jarok said:
DWF said:
The first Doctor also gave us the IM Forman junkyard and the Coal Hill School.
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Yeah, but that's not an established Doctor Who thing. Every time you see it again, it's a reference to that moment. It never appears for independent plot reasons beyond nostalgia.
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I can't agree Coal Hill School played a huge part of Rememberance Of The Daleks and it's where Clara teaches, the junkyard also played a part in Rememberance unlike it did in Attack Of The Cybermen.
 
Both Remembrance of the Daleks and Day of the Doctor were intended as anniversary episodes so they call back to the first episode. If the second episode had the school in it, it never would have reappeared. I don't think being nostalgic counts as introducing an element. When it appears in a random episode that has no reason to feature it, then it'll be a reoccurring element. But the sole purpose of using that exact location is to say "hey look, that's the school that was in An Unearthly Child."

ETA: Speaking of Remembrance, does the Dalek Civil War count as a reoccurring element? I can't remember which episode it appeared in, though.
 
Alidar Jarok said:
Both Remembrance of the Daleks and Day of the Doctor were intended as anniversary episodes so they call back to the first episode. If the second episode had the school in it, it never would have reappeared. I don't think being nostalgic counts as introducing an element. When it appears in a random episode that has no reason to feature it, then it'll be a reoccurring element. But the sole purpose of using that exact location is to say "hey look, that's the school that was in An Unearthly Child."

ETA: Speaking of Remembrance, does the Dalek Civil War count as a reoccurring element? I can't remember which episode it appeared in, though.
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The Dalek civil war although in a different form was first seen in The Evil Of The Daleks, butthet introduction of Davros in Genesis changed all that. And I disagree if something that's been introduced plays a part in the storyline then it's a element of the show.
 
Alidar Jarok said:
Both Remembrance of the Daleks and Day of the Doctor were intended as anniversary episodes so they call back to the first episode. If the second episode had the school in it, it never would have reappeared. I don't think being nostalgic counts as introducing an element. When it appears in a random episode that has no reason to feature it, then it'll be a reoccurring element. But the sole purpose of using that exact location is to say "hey look, that's the school that was in An Unearthly Child."

ETA: Speaking of Remembrance, does the Dalek Civil War count as a reoccurring element? I can't remember which episode it appeared in, though.
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Although Remembrance of The Daleks was the beginning of the 25th Series, wasn't the actual 25th Anniversary Episode The Silver Nemesis?
 
Sindatur said:
Although Remembrance of The Daleks was the beginning of the 25th Series, wasn't the actual 25th Anniversary Episode The Silver Nemesis?
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That's correct. The first episode of "Silver Nemesis" aired on November 23, 1988. "Remembrance" had anniversary elements, but "Nemesis" was the official anniversary serial. But since "Remembrance" was awesome and "Nemesis" was lame, fandom has embraced "Remembrance" as the "real" anniversary serial, and thus we sometimes forget that it wasn't.
 
Remembrance of the Daleks feels more like an anniversary anyway. It's set in 1963 and has all kinds of nods to An Unearthly Child. Aside from airing on the anniversary, Silver Nemesis isn't really much of a celebration.
 
The Wormhole said:
Remembrance of the Daleks feels more like an anniversary anyway. It's set in 1963 and has all kinds of nods to An Unearthly Child. Aside from airing on the anniversary, Silver Nemesis isn't really much of a celebration.
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No argument there. SN's attempt to be anniversary-relevant is pretty lame -- there's a comet that comes by every 25 years and last time was in November 1963 and its baleful influence somehow provoked the Kennedy assassination, which happened just before Doctor Who premiered. Oh, and it has Cybermen, because it's the "silver" anniversary, get it, huh, huh? It feels like they just stuck in whatever contrived anniversary links they had left after "Remembrance" snapped up all the good ones. I don't get why they didn't just make "Remembrance" the anniversary serial.

Well, maybe it's because "Nemesis" introduced the seeds of the Cartmel Masterplan, so they wanted to kick off the new story arc at the anniversary.
 
Christopher said:
I don't get why they didn't just make "Remembrance" the anniversary serial.
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Well, BBC does like to use Daleks for premieres. And before anyone starts pointing out how few Dalek stories actually are premieres, it is actually a request BBC frequently makes of Moffat, and RTD before him.
 
Christopher said:
Well, maybe it's because "Nemesis" introduced the seeds of the Cartmel Masterplan, so they wanted to kick off the new story arc at the anniversary.
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It's in Rememberance that the Doctor tells Davros that he's more than just a normal Time Lord, it could be said that's wher it started. Granted that was a deleted scene but it was part of the story. However it was ultimately an idea that wasn't going to work out.
 
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