I don't think I ever saw anything about that, and I can't find it now that I'm looking.
Spoilers The Giggle grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
I don't think that qualifies as either regret or an apology, especially when you take away the clickbait framing and remember that he likes to be jokey and self-deprecating in interviews (in the question before that, he talks about being a baby in the writers' room when Doctor Who first started in the '60s, and he was still filling his diaper and throwing food during production meetings to that day). I sincerely doubt Steven Moffat ever couldn't eat as his meals tasted like ashes because he was so distraught over his plot for "Day of the Doctor."
I did find a more recent interview where Moffat seems to consider his big mistake was setting it up as a "quest" storyline when doesn't actually care for them, considering them cruft wrapped around other stories and teasing and delaying a story to build artificial suspense.
And, while you had no way of knowing it was about to be posted (and I hadn't watched the video clip from the commentary yet when I wrote that earlier reply), quoting RTD comparing bringing back the Time-Lords to sullying the grief of losing a parent when he's now declared by fiat that all the old Doctors you ever loved are having adventures with their TARDISes at a sunny farm upstate because he's bored that inaugurating a new Doctor definitionally requires the loss of the old one and wanted to make getting a new Doctor be all gain and no pain paints him as a really terrible hypocrite.
So if all the Doctors got doubled then why didn't 24 Doctors show up at the end of 'Day of the Doctor' to save Gallifrey? I like this episode. I don't mind the biregeneration and expected something like this might happen considering the previous episodes didn't play with the idea that 14th had only a short time here. But biregeneration throughout all of Doctor Who? Makes it messy. It might explain Valeyard, Fugitive, the Curator Trenzalore but I highly doubt if they'd ever even hint at that.
All in all it's not an impressive episode for the 60th and it did feel like it was playing the best of RTD with yet another Tennant copy and another scene of the hinted return of the Master and another dance scene similar to the Master at the end of series 3.
Ncuti was fantastic. Can't wait to see more.
All in all it's not an impressive episode for the 60th and it did feel like it was playing the best of RTD with yet another Tennant copy and another scene of the hinted return of the Master and another dance scene similar to the Master at the end of series 3.
Ncuti was fantastic. Can't wait to see more.
Last edited:
One benefit of bigeneration is that they'd be able to explore an actual Valeyard story arc without the problem of the Doctor dying and being "evil" for the entire next series run.
I gave this one a C. Meh. Appears like I didn't like it as much as most.
It started out great. Nice moments with Donna. Good tension. Some humor. An interesting global threat.
But then it got too goofy and all the previous goodness fizzled out. We had the dance routine. Too soon! I was not a fan of the bi-regeneration. Russell said in an interview that he wanted a way to have the Doctor talk to himself. Well, he didn't need to invent a way to do that. See Twice in a Lifetime, for one example. And to resolve the big bad who did away with the Master and apparently the Guardians of Time and Space with a game of catch? WTF?! I was shocked when it was actually resolved during that scene.
On the plus side, Ncuti was good for the little we saw him. Mel was a pleasant surprise. I knew she was returning, but didn't know it was this episode.
All in all, the episode went by very fast, but not in a good way. More of a--that's it?! Really had substance in a story that purportedly deals with a particularly powerful villain. Hopefully the bi-regeneration thing dies a quick death and we just move on with Ncuti as the next Doctor.
UNIT seemed a bit cartoonish to me. And it's obvious they're setting up a UNIT spinoff. I'm a bit less excited about that now.
It started out great. Nice moments with Donna. Good tension. Some humor. An interesting global threat.
But then it got too goofy and all the previous goodness fizzled out. We had the dance routine. Too soon! I was not a fan of the bi-regeneration. Russell said in an interview that he wanted a way to have the Doctor talk to himself. Well, he didn't need to invent a way to do that. See Twice in a Lifetime, for one example. And to resolve the big bad who did away with the Master and apparently the Guardians of Time and Space with a game of catch? WTF?! I was shocked when it was actually resolved during that scene.
On the plus side, Ncuti was good for the little we saw him. Mel was a pleasant surprise. I knew she was returning, but didn't know it was this episode.
All in all, the episode went by very fast, but not in a good way. More of a--that's it?! Really had substance in a story that purportedly deals with a particularly powerful villain. Hopefully the bi-regeneration thing dies a quick death and we just move on with Ncuti as the next Doctor.
UNIT seemed a bit cartoonish to me. And it's obvious they're setting up a UNIT spinoff. I'm a bit less excited about that now.
That's makes no sense. The original Doctor would've noticed just like in this episode. And, it seems like each original Doctor who didn't regenerate would not have another TARDIS. And do those originals also regenerate eventually. If so, do those regenerations also get split? And so on.
I did think they probably should've at least mentioned the possibility that they might've been meeting imposters after they reconnected in the Toymaker's maze, with it being fresh in their mind.
just finished watching The Giggle (which was a huge improvement over Wild Blue Yonder) and now feel qualified to talk about the split regeneration (not gonna call it 'bi-generation' because that term is super-clunky). From an in-universe perspective, it works pretty well and can, as noted before, retroactively explain the existence of The Curator.
Out-of-universe, though, it's problematic because it potentially hands the fandom trolls a loaded bazooka, as it were, and unnecessarily handicapped Ncuti for his entire tenure since said trolls now have an onscreen reason to denounce his version of the character. What's done is done, however, so we move on.
Individual positives coming out of this story, in no particular order:
* Tacit onscreen admission that The Doctor loved Rose (I'd have also liked a mention of Yaz, but something on the romance front is better than nothing)
* Mel being part of UNIT
* Further acknowledgment of The Flux
* Ncuti's acting; he exudes charm and is going to be a fun incarnation of The Doctor, even with the potential specter of the fandom trolls crying 'not my Doctor' hanging over his head
* The Toymaker; because I don't have any desire to watch reconstructions of missing stories, this story is my introduction to him, but I liked him as a baddie
I've been feeling privately that RTD needed to 'stick the landing' with these Specials, and, despite my extra-narrative worries/fears, I'm prepared to admit that I think he did.
Out-of-universe, though, it's problematic because it potentially hands the fandom trolls a loaded bazooka, as it were, and unnecessarily handicapped Ncuti for his entire tenure since said trolls now have an onscreen reason to denounce his version of the character. What's done is done, however, so we move on.
Individual positives coming out of this story, in no particular order:
* Tacit onscreen admission that The Doctor loved Rose (I'd have also liked a mention of Yaz, but something on the romance front is better than nothing)
* Mel being part of UNIT
* Further acknowledgment of The Flux
* Ncuti's acting; he exudes charm and is going to be a fun incarnation of The Doctor, even with the potential specter of the fandom trolls crying 'not my Doctor' hanging over his head
* The Toymaker; because I don't have any desire to watch reconstructions of missing stories, this story is my introduction to him, but I liked him as a baddie
I've been feeling privately that RTD needed to 'stick the landing' with these Specials, and, despite my extra-narrative worries/fears, I'm prepared to admit that I think he did.
Last edited:
Theory i read on twitter - the bigeneration was another consequence of the Doctor spreading the salt; it was another myth or legend that was allowed to become reality.
I don’t know if that was RTD’s intention but I really like it.
I don’t know if that was RTD’s intention but I really like it.
Gosh, that was great. I'm back as a regular viewer and looking forward to Gatwa's first series. Ironic that Pertwee is my #1 Doc followed by Tennant. Now, Tennant is essentially going to BE Pertwee as an Earth-bound Doc working with UNIT. The obvious and deliberate Spearhead From Space nod at the picnic being the clearest tip-off.Hope we get a special or mini sometime but I'm certain books and audio will follow that thread.
"There's no such thing. Bi-generation is supposed to be a myth..." is obviously a deliberate joke on RTD's part.
That…just wasn’t very good.
NPH was entertaining, but I think a bit wasted. After the Spice Girls bit he was just MrGeneric Baddie. The first half didn’t really mesh with the second.
The bi-regeneration, we’ll just chalk that up to wtf. If you don’t want it to be Dr Who write another programme.
This whole Whoniverse thing is just a bit naff, but I suppose an inevitably if you a) get in bed with Disney, b) want to keep flogging spin-offs and c) want to turn it from a fun thing in to a money making empire.
I’m just glad the old stuff is on iPlayer for now, and that I bought the DVDs. I’m enjoying far more going through the really old stuff (Hartnell’s adventures are really interesting to see where they went with the idea originally), but then I am a grumpy old git, so maybe that’s all there is to it.
If you liked the specials, fair enough, but sorry, not my cuppa.
NPH was entertaining, but I think a bit wasted. After the Spice Girls bit he was just MrGeneric Baddie. The first half didn’t really mesh with the second.
The bi-regeneration, we’ll just chalk that up to wtf. If you don’t want it to be Dr Who write another programme.
This whole Whoniverse thing is just a bit naff, but I suppose an inevitably if you a) get in bed with Disney, b) want to keep flogging spin-offs and c) want to turn it from a fun thing in to a money making empire.
I’m just glad the old stuff is on iPlayer for now, and that I bought the DVDs. I’m enjoying far more going through the really old stuff (Hartnell’s adventures are really interesting to see where they went with the idea originally), but then I am a grumpy old git, so maybe that’s all there is to it.
If you liked the specials, fair enough, but sorry, not my cuppa.
This is Doctor Who.
Moffat's novelization of Day of the Doctor published in 2018 retcons the sequence by having several hundred Doctors show up, so I guess you can say in this scenario the double Doctors did take part in Save Gallifrey.
An issue I'm having with this retroactive bi-generation for all previous Doctors thing is, when the Doctor regenerates with companions present, what makes the companions decide to go on with the successor now as opposed to sticking with the double of the Doctor they know?
Or for that matter, in the 96 movie Will Sasso is freaked out when he watches the Seventh Doctor's corpse regenerate and the Eighth Doctor walk away. He's really going to freak if the corpse splits in two and then two guys, one looking completely different walk out.
The "Whoniverse" doesn't currently exist as anything other than a branding term, so I'm not sure what you're railing against.
Does Doctor Who actually need to be more complicated? I guess some people really want to see every single element brought back into the new.