The Woman? (Spoilers)

[Bacl]

I think that RTD said someone that the other person covering their eyes was a man, and that he was surprised people weren't speculating about his identity.

Oh, right. And they said two Time Lords voted against the plan, which must be The Woman and the man covering his eyes.

It does sound like mommy and daddy, but even if it is not, it is good to know the Doctor has at least two supporters back on Gallifrey.

 

[David cgc]

Well, he did have three...

 

[DeadmeatDiggory]

They are ignoring - but not really outright making a point of directly contradicting...if they wanted to do that, they wouldn't have *twice* acknowledged the 8th Doctor a canon.

Personally, I love the idea of the Doctor being 1/2 human because it explains his fondness for Earth - and the UK - and his various Brit accents...

His mother was a British human?

That's something I took from "The Empty Child" two-parter. The Doctor sounded like he really understood what was going on when he talked about how there wasn't anything in the world that could stop a scared little boy who wanted his mommy. It's been a long time since I explicated on it, but I seem to remember there being some other stuff from the new series that supported my supposition that a lot of the Doctor's issues come from the fact that he had a human mother who died when he was very young. And it was even more shattering for him because, on Gallifrey, no one dies. They just regenerate. He (and his father) would probably be the only people on a planet of immortals who'd had to deal with that kind of loss, and knowing the Time-Lords, the rest of them probably weren't very empathetic towards his situation. And that's why he runs.

Years later, after "Journey's End," I figured that the perfect woman would be one Donna Nobel. Getting into a pre-Time War period the only way anyone can, by living into it, she eventually meets a dashing man unlike any other who sweeps her off her feet and then takes her to his distant home planet to build a family with her. And one day, something about her young son reminds her of the man he was going to become and, bang, "Where's my mummy?" And that's why he never dares to look back at what he's done. Kids often assume that anything that goes wrong in the family is somehow their fault, and even if he didn't understand how it was possible, the little Doctor would believe he'd somehow made mommy go away.

(The actual thing that made me think it could be Donna was that it just seemed so damn arbitrary that it was her who combined with the spare hand, but it was so predestined and built up. I mean, there were a dozen things that meant that Rose and only Rose could make the Bad Wolf that were unrelated to it's predestination, but the only reason we got the Doctor-Donna and not the Doctor-Jack or the Doctor-Rose was that Donna heard a noise and didn't step out of the TARDIS as quickly as the others, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. The plot-hole would be filled handily, however, if Donna was the only one who could make the metacrisis work... say, because she was a relative of the Doctor, and Jack and Rose weren't.)

It also has a funny little thematic tie with everyone assuming the Doctor and Donna were a couple; they were actually related (though she seemed more like a big sister than a mom, which could go back to "The Empty Child" again).

Of course, now that's all kaput, since the Doctor left an auto-wipe in Donna's head so she'll never actually die of Time-Lord-itis, complete with energy-bomb-thingy to give a right smack to whoever reminded her of something Time-Lordy, and she's gotten married to a guy with absolutely no resemblance to William Hartnell (though I suppose he could regenerate before they go back to Gallifrey...)

I had thought durring Season Four that Donna would end up being revealed as The Doctor's Mother, even up to and through the "End of Time" two parter, posssibility after a regeneration.

There were little things that stuck out for me that led me to believe that Donna with The Doctor's Mother. The fact that she wasn't moonstruck in love with him, the fact that she took no shit from him and often put him in his place (as a mother would do. but the really big thing that stuck out for me was in "The Stolen Earth" when The Doctor heard the voice of Davros and got scared. She immediatly started to comfort The Doctor in a very maternal way, as a mother would a scared child who just had a nightmare.

The fact that The Doctor didn't know that Donna was his mother, or didn't recognise her, could all be explained away with a simple Timey Wimey answer, but it made a certain ammount of sense to me.

Hell, in fact until the pictures of Amy Pond came out in a cop uniform, I thought that Matt Smith's first Companion might actually be Donna's first regeneration.

Well, we can all live in hope that the story of one of the best, if not the best companion, from the new era isn't over.

 

[David cgc]

The fact that The Doctor didn't know that Donna was his mother, or didn't recognise her, could all be explained away with a simple Timey Wimey answer, but it made a certain ammount of sense to me.

Oh, I never even considered that, because I folded it into my preexisting "Doctor's human mother dies when he's less than ten years old" theory. A human child orphaned at six or seven would probably have trouble remembering much about his mother as an adult thirty years later. The Doctor, then, wouldn't have seen mum for on the order of a millennia. And he probably doesn't like to think about it to begin with.

 

[RoJoHen]

This thread tells me that I really need to learn more about the Doctor's backstory. I've only seen nuWho. I have no idea who Susan is!

 

[DWF]

This thread tells me that I really need to learn more about the Doctor's backstory. I've only seen nuWho. I have no idea who Susan is!

This might help you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Foreman

 

[RoJoHen]

This thread tells me that I really need to learn more about the Doctor's backstory. I've only seen nuWho. I have no idea who Susan is!

This might help you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Foreman

Well, yeah, I did look that up. But from a strictly nuWho perspective, unless they plan on revisiting it later, I think it's weird for this mystery woman to be someone like Susan. My sister, mom, and I all watched TEoT together, and none of us have any experience with classic Who. As a result, we all assumed The Woman was the Doctor's mother.

 

[Sci]

I have another reason for rejecting the idea that she's the Doctor's mother:

It hurts the mystery of just who the Doctor is if we see that he has parents and grandparents. It makes him a little too familiar.

(Also, it conflicts with the Doctor's comment in "The Empty Child" that he knows what it's like to be abandoned and left out in the cold as a child if his parents were alive and well and members of the High Council.)

 

[StCoop]

The updated version of "The Writer's Tale" confirms that she was indeed his Mummy.

It also reveals that a line was cut from the scene where the Doctor talks to Wilf on the Vinvocci spaceship in which he revealed that he was "half-human back in 1999 for a couple of days.”

 

[Bones2]

They are ignoring - but not really outright making a point of directly contradicting...if they wanted to do that, they wouldn't have *twice* acknowledged the 8th Doctor a canon.

Not that I'm disbelieving, but where? I don't recall.

As for the question of who the woman is, I still prefer the idea that she's Susan, but the most I think of it, the more I'm starting to like the idea of it being Donna as his mother. Which surprises me, because I'm neither a huge fan of the character, or the idea that it's the Doctor's mother at all. But maybe I've swallowed enough RTD-penned nonsense to go for it.

 

[Sci]

They are ignoring - but not really outright making a point of directly contradicting...if they wanted to do that, they wouldn't have *twice* acknowledged the 8th Doctor a canon.

Not that I'm disbelieving, but where? I don't recall.

The Eighth Doctor is hand-drawn alongside the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Doctors in John Smith's Journal of Impossible things in "Human Nature," and the Tenth Doctor shows Jackson Lake a Cybermen data rod that projects images of all ten incarnations of the Doctor in "The Next Doctor."

I for one reject the idea that acknowledging the Eighth Doctor is the same thing as keeping all details from the TV movie in continuity with the new series, though.

 

[Bones2]

Ah, course. I'd forgotten that. As for the TV Movie, I've developed an admiration for it recently. If the only real issue people have with it (in terms of continuity) is the Doctor being half-human on his mother's side, then there are loads of ways to explain that away. Or maybe the woman in Donna and Donna is the Doctor's mother.

 

[Starkers]

I have another reason for rejecting the idea that she's the Doctor's mother:

It hurts the mystery of just who the Doctor is if we see that he has parents and grandparents. It makes him a little too familiar.

(Also, it conflicts with the Doctor's comment in "The Empty Child" that he knows what it's like to be abandoned and left out in the cold as a child if his parents were alive and well and members of the High Council.)

Well they can be alive and well and he can still be estranged from them.

But, depsite what RTD himself as said, it still seems to make more sense to me that it's Susan.

The idea of Donna being the Doctor's mum is just plaint ridiculous though!

 

[RoJoHen]

The idea of Donna being the Doctor's mum is just plaint ridiculous though!

This is Doctor Who. They thrive on ridiculous.

 

[Joy]

Just re-watched End of Time last night...

Upon making sure to pay close attention to all the scenes featuring The Woman as well as in the end when the Doctor is asked who she was by Wilf...

I am now willing to give up the idea that it was Susan and that she is, indeed, the Doctor's mother.

Mostly, it's a visual thing. When The Woman is not shown in her Time Lady robes, she is wearing a nice skirt-suit (I dunno what one would call it), with a pearl necklace and pearl earrings.

At Donna's wedding, Sylvia Noble is wearing a similar skirt-suit (different cut and color, but same kind of outfit), as well as a pearl necklace and pearl earrings.

In the shot of the Doctor when Wilf asks him who The Woman was, the Doctor's eyes are in three places. At the beginning of this specific shot, he is looking at Wilf as Wilf asks the question. Then his eyes move to the middle-ish, to right where Sylvia is standing next to Wilf. THEN his eyes move past Sylvia's position and focus outward into the distance, wherein we then see the shot of Donna, with Sylvia to the right out of focus.

Upon watching this very closely, I'm quite conclusive in my thoughts that when asked about the identity of the woman, the Doctor quite definitely looked at Sylvia THEN Donna, NOT straight from Wilf to Donna (as people have said in support of the "granddaughter/Susan" theory; I, too, was one who said it).

So.... yeah. I'll go with the "word of god" and say that it's the Doctor's mother.

And she said she'd been lost... How are we to know just how long ago that was? Maybe something happened to her, and she was only found/resurrected/whatever during the Time War, and the Doctor hadn't known.

Joy

PS: As for who the lady looks like, yeah, that was one main reason I thought it was Susan, but if you think about it, if Susan is the Doctor's granddaughter, it stands to reason that his mother could bear a resemblance.

 

[OmahaStar]

The updated version of "The Writer's Tale" confirms that she was indeed his Mummy.

It also reveals that a line was cut from the scene where the Doctor talks to Wilf on the Vinvocci spaceship in which he revealed that he was "half-human back in 1999 for a couple of days.”

Just because they intended to do something, but cut it out or did not acknowledge it in the actual episode, is pretty meaningless. The the Utopia/Saxon finale, they "intended" it to be either the Rani or Lucy who picks up his ring. But it wasn't stated on screen what it was, which means they are free to change it to whoever the heck they want later. And they did.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Of course they are free to change it, but until they do, she's the Doctor's mum.

 

[Sci]

Of course they are free to change it, but until they do, she's the Doctor's mum.

Um, no, she's the Woman.

It's fair enough to say that RTD thought of her as the Doctor's mother when writing it, but that does not make it definitive.

As for me, I don't like the idea. Like I said, I don't think we should ever see the Doctor's family or get any real hint of his origins (even if they're alienated, as suggested earlier in this thread). Further, I thought that the symmetry of the Doctor and Wilf both being grandfathers added an extra layer to their relationship that's lost if it's the Doctor's mum.

 

[RoJoHen]

Under the theory that Donna is actually The Doctor's mother, I just want to say that I love the idea of Wilf being his grandpa!

And it might explain, in some wibbley wobbley, timey whimey way, why they have been drawn together.

 

[Sci]

Under the theory that Donna is actually The Doctor's mother, I just want to say that I love the idea of Wilf being his grandpa!

And it might explain, in some wibbley wobbley, timey whimey way, why they have been drawn together.

Lamest piece of fanon ever. Even worse than epileptic trees.