Bah, where's the fun in that?
It's all true, I tell you. We just don't understand how it all fits together yet. It's worth reading Cold Fusion though.
Was Hartnell first?
- Thread starter TemporalFlux
- Start date
Bah, where's the fun in that?
It's all true, I tell you. We just don't understand how it all fits together yet. It's worth reading Cold Fusion though.
Were I the Doctor, myself would be the first person I'd keep secrets from.
Yeah, we do. It's been explicitly stated before and after this story to know that Hartnell is the first.
Mr Awe
The First Doctor simply wore several disguises when he was younger.
There are a lot of reasons to read Cold Fusion, beyond what it says about the pre-Hartnell Doctors.Bah, where's the fun in that?
Really, I'm just a sucker for the relationship between the Doctor and Patience. She's the Doctor's Mellow Pixie Dream Girl. (She's Mellow rather than Manic, but she fits all of the other characteristics of the MPDG,) And she meant so much to him that he was willing to let Omega win and the universe end in The Infinity Doctors if it meant he could spend eternity with her.
I try not to get too working up about issues like this. Back in the 70's the showrunners just weren't as diligent about continuity as they are nowadays.
Re The Masters skepticism: I can see the time Lords being able to hand out new regeneration cycles, but doing so is a serious breach of ethics. The Master was simply doubtful the the oh-so-pure High Council would violate the rules that way.
Re Pre Hartnell Doctors: Perhaps the Doctor had a previous identity, but as punishment, or thee need to hide who he really was, he was given a new regen cycle and his memory of his old life erased. Might actually go a ways toward explaining all the Cartmel stuff.
Maybe I should read the thing. It must be a hell of a story if people are still quoting it and bitching when the show contradicts it after all these years.
Re The Masters skepticism: I can see the time Lords being able to hand out new regeneration cycles, but doing so is a serious breach of ethics. The Master was simply doubtful the the oh-so-pure High Council would violate the rules that way.
Re Pre Hartnell Doctors: Perhaps the Doctor had a previous identity, but as punishment, or thee need to hide who he really was, he was given a new regen cycle and his memory of his old life erased. Might actually go a ways toward explaining all the Cartmel stuff.
Maybe I should read the thing. It must be a hell of a story if people are still quoting it and bitching when the show contradicts it after all these years.
Yea, good luck with that, I've searched for it a few times. Out of Print, and people want $100 for their used copy. This is one I'd like to see get a reprint as I've never had the opportunity to read it myself
Maybe I should read the thing. It must be a hell of a story if people are still quoting it and bitching when the show contradicts it after all these years.
Or even make an Audiobook/Audio Play would be fantastic
Yea, good luck with that, I've searched for it a few times. Out of Print, and people want $100 for their used copy. This is one I'd like to see get a reprint as I've never had the opportunity to read it myself
Maybe I should read the thing. It must be a hell of a story if people are still quoting it and bitching when the show contradicts it after all these years.
Or even make an Audiobook/Audio Play would be fantastic
It was available as a free eBook from the BBC website for awhile but those seem to have vanished.
^Yeah, that's where I read it.
Since the Doctor won the psychic battle I felt it was obvious that those other faces were Morbius. It was a classic example of the hero starting out losing a fight then turning tables to win.
For me, what makes it obvious that those faces are meant to be the Doctor's is that when those faces are being displayed Morbius is
- Winning
- Saying “How far back, Doctor? How long have you lived? Your puny mind is powerless against the strength of Morbius. Back, back to your beginning…”
^ It's far from obvious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y8uNMPJfwQ
When the "mysterious" faces begin flashing, Morbius is ranting that the Doctor is losing. It's not very clear as transmitted why the Doctor wins when he does, though.
When the "mysterious" faces begin flashing, Morbius is ranting that the Doctor is losing. It's not very clear as transmitted why the Doctor wins when he does, though.
It's very clear, I thought: Morbius loses because the stress of the game causes a 'fuse' to blow in the artificial head housing his brain, and that was the Doctor's plan in challenging him to a mind-duel the Doctor couldn't hope to win in the first place, as set up by some earlier lines about how crude the artificial braincase is, and the dangers of it overloading*.
Watch the episode cold, without importing any other continuity (apart from the fact that Time Lords change their faces occasionally) and there's no way to interpret the scene except that the appearance of the Doctor's earlier faces shows he's losing, and that the faces seen after Hartnell are pre-Hartnell Doctors.
Anything else is retconning to try to reconcile the scene with the rest of continuity. Like we do.
*Edit: Here's the lines, at least as Terrance included them in the book (without checking the DVD I can't be sure he didn't add them to clear things up):
"Solon, you spoke once of constructing an artificial brain case."
"I abandoned that project long ago. There were problems... formidable problems. There was a build-up of static electricity withing the cranial cavity. At times of stress it could have earthed through the brain, upsetting the delicate equilibrium, disturbing the neural centres."
Then, after Morbius has ordered Solon to find and use it, "Oh, it wouldn't do, Morbius. There could be severe pain, seizures, perhaps even madness..."
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Yes, the point is that morbius DOES NOT LOSE. He wins the battle, but his plastic head blows a fuse in the process and destroys his mind - a pyrrhic victory indeed. The Doctor is left in a catatonic state and almost certain to die, but for the Sisterhood giving up the last of the Elixir to save him. It's all there in the story, later retcons be damned.
I will play...
So I counted 8 faces before Hartnell, so Tom Baker would have been #12 and then Davidson #13, that scenario fits in with #5's regeneration. "Might Regenerate, I don't know..feels different this time." So he thought it should be the end of his life and did not know if he would regenerate. Perhaps he got an extended life span somewhere along the line and did not really know LOL Also explains some of instabilty of 6 being the first of a new life cycle.
So I counted 8 faces before Hartnell, so Tom Baker would have been #12 and then Davidson #13, that scenario fits in with #5's regeneration. "Might Regenerate, I don't know..feels different this time." So he thought it should be the end of his life and did not know if he would regenerate. Perhaps he got an extended life span somewhere along the line and did not really know LOL Also explains some of instabilty of 6 being the first of a new life cycle.
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Yes, that and the Five Doctors at the time really cemented in that 5 was really 5. Still fun to flirt with the idea though lol
Well, I think that line derives from the fact that the fifth Doctor might expect to regenerate in any normal circumstance, but he isn't sure if spectrox poisoning is something he can recover from - but otherwise, he thinks he's got eight more regenerations left to him. BUT we, the viewer, can infer an extra layer of meaning in it based on our secret knowledge that there were eight Doctors before Hartnell, which indeed makes Davison the thirteenth, and so there's a whole extra meaning in why it "feels different this time".
It's brilliant. It all fits. We can have our cake and eat it.
It's brilliant. It all fits. We can have our cake and eat it.
Exactly. It's a mistake to think that regeneration is always a guaranteed out from death. It won't work if the damage is too great, so there's usually a risk that it won't kick in -- which is why the Doctor isn't just blase and casual about it when it happens. We saw this with the third regeneration in "Planet of the Spiders" -- the Doctor almost didn't regenerate, but needed K'anpo's help to jumpstart the process. And while he did regenerate after "Logopolis," we saw that there was a risk of the regeneration failing and the Doctor not surviving -- or at least regenerating again right after, and who knew if the next one would be stable? (See also "The Christmas Invasion" for a touch-and-go post-regeneration phase.) And of course we saw in "The Impossible Astronaut" that if the Doctor got fatally injured during regeneration, it would halt the process and leave him dead.
With something like the injuries the Doctor sustained in "Logopolis" or the McGann movie, where the cause of the damage is over with by the time regeneration starts, it's just a matter of healing the damage that's been done. But in "Androzani," with the spectrox toxin still coursing through his body and doing lethal damage, the Doctor couldn't be sure the regeneration process would be able to cancel out that damage, rather than vice-versa. And perhaps the iffiness of that regeneration was why the Sixth Doctor was so erratic at first.
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