Doctor Who - Season... Spring 2013

[Bat King]

I enjoyed this episode.

My review is up.

http://judgetutorsemple.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/doctor-who/

[Trout]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK, I loved that.

So, that individual at the end is... [spoiler]somewhere between McGann and Ecclestone, right? The only regeneration we never saw.[/spoiler] I love this stuff.

[Sideshow Bob]

While I thought this series was a bit 'patchy', with some not quite so good episodes...for me it finished with a 'cracker' !!...
Will certainly be waiting with 'bated breath' for the next episode in November....
Overall for the series,  an 8 out of 10...with the final episode bringing the score up considerably..

And Mr Hurt....wow !!

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Like so much Dr Who, it was riddled with plot holes:-

- Where did Simeon come from?
- How did the prisoner know about the Doctor's secret? A Victorian murderer in London?
- How does this fit in the time line for Clara's first episode, the one set in the present day and featuring the Great Intelligence? Why didn't it recognise her?
- How did Clara save the Doctor? Are we supposed to think she was in every episode ever, behind the scenes, just causing a distraction to save him? Doesn't that make the Doctor kind of rubbish?
- How did the Doctor save Clara? Where was she at the end? If she was in a physical embodiment of his psyche then why wasn't Simeon?

Bah.

And I'd be stoked if I thought that John Hurt was a "missing" Doctor who fought the Time War and regenerated into Ecclestone. But the anniversary episode is about Zygons, not Daleks, so that won't be the case.

[Steve Green]

Maybe she was in a secret room in the Hall of Justice TARDIS, Biscuits supplied.

As for John Hurt

[spoiler]It does seem he will be a lost Doctor, they've made a point that the Doctor shouldn't know his own future, so the most likely explanation is that he's been buried/banished because of what he's done. The guilt of the last few Doctors over the Time War seems to point to something in that event[/spoiler]

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

The informed specultaion is that he is the original Doctor who did something bad on Gallifrey before running off to become the Doctor. Which would fit for the 50th special as it would bring the thing "full circle" and explain his origins while also avoiding the need to deal with the Time War which is a Davies creation.

[JamesC]

Yeah I assumed he was the original whose name we don't know - the identity he gave up to become the Doctor.

[Grant Goggans]

I don't know that I'm ready to believe that he's the Time War Doctor, because the three most recent Doctors have owned their participation in that.  Remember Smith growling "Fear me, I killed all of them" in The Doctor's Wife, for one of lots of examples.  That must either be a Doctor who did something that he finds unpardonable, or he's the Valeyard - who was namechecked by the Great Intelligence earlier in the story.  As for what the Valeyard's doing in the Doctor's memories, well, the Doctor has memories of him...

That was not at all the revelation that I expected, though.  I heard a little of the speculation, and here's what I thought we were going to get: Clara missed one.  All the times she had to push the continuity back in place, she missed an incident right before the Time War.  I thought that right at the end, the Great Intelligence would bump into McGann right after the events of the TV movie and shoot him.  McGann regenerates into Hurt instead of Eccleston, setting up a universe where there the Time War goes very differently and he's still the Doctor.  The 50th anniversary story, therefore, would be Tennant and Smith fighting for their existence.

Then again, I never learned that lesson about theorizing in advance of the facts...

[Steve Green]

Yeah I assumed he was the original whose name we don't know - the identity he gave up to become the Doctor.

Didn't it say that the Hurt Doctor was the one who betrayed the name he took though? That seems to imply he was a later incarnation rather than the original.

Although it could be read that the role of the Doctor was to heal what was broken by the original.

I wonder whether BBC Worldwide would see a renumbering as a pain in the arse (since the merchandise is labelled as the nth Doctor) or a way to sell the same stuff (under a different number)

I guess he could be the Zero Doctor if he is the incarnation before Hartnell.

[Colin YNWA]

I guess it would make sense for the 50th anniversary to deal with the Doctor's time travelling origins so the pre -Hartnell theory is a solid one...

... then it also makes sense as part of the celebrations to tie the new and old together more firmly so the Time War Doctor theory is a good so...

... so in other words... errr I hope its both, or either, or something else entirely... just hope its a better bloody episode, but the track record with specials does derail by normal naive optimism!

[Ghost MacRoth]

[spoiler]I believe she had already done all that from her point of view by the point that The Doctor pulled her out. Of course she was supposed to have been scattered into hundreds if not thousands of places all at once so I'm not sure what that version of her in that misty place is meant to be. I.e. is it one of those echoes? Did they all coalesce together again after doing what they needed to do? Or is Clara in the misty place representative off all those echoes at once? I.e. what we're seeing shouldn't be taken too literally, just a way of telling the story and showing something which is intrinsically unshowable. If that makes sense.[/spoiler]

For me, that would make no sense. It certainly wasn't played that way, and let's face it, we rely on the actors/director to 'guide' us through the story and suspend disbelief in order to enjoy it.  We are talking about a series centring on an immortal morphing man who travels time and space in a police box, so I don't think it's a problem of taking things too literally!

It's more a case of lazy (or cheap, take your pick) storytelling.  [spoiler]I'm not against the idea that somehow the Dr would be able to save Clara, I just would much rather he hadn't done so the way it was depicted[/spoiler].

[M.I.K.]

For me, that would make no sense. It certainly wasn't played that way, and let's face it, we rely on the actors/director to 'guide' us through the story and suspend disbelief in order to enjoy it.

She says right before the wibbly time stream stuff finishes that she was "born to save the Doctor, but the Doctor is safe now" and "my story is done", which would indicate that she's done all the rescuing she needs to do and her journey has reached some kind of conclusion when the current Doctor meets up with her.

[Ghost MacRoth]

To me it comes across as she's DONE.  Over....torn apart across space and time from here to eternity. Finished sorta thing.  Her story clearly ISN'T done if she got pulled out now is it? And since the Dr rescued her while still living out his timeline, then she was still to be saving him in the future as well as the past.  Sloppy writing man, just sloppy.

[M.I.K.]

If she was going to be torn apart across space and time, then so was the Doctor after he jumped in, which means the moment he jumped in is the moment he should have died, and if they're both travelling within the confines of his timeline then they'll only go as far as the point when that happens, which would explain why she doesn't seem to meet any future Doctors, but maybe that's why they were both able to escape in the first place, because the Doctor jumping into his own timeline created a paradox which clogged it up, allowed him to catch up with her, and jump back out again.

Or something.

[Ghost MacRoth]

Damn....You may have something there!