The Doctor Who Thread

Favorite Doctor - 9th
Favorite Companion - Rose

Hate them? Kiss my ass.

I've heard some interesting rumors about John Hurt's Doctor and about the 50th anniversary special but due to *SPOILERS* I shall keep silent in case anyone doesn't want to know specifics.

 

I like Rose the character but I do agree with you that they need to just put her to rest. I was okay the first time she got brought back from the alternate universe but each subsequent time has made less and less sense. Sometimes you have to kill a good thing.

The 50th anniversary special is going to be crazy. One rumor I heard pop up was that it wasn't the actual 10th Doctor we were going to get but the Meta-Crisis Doctor instead who somehow found a way back to the primary universe with Rose. Eccelston I would LOVE to see come back but I know he left the show initially due to disagreements with the people in charge and I heard that hew as in talks to come back for this but similar issues arose once again. I'm hopeful, especially with Moffat talking about lying (links to that interview please and thank you) but I'm skeptical. I even heard that the reason Hurt has come to the show and is bringing some really strange new plot twist is because of Eccelston leaving the anniversary special. Is it a stretch? Possibly, but the rumors I've heard add some plausibility I feel.

Harkness needs to freaking come back. It doesn't look like we'll be getting any new Torchwood any time soon which is a damn shame so he needs to rejoin the Doctor Who cast. He was supposed to freaking be a part of the Jenny/Strax/Vastra group but got cut out which sucks! I kinda feel like last season was our good-bye to River but it's the 50th anniversary special and with Rose already coming back who knows what else they are going to do. I don't think she'd have a large part in it though. Maybe she appears on a monitor or something or back in her ghost form? I think it's safe to say though that outside of a small cameo Donna won't be back and I highly doubt we will see the Ponds ever again. Martha is a possibility but again I doubt it.

I'd love to see all three of the new age Doctors team up. My mind would be blown. As for the older Doctor I still haven't gone back and watched the old show yet so I have no opinion on them. I want to go back and watch them eventually but knowing there is a whole arc of 6 or so episodes called The Planet of the Spiders makes me hesitant to watch.

 

I had heard before that Moffat was full of problems and this just confirms it. Some may not be true but I'd say that most of it is true and at the very least there are shreds of truth all throughout it. Especially with the Eccleston part of it. Why did Davies leave the show again? I enjoyed the show a lot more before he left and Moffet took over.

Tom Baker. That was the 4th Doctor wasn't it? Scarf guy? I think I heard that either he had the longest run as being the Doctor or he was the most popular in the old series. Can't remember which one.

I'm not the biggest fan of Donna and I honestly couldn't tell you why because everything about her character screams at me that I should enjoy her but I just don't. That said, I would love to see her return but with the way the show said goodbye to her I'm not sure how it would be possible. The best I can really see is a similar treatment to her cameo in The End of Time movie but unfortunately I just can't see anything more than that and it's a damn shame.

I do feel like we've already said good-bye to River with the last series finale but it does feel a little odd. All the times that she referenced running into the Doctor in previous episodes were events that have already happened and that we have seen. We COULD see her again in which case we do need to say good-bye somehow and if we do then I think the final good-bye to River will be when the Eleventh Doctor regenerates and that will be when we see the final good-bye to River Song.

I completely forgot about Unit and Mickey. Definitely a strong possibility. I'd love to see them come back. I do feel of all the companions Rose or Clara will be given the most screentime but I'd love it if Martha and Mickey could make an appearance somehow even if it is only a brief cameo. They weren't the most popular characters but I don't think it'd be too hard to fit them in.

 

Please.

Anyway, I was hoping for a middle-aged to older Doctor for the next one, and I am so happy that that came true.

Unfortunately, I think that Capaldi's face is just too angular and sharp to be the Doctor. In my opinion, he would possibly make a better Master than Doctor.

Otherwise, however, I totally agree that this is the perfect chance for DW to "grow up," and I'm hoping it will. A Hartnell-esque Doctor would be fantastic again, and would "bookend" it until the next Doctor (if ever there will be one...).

 

OH MY FUCK IT WAS SO GOOD

 

Gonna be watching it at 7 tonight. I didn't realize it was a world premier and we went to the store and stuff...

 

Damn Nate, you have to watch it. It's so good. SO GOOD MAN SO GOOD

@"Rose Hathaway", have you seen it yet?

also i did the thing

 

oh my god it was so amazing so much yes.

And John Hurt was an amazing choice for the 8.5th doctor. <3

 

Guize guize look at this.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131119-doctor-who-travels-through-time

 

Bit of a late night D Who conversation with #CoE

Spoiler

[06:42:47] Nate_ I'm also not a fan of jump scares. It's not that they don't get me (quite the opposite really, I tend to have bigger reactions than most people), it's just that they don't stay with me. When I watch a scary movie or read a scary story, I WANT it to freak me out even afterwards, maybe make me never look at [object] the same way again
[06:43:17] Nate_ And that's why, in my opinion, Steven Moffat is one of the best horror writers ever.
[06:44:39] Nate_ Statues? Don't take your eyes away. Darkness? Holy crap it's gonna eat me alive. Randomly losing sections of time? Oh god I met a silence what did it tell me to do.
[06:44:52] Cerberus Fuck Weeping Angels up and down, I don't look at stone statues in remotely the same way-- OH GOD SILENCE
[06:44:54] Cerberus OH GOD
[06:48:14] Cerberus brb
[06:48:54] Eebit Family of Blood tho
[06:49:21] Nate_ Oh yes and the ticking of a clock when none is around and/or is broken.
[06:44:39] Cerberus Family of Blood...
[06:44:46] Cerberus I forget what that's about
[06:44:48] Eebit Two-parter
[06:44:57] Eebit Human Nature / Family of Blood
[06:45:01] Cerberus I remember the ending, but not the conflict
[06:45:26] Nate_ David Tennan't thrown into the past, foegetting he's a timelord because of that failsafe thing
[06:45:26] Eebit It was the one where the Tenth was being chased by The Family and then locked his memories away
[06:45:54] Eebit Oh also The Empty Child
[06:45:56] Nate_ Er well. Sometime in the 1910s
[06:46:03] Nate_ EMPTY CHILD OH MAN
[06:46:08] Eebit 1913 iirc
[06:46:11] Nate_ still one of my favorites
[06:46:21] Cerberus Was The Empty Child the one with Eccleston and the gas mask kid
[06:46:30] Eebit Yup
[06:46:32] Nate_ Yeah.
[06:47:26] Nate_ My favorite part though is the end, with the whole everybody lives thing.
[06:48:15] Nate_ It was one of those moments where if you didn't shed a happy tear, there is seriously something wrong with you.
[06:48:36] Cerberus whistles and looks around nonchalantly
[06:48:47] Eebit ^
[06:49:11] Eebit To be honest I thought the second part absolutely gutted the episode
[06:49:14] Nate_ Welp.
[06:49:42] Nate_ Well yeah, the second part in general. But that quote at the end made up for it imo
[06:49:58] Eebit The Empty Child was flawless, and The Doctor Dances opened up with them having to bullshit them out of the conflict they had them in at the cliffhanger
[06:50:21] Eebit The Doctor Dances pretty much just goes far downhill
[06:50:22] Eebit qq
[06:50:31] Cerberus OH WAIT
[06:50:36] Cerberus I remember that part
[06:50:41] Cerberus "Go to your room!"
[06:50:58] Nate_ Yeah that was stupid.
[06:51:00] Cerberus I thought it was actually pretty clever
[06:51:03] Cerberus OH WELP
[06:51:05] Cerberus GG
[06:51:06] Nate_ Well
[06:51:07] Cerberus FIEN
[06:51:15] Nate_ One of those things that was like
[06:51:22] Cerberus Like, it's authorial laziness, but it also makes sense
[06:51:23] Nate_ Simultaneously clever and stupis
[06:51:57] Cerberus Everyone was sharing a hive mind with a desperate child, so the action makes sense, but the event in and of itself is anticlimactic
[06:52:10] Nate_ Yeah.
[06:52:30] Nate_ But I will say my least favorite episodes are the ones with the Slitheen.
[06:53:01] Cerberus I liked the episode with the captured Slitheen woman
[06:53:14] Nate_ That one was good, yeah.
[06:53:19] Nate_ But the first two
[06:53:22] Nate_ It was like
[06:53:31] Nate_ "What the fuck RTD"
[06:55:26] Cerberus ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhklrve5xmw )
[06:55:56] Eebit But no it literally is just authorial laziness @Cerby
[06:56:22] Eebit Well, I guess it's also comic relief but I was like "bros pls why"
[06:58:00] Cerberus To me it makes the entire action more justified when the plot has it come back to bite the party in the ass, because the kid returns the room they're searching because it's lol his room
[06:58:51] Cerberus And it may or may not come as a surprise for you guys to learn "The Satan Pit" is one of my favorite episodes
[06:58:54] Eebit / u g h/
[06:59:06] Cerberus ;^;
[06:59:29] Nate_ I don't hate it. I don't particularly like it either though.
[06:59:38] Eebit No not at Satan Pit
[06:59:42] Eebit at bad writing in DW
[06:59:58] Nate_ Oh
[07:00:00] Eebit Satan Pit was alright... not really standing out in memory beyond the minor plot
[07:00:27] Nate_ If we're gonna talk about bad writing, what about that one with that Elton guy
[07:00:33] Nate_ And the absorbing monster
[07:00:41] Eebit LOL THAT ONE
[07:00:53] Eebit But it had Electric Light Orchestra in it lol how do you hate that
[07:00:57] Nate_ ^
[07:01:16] Nate_ Good point of the episode: It had and made me download some ELO
[07:01:29] Nate_ Bad point: everything else
[07:01:57] Cerberus I think that episode was much more satirical than literal to the canon
[07:02:40] Nate_ Even the satire of it kinda fell flat imo
[07:02:54] Eebit I think my favourites are Blink (easily), Human Nature, Midnight, Empty Child (barring all Doctor Dances' calamities), Girl in the Fireplace, Rings of Akhaten, and Silence in the Library
[07:03:12] Nate_ GIRL IN THE FIREPLACE
[07:03:19] Nate_ I loved that episode

 

So when I was browsing Tumblr today (surprisingly not looking at puppies) I came across this:

Spoiler: Doctor Who AU

"River is an abandoned child Rory and Amy find on their travels with the Doctor and decide to adopt. When the trio land on House, the parasitic being who devoured TARDISes in The Doctor’s Wife, they discover an orphaned child Aunt and Uncle are growing for parts. Naturally horrified, they take her with them when they leave, but find themselves unwilling to give her up. She’s not from Earth, or anywhere they know of, and Amy can’t stand the thought of any child feeling as out-of-place and abandoned as she did in her original Leadworth childhood. Rory and Amy can’t have children biologically and have been exploring their options anyway. It feels like the universe put them in Melody’s path, the same way it put the Doctor in Amy’s garden all those years ago. It feels right. So the Ponds adopt baby Melody. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that she is not entirely human. She has Time Lord DNA, which the Doctor concludes must be because her birth mother was trapped among the decaying, destroyed TARDISes on House when Melody was in the womb. He is unsure what the effects will be but vows to be there for her if there’s ever anything he can do to help. Melody grows up loved and wanted, but when she is eighteen and the Doctor is on one of his frequent visits to the family, something goes wrong. The Ponds are cornered by the episode’s Big Bad (GI, Daleks, etc) and killed … only Melody, to her shock, doesn’t die. Instead she experiences regeneration for the first time, alone and afraid, having just lost her parents. She is overwhelmed by grief and unsure who this new “her” is, so she commandeers a Vortex Manipulator and tries to find out, under a new name: River Song. We get to know at least one regeneration in depth before we get to the Alex Kingston version.The Doctor’s relationship with River, meanwhile, is sporadic. Neither of them will stay still long enough to address their grief (adding poignancy to the catchphrase “You watch us run”) but each is drawn inexorably to the other. In some regenerations that attraction is sexual. In some it isn’t. Hey, people are complicated, and regeneration is too. We use this to explore the whole issue of regeneration, and the history of the Time Lords. If the Time Lords return (if they must) then perhaps the next conflict comes from their attitude to Melody / River, who is not a “pure” Time Lord. Perhaps the Council offer the Doctor the chance to chance to return and be exalted as the hero who stopped the Time War - and perhaps he realizes they haven’t really changed, and decides he’d rather flip a giant two fingers to the establishment and become a renegade again, if that’s what it takes. He’ll defend River, and anyone like her - because he’s the Doctor. And that’s what the Doctor will always, always do."

Most importantly this clears up the agency and consent issues surrounding Amy's pregnancy as well the whole mystical pregnancy trope and how in media we really like to portray pregnancy as 100% TERRIFYING and debilitating when that isn't actually how pregnancy works.  
Also though, the feels.

 

That's an interesting perspective. I like the way it ties up some knots; River's plotline was absolutely unnecessarily convoluted. I think that the way River was 'introduced' as Amy/Rory's friend from childhood sort of removed the allure and mystique of her character, but I do think in some ways that the fact that she is Amy's daughter is interesting. The TARDIS birth thing was pretty bullshit though, not going to hold back on that one.

With respect to the alternate universe thing Krista posted, I don't know quite how I feel about its starting points, but it is certainly an interesting viewpoint. Personally, I am fine (in most ways) with how River developed. I think it was actually quite interesting how they looped 'Pond' and River together, and 'Melody' with Song. The pregnancy thing was a really cool twist, too. However, I hate DESPISE how they treated her character after that. That was what pissed me off the most.

River's portrayal in Let's Kill Hitler was atrocious, plain and simple. And 'Mels' as a character? Really nothing particularly special, save for being a showoff-y bitch (to the point of being needlessly snotty) with no real development. Let's Kill Hitler was a terrible episode overall; a lot of it was poorly written loopholes, thinly-veiled sexism, and comic relief that strikes me as rather... forced. The line about her wanting to grow younger in the future to explain Kingston appearing older in future episodes? Please.

My BIGGEST complaint with her character is in that episode, when she 'gives up' her regenerations for the Doctor. I don't think it was necessary, but they wrote it somehow to undo the prospect of River being 'a true Time Lady' or something, I guess? Regardless, I think there would have been better ways to handle the potential of River being a Time Lady - the potential is definitely there. Just look at the above post's ending bit. There is (or rather, would have been) an easy way to reintroduce the Time Lords and Gallifrey as an arc, especially after the 50th Anniversary special. But I guess they're not opting to go that route, which is a little disheartening. Would have been nice to see tips of the hat to the old series, in some ways.

Also, I wish somehow they would have tied River to Madame Kovarian (eyepatch lady) as the same character, somehow. Because that would have been awesome. A future River conditioning a past River to have a subconscious need to kill the Doctor.

Overall, I still like River as a character, but I'm no longer nearly as interested in episodes in which she appears because of the bullshit the writers have treated her to.