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Doctor Who Season 3 UK (No Spoilers)

 
  

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penitentvandal
06:24 / 11.04.07
An episode I'd like to see would be a flashback episode, set on Gallifrey, with the young doctor. This would work on a couple of levels:

1)It's a good set-up for a non-regular cast episode (you could even have one flashback ep per season, maybe).
2)It helps to flesh out the background
3)You can possibly use it to drop hints of long-term plot threads
4)It would presumably appeal to the show's young audience, possibly even leading into spin-off strips in the endless array of Dr Who magazine product which seems to exist only to keep the vital pocket money pound circulating in the economy. Charlie Higson's Young Bond stuff has been popular with the kids, so there may be a market.

Of course, you are going to run into problems with a young doctor in terms of regeneration. You can have it so that YoungDoc only regenerates when he goes through Timelord Puberty, and this would have its attractions in establishing Gallifrey's status as an alien culture: in our world, childhood is a time of endless change and growth - on Gallifrey it's ironically more static than adulthood - but has risks in that the young doctor actor can then effectively hold the show to ransom by threatening to pull an Eccleson...

(the regeneration device in Who is, I imagine, a useful tool in bargaining between actors and management:

Davidson: I want to be paid £1 million an episode, serviced by Hot Gossip whenever I'm not actually needed on set, and to have only lime opal fruits in my dressing room.
Management: Fuck that! Send in Colin Baker!

But I digress...)

...so a more interesting idea would be to go for the concept (what I have just made up) of chaotic regeneration - that is to say, immature gallifreyans are actually constantly regenerating, changing appearance, all the time. You literally don't know what they'll look like one day to the next. This would make for a really alien culture. How do Gallifreyans identify each other? It would be like a planet full of prosopagnosia sufferers. There are probably endless possibilities you can use with a set-up like that.

'Course, this may conflict with previous continuity, but there's always retcon. If Torchwood has taught me one thing, it's that there is no porblem which can't be solved by retcon...
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
07:28 / 11.04.07
Well, I think Ewan McGregor has shown that he's your go-to guy when you want someone to play a younger version of the character, fuck the physique or body language, just get the accent in the same language as whoever he's mimicking and he'll be away.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
07:48 / 11.04.07
I kind of like the young Doctor idea, except then they'd probably have to tell us his name, which would spoil things a little (unless they already did at some point and I missed it?)
 
 
jentacular dreams
13:17 / 11.04.07
I don't think they have. There's power in names remember.

It's also notable that each regeneration has a different character, so maybe a different name too. Maybe all the 'names' used are titles ('the master' and 'the rani' seem to back this up to a point.)
 
 
Benny the Ball
13:31 / 11.04.07
His name is THE DOCTOR! Just the Doctor!
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
16:53 / 11.04.07
Yes, but there was President Borusa, Omega, Rassilon, Leela's hubby...

Young Doctor stories are for fanfic, I'm not sure where or why RTD is going with these hints about the Doctor's family, unless it's just to tweak the noses of the old school fans and he's not meaning anything by it.
 
 
Lama glama
17:48 / 11.04.07
When CBBC were looking for RTD to create what eventually became the Sarah Jane Adventures, he played around with the idea of doing a Young Doctor style show. He eventually decided against it, because he felt that it would remove any sense of mystery surrounding the character, if it featured him romping about Gallifrey creating sonic screwdrivers and stealing TARDISes.
 
 
penitentvandal
22:28 / 11.04.07
A Young Doctor series wouldn't work, no. But what I'm talking about is the odd flashback eppy here and there.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
21:06 / 13.04.07
That's two episodes now where "race" and ethnicity (human/non-human classifications; slavery, racial epithets) has been highlighted ~ I do feel Martha's position as the first non-white assistant is being used (productively, interestingly so far) as a springboard for this kind of ongoing discussion during this season, and that, without wanting to speculate, this may become a "theme".
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
23:27 / 13.04.07
Given that we're not now allowed to speculate, should there be another thread where we can, but without spoilage?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
05:06 / 14.04.07
Weeeeeell, I could argue this has already been a theme in most of the episodes already, the racial purity of the Daleks, the upgrading fetish of the Cybermen, the Slytheen in Boom Town, Lady Cassandra and the 'non-human vermin'...
 
 
miss wonderstarr
06:31 / 14.04.07
Oh, true, good point. Maybe it's just me noticing it more because she's black (or Ghanaian/Iranian) and because there was specific reference to British attitudes towards blackness in the last episode, rather than it being SF metaphored.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
13:50 / 14.04.07
It's the "out of time" thing again though - when she doesn't like being referred to as a "blackamoor" Shakespeare quickly comes up with various alternatives - dusky beauty, Egypt's daughter, Queen of Ethiop, etc. - implying that he sees no difference between these descriptions.

Still liking the Dark Lady ref. though.
 
 
Feverfew
17:25 / 14.04.07
Well, unless Watford score four goals in ten minutes, I think that it's going to be on at 7:40.
 
 
penitentvandal
18:12 / 14.04.07
This episode didn't seem great at first, but now it's turning into my favourite so far. Ballardian social metapor featuring Catman Dougal and a guest appearance from Max Normal, the Pinstripe Freak! What more could one want?
 
 
penitentvandal
18:15 / 14.04.07
Oooh, and a Matrix reference...
 
 
Feverfew
18:34 / 14.04.07
I'm impressed by this season so far.

This may be reaching, but were the 'Parents' in the car at the opening of the show a reference to this:
?

Or is my brain just making random connections?
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
18:49 / 14.04.07
No, it was quite definitely a reference. Not sure what it was doing there, mind.

Doctor Dave + lovely kittens = squee meltdown.
 
 
DavidXBrunt
20:04 / 14.04.07
Macra! The Doctor quotes his Grand daughter! Novice Hame! You are not alone!

Fanboy heaven in 2007.
 
 
Feverfew
20:17 / 14.04.07
Not sure what it was doing there, mind.

Probably thrown in for a laugh. "Ha! Let's get those fanboys guessing!"

So my elaborate American Gothic/Doctor Who multi-page thesis will go unwritten for another night.
 
 
penitentvandal
20:21 / 14.04.07
Is it a spoiler if I post something from Dr Who Confidential?
 
 
Lama glama
20:27 / 14.04.07
I think it might be considered one. Anything that wasn't broadcast in the episode could, technically, be spoiler-ific. The production crew are really careful though. They never include anything remotely detrimental to the enjoyment of the rest of the season on it.

Good episode though. Had a wonderfully epic feeling to it, even though it was essentially set in one teeny tiny set. Nice to see the Macra. It gives me a strange perverse pleasure that of all the monsters re-used in the new series, it had to be them above worthier fare like the Ice Warriors, Sontarans, Zygons, etc.

It improved vastly on the past two week's efforts. There was emotional resonance this week, compared to the last two. Really, really liking Martha as the season progresses.

New NY, the senate and the macra were all very striking images. That big sea of snapping claws, trying to crush Martha's car was really gorgeous.
 
 
Lama glama
20:29 / 14.04.07
You could always post the spoiler here. The only stuff that I would consider approaching spoiler content is some of the ambiguous stuff mentioned by David Tennant at the end of DWC.
 
 
pony
04:14 / 15.04.07
i don't know whether to do this in this thread or the "stupid film/tv/theater" thread (if indeed such a thread exists), but i'm sort of starting to become intrigued by all this talk of doctor who. my only recollections of the show are from watching bits of it on PBS in the mid-to-late 80's, and thinking (as a grade-schooler) that it totally sucked. i recall some aliens in crap make-up and costumes, and sets that looked like they came out of my local cable-access channel, and maybe a telephone booth. but i'm starting to think that i'm missing something, and i'd like to start my doctor who re-education with the magic of bit-torrent. so, where to start?
 
 
DavidXBrunt
07:07 / 15.04.07
You have three choices for the modern stuff. Rose is Nu Who series one episode one and started the whole ball rolling. The current lead actor is introduced in The Christmas Invasion which was, surprisingly, a Christmas special from December 2005. The current series began with Smith and Jones from a fortnight ago and I would suggest that's as good a start as any.

Failing that look for An Unearthly Child or Pyramids of Mars episode 1 or Talons of Weng Chiang 1.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
09:28 / 15.04.07
That episode was pure joy, especially as I didn't really care for the cat-nuns aspect of New New Earth back round last time. I especially liked the bit where they all stopped for the hymn, while everything else about the situation had been engineered to keep the travellers travelling without ever stopping, this seemed a moment where they all transcended that, a defiant 'fuck you' to the situation they found themselves in.

They also seemed careful to make it clear that the plague that wiped everyone out wasn't related in any way to the Doctor shutting down the hospital some thirty years previously.

I do wonder why the lesbian couple were referred to as 'sisters', whether it was some weird callback to the last New New Earth episode or what.
 
 
sleazenation
10:24 / 15.04.07
I quite like End of the World episode 2, of the new series, as a good starting point because it sells the whole time travel idea and its human impact.

Back onto last night's episode - lots of fun, particularly for one that spent so much time in the same set. But as I often say, I'm an easy sell for Doctor Who.
 
 
sleazenation
10:30 / 15.04.07
I do wonder why the lesbian couple were referred to as 'sisters', whether it was some weird callback to the last New New Earth episode or what.

I thought it was made clear that 'sisters' was just what Brannigan called them, and he explicitly states that he does that because he is 'an old fashioned cat'. I figured the idea was a reference to the mental leaps some people will go through to ignore things they don't necessarily want to know.
 
 
Triplets
12:34 / 15.04.07
this seemed a moment where they all transcended that, a defiant 'fuck you' to the situation they found themselves in.

Actually, I had a completely opposite reading of that scene. For a moment they've all stopped, mesmerised, and praying. To a dead god. That was, surely, the whole point of the daily/hourly hymn? To keep the drivers going and going to their deaths? Chlling stuff. One the creepiest moments of Who yet.
 
 
Triplets
12:38 / 15.04.07
I do wonder why the lesbian couple were referred to as 'sisters'

That was Dougal being a bit hetero-normative. The driver corrected them, saying they were married.

As I pointed out to my Associate, that episode was a bit transgressive sexually. The blatant lesbian couple (and OAP lesbian couple at that, something I don't think I've ever seen before on telly) amd, of course, the never-said but obvious bestiality of Dougal and his missus (who, scarily I saw on Two Pints of Lager not 3 days earlier). Subtle and more effective in 2 minutes than the whole first series of Torchwood. Sort it owt, Russ.
 
 
Tom Coates
14:39 / 15.04.07
I do think that you could do something with Time Lords that was actually genuinely interesting in terms of understanding them or going into greater detail with them. My brilliant scheme was that Gallifreyans were basically normal human type people or perhaps normal human type people who could regenerate and had mastered time. The side effect of such proximity and a role at the heart of the universe would be that at any given moment a proportion of them would occupy more iconic, archetypical role. So a child might grown up Gallifreyan but then discover in their early twenties that they were becoming something more - a Time Lord. Such a person would take on or manifest their archetypical title, which would come to mean more to them than their original name, especially as they started to regenerate, sort of like the Phoenix did in GM's X-men run.

The role would be archetypical and carry with it some cosmic sense of the role - ie. that the doctor is there to fix things that are broken, to heal and inspire. When one doctor worked through his regenerations the next would be called from the Gallifreyan people and the mantle would be passed in some way.

The names / titles thing would be quite simply explained away by saying that Time Lords often continued to use their Gallifreyan names as well as their archetypical ones, particularly if they spent a lot of time on Gallifrey in the company of the people they grew up with. The ones that name themselves with the iconic names could be generally considered to be older, to have outlived their peers, to have progressed through more regenerations or to have a more progressed archetypical role in some way. You could go further and say that female Gallifreyans tended to keep their names going longer than the men - find some social reason for some of it.

The titles themselves interest me particular in terms of which ones sound right. As I've thought about it, the titles that sound right are the ones that you would either be able to use instead of a name or are a title that would be spoken. It's infrequent (although not unheard of) for a role to be a simple occupation - ie. there is no Soldier, Stationer, Engineer or Potter because you wouldn't refer to someone as 'Soldier', 'Stationer', 'Engineer' or 'Potter'- but you can imagine The Judge, The Magistrate, The Detective, The Heirophant, The Castellain, The Chancellor, The Minister, The Bishop.
 
 
jentacular dreams
14:58 / 15.04.07
The hymn was a nice touch, especially:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me
.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not
, abide with me....

...Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee
;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.


But I guess it was a very Eastery episode. Lots of death and rebirth.
 
 
sleazenation
15:22 / 15.04.07
Didn't the The Invasion of Time establish that there were Gallifreyans who were not Time Lords, Gallifreyan's who lived outside the Capitol?
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
17:00 / 15.04.07
sleazenation I do wonder why the lesbian couple were referred to as 'sisters', whether it was some weird callback to the last New New Earth episode or what.

I thought it was made clear that 'sisters' was just what Brannigan called them, and he explicitly states that he does that because he is 'an old fashioned cat'. I figured the idea was a reference to the mental leaps some people will go through to ignore things they don't necessarily want to know.


I wondered if it were a reference to something else, something to do with cats and lesbians in popular culture. Any ideas?
 
 
miss wonderstarr
17:21 / 15.04.07
The titles themselves interest me particular in terms of which ones sound right. As I've thought about it, the titles that sound right are the ones that you would either be able to use instead of a name or are a title that would be spoken. It's infrequent (although not unheard of) for a role to be a simple occupation - ie. there is no Soldier, Stationer, Engineer or Potter because you wouldn't refer to someone as 'Soldier', 'Stationer', 'Engineer' or 'Potter'- but you can imagine The Judge, The Magistrate, The Detective, The Heirophant, The Castellain, The Chancellor, The Minister, The Bishop.

I know nothing about Gallifreyan society so I just looked it up quickly and found that Time Lords within canon have included The Other, The Meddling Monk, The Inquisitor, The War Chief and The Valeyard (as well as others, who don't fit this formula at all ~ most obviously Romana). However, there would surely have to be a pretty small group of Time Lords to have only one who suited the title Doctor?

I also know nothing about the Time War. Has it been described in any detail within canon? The current and last Doctors talk about it a lot as the final (supposedly) conflict with the Daleks, but how does a Time War work? How do you fight a war in time? And why with Daleks, who don't, from what I've seen, seem especially to exhibit much facility with time or interest in manipulating it?
 
  

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