DW Q re Rassillon

[NecronLord]

I have to concede that Five Doctors is better written than I thought it was, actually. The bit about the tomb's defences being switched off is indeed in there. Of course, I'd rather watch Three Doctors over either of the pieces of crap featuring Rassilon, so childish bickering about 'prettiness' is balls (though I suppose Omega's lair is at least more interesting looking than the sets of Five Doctors, if silly)

As for Borusa, yeah, he's evil. That really doesn't mean I find the Doctors just going 'got his just desserts, hah' in-character for them.

I never once, not even in Dalek, got the notion that the Daleks had destroyed Gallifrey in battle, so I don't know what you're complaining about. The revolving door 'time lock' perhaps? Objecting to Gallifrey being extant on the 'Last Day of the Time War' seems a bit silly though. Even in Dalek, it was:

"I watched it happen, I made it happen!"
"And what of the Time Lords?"
"Dead. They burnt with you. The end of the Last Great Time War, everyone lost"

I always interpreted that as the Doctor destroying both sides in one apocalyptic act.

[Revy]

I always interpreted that as the Doctor destroying both sides in one apocalyptic act.

That's the problem - every time he seems to say that Gallifrey was destroyed in the Time War, yet when EoT comes around there are clearly hundreds of Time Lord survivors sitting around in a big audience chamber waiting to vote on destroying the universe. They look pretty healthy for a supposedly extinct race that was destroyed by the Doctor.

Mind you, when you consider that the Dalek Emperor, the Cult of Skaro and Davros all managed to escape the Time Lock and turn up in the show, it's a wonder there is any actual 'war' going on inside that Time Lock anymore. Really, by the time EoT rolls around it seems like all of the Time Lords enemies have already skipped out on the war.

In EoT there was some obscure reference to the Doctor possessing 'The Moment' (am I remembering that right? I don't really want to watch it again to find out), does anyone know what the hell that is? I couldn't even find it on the Doctor Who wiki. I'm guessing it is just some random Deus Ex Machina meant to explain how he ended the Time War, but again, seeing as so many people evidently survived the Time War, I'm guessing it wasn't some kind of mega nuke explosion of doom that destroys everything.

[Johonebesus]

I think "time lock" merely meant that the events couldn't be changed, not that it is some sort of bubble. I assumed that the events depicted on Gallifrey happened during the final battle. The Time Lords couldn't hold off the invasion fleet indefinitely, so in their last hours they came up with a desperate plan to save themselves. When their plan was undone, Gallifrey just went right back to the instant it disappeared, before the Doctor destroyed it.

The line about "moment" seemed to be just a turn of phrase, meaning that he was the only one in a position to accomplish anything and the Time Lords couldn't stop him.

[mr friendly guy]

1. The Time Lords "surviving" are in the last days of the Time War, so the Doctors statement about Gallifrey being destroyed is still correct. They tried to cheat fate by time travelling to the future.

2. The moment is a deus ex machina device by RTD. Fans speculate it is a souped up version of the Demat gun, but who knows? Well aside from RTD but since he has already stated he prefers fans to use their imagination instead of writers telling fans what happens its going to remain that way for the time being.

[Patrick Degan]

I have to concede that Five Doctors is better written than I thought it was, actually. The bit about the tomb's defences being switched off is indeed in there. Of course, I'd rather watch Three Doctors over either of the pieces of crap featuring Rassilon, so childish bickering about 'prettiness' is balls (though I suppose Omega's lair is at least more interesting looking than the sets of Five Doctors, if silly)

Well, who wouldn't? T5D had a troubled history, an impossible brief which Robert Holmes gave up on after trying a fifteen page outline, and the direction was really crap. The whole thing has the air of something slapped together almost at the last minute. T3D was far more professionally handled and didn't try to cram in so many characters.

As for Borusa, yeah, he's evil. That really doesn't mean I find the Doctors just going 'got his just desserts, hah' in-character for them.

My impression was more like "Borusa's gotten in shit with Rassilon and this is not something we really want to step into".

I never once, not even in Dalek, got the notion that the Daleks had destroyed Gallifrey in battle, so I don't know what you're complaining about. The revolving door 'time lock' perhaps? Objecting to Gallifrey being extant on the 'Last Day of the Time War' seems a bit silly though. Even in Dalek, it was:

"I watched it happen, I made it happen!"
"And what of the Time Lords?"
"Dead. They burnt with you."

I always interpreted that as the Doctor destroying both sides in one apocalyptic act.

As did I. But EoT really does try to have it both ways, then of course turns the Time Lords into cartoon evil. It really was hopelessly stupid and a retread of RTD's other travesty of "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End".

[Revy]

1. The Time Lords "surviving" are in the last days of the Time War, so the Doctors statement about Gallifrey being destroyed is still correct. They tried to cheat fate by time travelling to the future.

If that's true, then why the retarded plan to travel to the future using a signal implanted in the Master's brain and a funny diamond? They're the freaking Time Lords! Why couldn't they all hop into a TARDIS and turn up at any point throughout the series? What's to stop 'Rassilon' from using a TARDIS to travel to Earth (or whatever) normally? Why was the signal and the diamond necessary at all? Why did they need a 'link' when time travel never seems to require such a thing, and why did they get suddenly snapped back when the link was broken? I don't get it!

Remember as well that Davros was only saved because Dalek Caan used an emergency time jump that allowed him to return to the time war and 'bypass' the time lock. What the hell does that mean? It makes it sound as if normal time travel cannot access the events of the time war (or else why would an emergency time jump surprisingly allow Caan to do so if regular time travel could do so anyway? And why did it send him mad in the process?). That might go some way to explaining why the time lords needed the whole stupid master/signal/diamond thing to escape the time war - if normal time travel cannot be used to enter or exit the events of the time war. Hell if I know though, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it all.

[NecronLord]

If that's true, then why the retarded plan to travel to the future using a signal implanted in the Master's brain and a funny diamond? They're the freaking Time Lords! Why couldn't they all hop into a TARDIS and turn up at any point throughout the series? What's to stop 'Rassilon' from using a TARDIS to travel to Earth (or whatever) normally? Why was the signal and the diamond necessary at all? Why did they need a 'link' when time travel never seems to require such a thing, and why did they get suddenly snapped back when the link was broken? I don't get it!

They needed a link to breach the Time Lock thing. Of course once they had that, they could logically use TARDISes and Time Rings and whatever normally.

That might go some way to explaining why the time lords needed the whole stupid master/signal/diamond thing to escape the time war - if normal time travel cannot be used to enter or exit the events of the time war. Hell if I know though, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it all.

That's the idea, yes.

[Stark]

The 'time lock' was certainly rationalisable early on in the series as simply a result of causality, but is pretty clearly shown later to be a Time Lock which is an actual factual big locky forcefield keeping the Timelords inside. LOL.

[NecronLord]

In fairness, Time Lock was only ever introduced in the episode they got 'round it. So it was always a big locky forcefield.

The concept of not fucking with the Time War was better unexplained.

[Stark]

Didn't Davros also fight the Time Lock?

[NecronLord]

By that I meant the Davros episode where they got around it (per se) first. Not the End of Time.

[mr friendly guy]

1. The Time Lords "surviving" are in the last days of the Time War, so the Doctors statement about Gallifrey being destroyed is still correct. They tried to cheat fate by time travelling to the future.

If that's true, then why the retarded plan to travel to the future using a signal implanted in the Master's brain and a funny diamond? They're the freaking Time Lords! Why couldn't they all hop into a TARDIS and turn up at any point throughout the series? What's to stop 'Rassilon' from using a TARDIS to travel to Earth (or whatever) normally? Why was the signal and the diamond necessary at all? Why did they need a 'link' when time travel never seems to require such a thing, and why did they get suddenly snapped back when the link was broken? I don't get it!

.

RTD explained the first part away as being time locked, whatever that means. However once they started going through there was no way to explain away why they didn't just use TARDISes or time rings to escape, except gross stupidity. They didn't even need to go about ending the universe, since the time lock would only "break" when Gallifrey came through. They could have just evacuated the planet and create another duplicate which isn't battle scarred.

But RTD's short sightedness (that is he creates the tech but doesn't think through the implication of said tech) has been pointed out quite frequently. Its like a bronze age world where a character creates lots of workable guns but no one thinks to build more even though they clearly can.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The EoT episode was quite posibly the worst episode of NuWho i have ever seen. The idea of Time Lords going freaky evil and stealing the "Ascension" idea from Stargate was just DUMB. The way RTD built up this masssive problem with the Master Race and the President undoes it with a wave of his hand was just gay.

It simply DOES NOT MAKE SENSE to plan an escape from a war, only to destroy everything afterwards.

After all, the Doctor states that the war was fought "with the whole of Creation at stake". Which the TL decide to obliterate, despite having fought a horrific war to save everything from the Daleks

RTD = Retard fanboy writer. Hey, the letters even fit