Doctor Who S09E1 - The Magician's Apprentice (spoilers)

[Eternal_Freedom]

I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet (just watched the repeat, so it's fresher in my mind).

So, Davros has had the Doctor's sonic screwdriver in his back pocket all along. Haven't we frequently seen Davros' travel machine use a little detachable joysticklike thingummy? Has it been right there in front of us all this time (or a lot of it, anyway), and we never realised the significance?

Davros' chair has a pair of joysticks, but not the Doctor's screwdriver.

Interesting theory...are you saying the Time Lords could in fact be an offshoot of humans?

Wild speculation, but yes, Time Lords are an off-shoot human. Could have started much earlier than the 51st, in fact: Orson Pink was only 100 years into the future!

Want the mind-bender? So are the Daleks! The Kaled (human stock!) got into a 1000 year war, and Davros created the Daleks to fight "the enemy". Then things got interesting, and they went off on their mission, like a Saberhagen Berserker.

Consider: in "Bad Wolf", the Daleks are harvesting humans from the games at Satellite Five, sieving each for "suitable cells" ("one in a billion" - so of 37.2 trillion cells each human, that's ... a whole lot, actually!), but why would human cells be suitable for Daleks? Because Daleks are humans!

Um actually humans and Time Lords can't be related to Kaleds or Daleks: In Genesis the Doctor and Harry are both scanned extensively, and Ronson examine the results and says something like "absolutely nothing conforms to any known life on this planet, except for external appearances."

But as for your "Time Lords are humans" well....why can't human's be descended from Gallifreyans who were expelled/dropped out from the Capitol? See, wild speculation is fun, and works equally well when you flip it around!

[Khaat]

Um actually humans and Time Lords can't be related to Kaleds or Daleks: In Genesis the Doctor and Harry are both scanned extensively, and Ronson examine the results and says something like "absolutely nothing conforms to any known life on this planet, except for external appearances."

But as for your "Time Lords are humans" well....why can't human's be descended from Gallifreyans who were expelled/dropped out from the Capitol? See, wild speculation is fun, and works equally well when you flip it around!

And in A Good Man Goes to War, Melody Pond's DNA is "human ...plus Time Lord", with the further discussion that the Time Lords became what they are through prolonged exposure to the Time Vortex. And this was the Doctor and Madame Vastra's assessment on reviewing the research the Silence had done. Was it all an elaborate Silence lie, and Melody Pond wasn't? Well, no, we see that she can regenerate.

Does that mean the analysis in Genesis might be wrong? The science of a culture at war for 1000 years off about biology? Possible.

Humans are exiled Time Lords? Also possible: during the Gallifreyan Dark Times all kinds of things happened, but we also that the Gallifreyans "tinkered" with many races.

But now with "the doctor created Davros, Davros created Daleks, Daleks fail to kill humans, (humans be ome Time Lords?)" everything is protected by paradox. If Daleks ever exterminate humans, humans don't become Time Lords, the Doctor never creates Davros. Simple.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Um actually humans and Time Lords can't be related to Kaleds or Daleks: In Genesis the Doctor and Harry are both scanned extensively, and Ronson examine the results and says something like "absolutely nothing conforms to any known life on this planet, except for external appearances."

But as for your "Time Lords are humans" well....why can't human's be descended from Gallifreyans who were expelled/dropped out from the Capitol? See, wild speculation is fun, and works equally well when you flip it around!

And in A Good Man Goes to War, Melody Pond's DNA is "human ...plus Time Lord", with the further discussion that the Time Lords became what they are through prolonged exposure to the Time Vortex. And this was the Doctor and Madame Vastra's assessment on reviewing the research the Silence had done. Was it all an elaborate Silence lie, and Melody Pond wasn't? Well, no, we see that she can regenerate.

Does that mean the analysis in Genesis might be wrong? The science of a culture at war for 1000 years off about biology? Possible.

Um, I tihnk you rather spectacularly missed my pint. Genesis states that neither humans nor Time Lords/Gallifreyans are related to Kaleds (and by inference, Daleks). It doesn't say anything about Time Lords and humans being related or not.

As for Melody Pond, well, if Time Lords did become what they were because of such exposure to the vortex, then humans following a similar path is reasonable. I honestly think people get stuck on "Melody Pond is a Time Lord because we see her regenerate." Sure we do. Do we see any other known Time Lord abilities in her? Do we see her having two hearts? (probably not, she was at school with Amy for years, someone should have noticed, and that wasn't even her first life so you can't use the old EU "Time Lords grow their second heart when they first regenerate" idea). Do we see her able to communicate with the Doctor or others telepathically? Do we see her have that respiratory bypass system that let the Fourth Doctor survive being strangled?

[mr friendly guy]

Going on with the status of the Time War prior to the Dalek final assault, there is lots of confusing info. Most probably because the writers didn't give a shit about making a coherent ahem, timeline of what happened. I will try and sort out the disparate information. Prior to the End of Time, this would be my interpretation.

We know at the time of the Dalek final assault, Skaro had already been destroyed (mentioned in the sourcebooks at the time). Skaro's destruction was again confirmed in the new series because the Daleks keep on bringing it back. Presumably it took some effort or else the Doctor would not ask Davros how he did it. This might make me think that at the point, it seems the Time Lords were winning, or at least had some advantages. Gallifrey still stood, and they were confident no one could breach their sky trenches, and they continued to hold for goodness knows how long against the Dalek assault even though some managed to land and take Arcadia. Meanwhile the Dalek homeworld didn't fare so well. I think in most settings where two sides with homeworlds, but only one homeworld is still standing, we would tend to give the advantage to the side with the homeworld that is not destroyed.

Another thing to note is why would the Daleks launch and all out attack (ie all their ships) if they were winning? It always smacked of desperation to me, like an all or nothing ploy. If the Daleks were so inclined to think that way, ie they have a really high risk taking taking mentality like gambling, then they would have done it earlier.

Of course the other side of the coin is that the Daleks had much more resources to play with. We know they had an entire galaxy which is bigger than the Milky Way of resources. We also know from another EU novels they always fielded more Dalek Saucers to war TARDISes, that being said the numbers were that badly scewered in favour of the Daleks as I expected. So the lost of Skaro might not be that devastating except on a psychological level. However its lost does lend credence to the hypothesis that the Daleks were desperate and losing, hence the final assault.


Then RTD changed all that with the End of Time. It seems like the Time War seemed to create new monstrosities which both sides battled against - Davros was thought lost fighting the Nightmare Child, while the Doctor pretty much states even the Time Lords can't survive all the monstrosities. Now the interpretation would be that both sides were going to lose, to these new force that was spawned. We don't know whether these new forces aside from the Nightmare Child even attacked either the Daleks or Time Lords, but the TL were obviously worried about that. Even if the Doctor didn't take the Moment it would have likely be a short while before these new forces fuck everything up.

So both sides could have been in a stalemate phase for all we know and only got worried because of these new forces. I think its fair to infer based on the End of Time, and Time of the Doctor that the Time Lords weren't so worried about a Dalek attack on Gallifrey and more worried about these new forces that came about in the Time War. Its not quite clear whether the Daleks were more worried about these new forces of the Time Lords. We do know however that Gallifrey's disappearance and the destruction of the Dalek fleet somehow reset things so that these new forces magically disappeared. Perhaps the Daleks believed the destruction of the Time Lords would also make these new forces disappear and that was the reason they launched their all or nothing gambit. Or maybe they were losing to the Time Lords as per my pre End of Time interpretation.

In short, I still think the Daleks were desperate in their final assault on Gallifrey. Either because a) they were losing to the Time Lords or b) like the Time Lords they were worried about these new forces and they would fall in a matter of time, so they enacted a final assault.

[Khaat]

Um, I tihnk you rather spectacularly missed my pint. Genesis states that neither humans nor Time Lords/Gallifreyans are related to Kaleds (and by inference, Daleks). It doesn't say anything about Time Lords and humans being related or not.

Uh, actually, I addressed it with my throw-away line:

Does that mean the analysis in Genesis might be wrong? The science of a culture at war for 1000 years off about biology? Possible.

(Granted, I should have called that out a little better)

Is that a guarantee Kaled science is wrong? No. Am I stating that categorically, "it must be, because I believe..."? Definitely not. But, when you consider from Genesis that Davros himself (supreme high grand poohbah of Kaled science) said that life didn't exist in the universe outside of Skaro, so Harry and the Doctor's claims of being aliens was dismissed outright at first. It throws a shadow of doubt on the state of science on Skaro (outside of war efforts).

If the later investigation reveals "uh, no, he's not one of us!", just how much would it need to be different for bureaucrat scientist Ronson working for a war-machine culture to say "absolutely nothing conforms to any known life on this planet, except for external appearances." He's already contradicting Davros in claiming these two aren't from Skaro ("in for a penny...")

Did Ronson run DNA? Blood work? Neurological analysis? Or perhaps the Kaled variant of (again, just speculation) humans is different enough from Harry? And did the exam get past "Two hearts!" on the Doctor? I don't know, I've only had one chance in passing to watch Genesis, so maybe they did address this better.

[Khaat]

As for Melody Pond, well, if Time Lords did become what they were because of such exposure to the vortex, then humans following a similar path is reasonable. I honestly think people get stuck on "Melody Pond is a Time Lord because we see her regenerate." Sure we do. Do we see any other known Time Lord abilities in her? Do we see her having two hearts? (probably not, she was at school with Amy for years, someone should have noticed, and that wasn't even her first life so you can't use the old EU "Time Lords grow their second heart when they first regenerate" idea). Do we see her able to communicate with the Doctor or others telepathically? Do we see her have that respiratory bypass system that let the Fourth Doctor survive being strangled?

No, but we also started with the claim that Melody's DNA was human plus Time Lord, not that it was full Time Lord. Neither the episode or I made claim that she had full Time Lord abilities after just one generation, or that she was one.

Melody's a step on the way, that's all.

*format edit

[Joun_Lord]

But as for your "Time Lords are humans" well....why can't human's be descended from Gallifreyans who were expelled/dropped out from the Capitol? See, wild speculation is fun, and works equally well when you flip it around!

The same reason it doesn't work for any other setting where humans come from the stars like Doom 3, maybe Halo (I don't remember and don't care enough to look up whether or not the ancient human space empire was from earth or what), old BSG, and probably alot more. We got a fossil record to show we came from here. Now assuming they weren't planted we still have DNA in common with some animals, we are apes and share alot of DNA with our cousins.

As for Time Lords being descended from humies, its possible especially with time travel allowing them to go back and technically be before humans. Humans do share more then just looks. Human can hybridize with Time Lords including Donna, humie 10, the entire human race turning into the Master, River Song, and I remember some thing about the Doctor being half human though I don't know if thats canon or not. Now this is a show where some dude turns into an Ood by drinking some shit and a girl turns into a bit of concrete (in probably what is the most horrifying bit of Dr Who whether or not that was real or the guy in the episode breaking down completely) so maybe there is no connection.

Just going on looks the standard human (or should we say Gallifreyan considering they came first) is fairly common with some species like the Kaleds, Thals, the race that built the space Titanic, and of course the Gallifreyans and probably many others looking identical to humans. Others maybe not look identical to humans but still look pretty human. The humanoid form is so standard that even earth trees and cats evolve into humanoids.

Maybe Time Lord manipulation, making all others races in their image?

[Parallax]

The novels made it a point to say that the Time Lords, to help cement their own power, worked to make other life in the Universe look much like they do. I believe it was the basis for the first Time War they ever entered into - the rival race, that looked like nothing humanoid, likewise wanted life to be in their own image.
Obviously, the Time Lords won to the point where that first Time War never actually happened because the rival species suddenly never developed. And life took on a much more humanoid developmental path.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Um, I tihnk you rather spectacularly missed my pint. Genesis states that neither humans nor Time Lords/Gallifreyans are related to Kaleds (and by inference, Daleks). It doesn't say anything about Time Lords and humans being related or not.

Uh, actually, I addressed it with my throw-away line:

Does that mean the analysis in Genesis might be wrong? The science of a culture at war for 1000 years off about biology? Possible.

(Granted, I should have called that out a little better)

Is that a guarantee Kaled science is wrong? No. Am I stating that categorically, "it must be, because I believe..."? Definitely not. But, when you consider from Genesis that Davros himself (supreme high grand poohbah of Kaled science) said that life didn't exist in the universe outside of Skaro, so Harry and the Doctor's claims of being aliens was dismissed outright at first. It throws a shadow of doubt on the state of science on Skaro (outside of war efforts).

Honestly, it seems a really pointless thing to argue about, since the only real outcome of "humans/daleks/time lords" are related is...what exactly? They've still spent enough time apart to be distinct species, so does them having a common ancestor really matter? Especially not when we have categorical statements that humans/Time Lords and Kaleds are not related.

If the later investigation reveals "uh, no, he's not one of us!", just how much would it need to be different for bureaucrat scientist Ronson working for a war-machine culture to say "absolutely nothing conforms to any known life on this planet, except for external appearances." He's already contradicting Davros in claiming these two aren't from Skaro ("in for a penny...")

Did Ronson run DNA? Blood work? Neurological analysis? Or perhaps the Kaled variant of (again, just speculation) humans is different enough from Harry? And did the exam get past "Two hearts!" on the Doctor? I don't know, I've only had one chance in passing to watch Genesis, so maybe they did address this better.

Ronson seemed surprisingly open to the idea. Before he looks at the scan results he looks at some of the Doctor's confiscated possessions, including the sonic screwdriver and the Time Ring. After a brief look he says "If I didn't know better I would have to say these were made by some intelligence on another planet." So he recognises them as non-Skarosian, even if the "party line" still hold sway. As for the tests that were run:

Ronson: "Well when you passed through our security scan a complete check was made on your blood and chemical makeup, encephalographic patterns and so on. Physiological compositions and so, if you are from another planet...." reads results, looks stunned "...there's nothing. Nothing conforms to any know life on this planet, except for external appearances."

So yeah, I see no reason to doubt that analysis, especially for the sake of a fanfic-esque "Daleks are descended from humans!" plot.

[Khaat]

Ronson: "Well when you passed through our security scan a complete check was made on your blood and chemical makeup, encephalographic patterns and so on. Physiological compositions and so, if you are from another planet...." reads results, looks stunned "...there's nothing. Nothing conforms to any know life on this planet, except for external appearances."

Thanks, Eternal_Freedom, that's what I had missed! And in case anyone else needs a handy source for Who scripts, I found http://www.chakoteya.net/doctorwho/index.htm in my search for more stuff to read. (I have been limited to what Netflix has for ClassicWho, and the occasional surprise episode on BBC America.)

So now I'm just left to wonder what the Emperor meant in The Parting of Ways (not Bad Wolf)

EMPEROR: We waited here in the dark space, damaged but rebuilding. Centuries passed, and we quietly infiltrated the systems of Earth, harvesting the waste of humanity. The prisoners, the refugees, the dispossessed. They all came to us. The bodies were filtered, pulped, sifted. The seed of the human race is perverted. Only one cell in a billion was fit to be nurtured.

Were they mutating stem cells or something? Are humans really so charming that even the dead can convince a race like the Daleks to "dance"?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I didn't bother with scripts, I just put the DVD in my laptop. It's always near the top of the pile and I've been meaning to watch it again for a while, so thanks for the convenient excuse

As for the Emperor, well, none of those Daleks were particularly sane, even by their standards. But if we take what he said at face value, then he said that only a scant few cells were fit to be "nurtured." As in "cared for," "grown," etc. Perhaps they actually were taking adult stem cells and using those. Or maybe they took appropriate cells and replaced the nucleus with copies of available Dalek cell nuclei. Apart from the copying, we can do that today, it's how we made Dolly the Sheep after all (at least I think it is, please don't be mean if I'm wrong, I'm a Warrior Dalek, not a Scientist )