Doctor Who...... What the bloody hell?

[Havok]

It's your fault. You and your AV are the reason I started watching Doctor Who.

[Stark]

The festering dogsht should have been the reason you stopped.

But serious, aside from pissing all over the old show (which the modern target has never seen anyway) they should just make the show 'some girl Quantum Leaps the Doctor' forever. Disrespecting the past is fundamental to Doctor Who!

[Scrib]

Why would he remember Clara from 1000 years ago telling him to take a different TARDIS until he realized it was Clara? She would have just been some helpful Time Lord chick until that moment.

Which is why it would have been mentioned or hinted at the first time they met. Was it?

And in theory, the GI and Clara do cancel each other out because their meddling happens in each instance all at once. How she knows what to do is because she filtered through the Doc's timeline to get there. It's ingrained in each one of her incarnations.

She basically Quantum Leaped the Doctor's life.

They don't annihilate each other's traces though. They shouldn't anyway.

As for her filtering through...I thought that she was a bunch of echoes at each point in time? Either way, it doesn't matter, so did the Great Intelligence. Yet it somehow lost to the puny human...every time.

[Arimai]

Interesting. I will definitely keep an eye on this. I lost my comp 6 months ago and I have just gotten an new one. I could not remember my old account so i mad a new one. Hello SD.Net I'm back.

P.S. What are the commands in this forum again? Quotes, links, also how do I change the color to a less painful (being literal) scheme?

[jwl]

It seems to me like the "source" saw a leak of the name of the doctor and guessed hurt was a regeneration between eight and nine, when he doesn't necessarily have to be. He could be an aged eighth doctor, a doctor between two and three, a doctor before one (maybe the other), a future doctor, some kind of wacky metacrisis-type doctor who later fused together with the current one again, grandfather paradox, a regeneration of the doctor that got somehow reversed by something similar to last of the time lords, among other things.

[jwl]

Come to think of, recently we've had various times when the faces of the Doctor have been shown in sequence (people chasing Prisoner Zero comes to mind as just one, as well as Mr Clever's presence in the Doctor's head).
None of these featured The NotDoctor.

So yeah, this is a bit of a retcon and would have been much smoother if they just had given McGann a call.

Mr Clever wouldn't have meant much anyway because that was the doctor deliberately giving away memories he firewalled. He can easily not broadcast one.

[Havok]

This really isn't that hard. If this guy is the Doctor that fought the Time War then no one has ever met him outside the Time War because the Time War is "time locked".
8 is the incarnation that entered and 9 is the incarnation that left. It is effectively like John Hurt (8 1/2?) didn't exist. He only exists in the Time War and in the Doctor's mind so there are not going to be any recordings of him, no sightings, no one he saved, no companions.

For all we know 8 1/2 could be the Master since he was taken back into the Time War in 10's last episode. Having the Master, who saved the Doctor before being taken back into the Time War, somehow merge with 8 to become 8 1/2 makes all the sense in the world because he would then have the Doctor's courage to stay and fight (something the Master didn't have the first time) and the Master's ruthlessness to do what needed to be done which the Doctor doesn't have.
It would also explain why the Doctor doesn't acknowledge him as the Doctor, yet still say he is him.

Of course then you have to explain why 10 doesn't acknowledge this, but you can just say that 8 1/2 and 9 blocked it from him somehow so that his actions wouldn't be altered. You could even go as far as saying they willingly had the memory wiped and then you could have a cool story about 11 discovering the Master part.

[Stark]

Is the Time War more locked now than it was in season one where people knew about it?

DISCLAIMER - 'time locked' is stupid plot weasel bullshit btw

[Havok]

Well of course it is. But it is there. I also don't think "Time Locked" ever meant "Time Secret". I'm working with what I got man.

The other thing that occurs to me is that the Master goes back the day that the Doctor is supposed to use the "Moment". So linearly, there is only a small amount of time that anything could happen. The "Moment" could have something to do with the Doctor and Master merging and then it ends up that the Time Lords caused their own deaths after all.

[Stark]

If there's one thing we need, it's more changes to the end of the time war. They've done nothing but improve drama so far, after all.

[Havok]

I would prefer that the Time War never gets explored at all and just leave it as angst, guilt and regret for Eccleston and lesser actors to emote about, however, they are obviously going to play around in it now.

[Stark]

The phrase you were looking for was 'clumsily plunder'. Remember that time a cackling moron turned up from the time war and it was hilariously awful?

No not that time. The OTHER time.

[mr friendly guy]

The Time War has lots of storytelling potential and I would be interested in seeing what happened if the creative team was good.

Unfortunately I have my doubts about whether the current crop of writers can pull it off and they would most probably turn something that should be epic into rubbish. That being said since they plumbed the depths of creative bankruptcy it can't hurt too much to explore the Time War.

[Alkaloid]

Aye, I like the idea that the 8th regeneration died early in the time war, and the one that came back knew he was going to do things so terrible during it that he refused to use the name that he had chosen for himself to associate with them. I think there's potential for a good story there. I just don't think this writing team has any more chance than a dyslexic earthworm of pulling it off.

[Gandalf]

Why are people so nuts about wanting to see the Time War? Is the idea that the violence will make their favoured shows more masculine, thus making them more masculine? Aside from the Doctor's "push the button" moment at the end, which was basically done in Parting of The Ways, what's the point?

[Havok]

The point in this thread is that none of us want to see the Time War Gandalf. There is nothing we can do about it at this point.

[Stark]

WE don't, but someone does. Just like people wanted Davros back, and wanted to bring back the Time Lords, and shit like that. That the time war has been been as interesting as it was before the first season even aired isn't a mystery.

[Starglider]

Why are people so nuts about wanting to see the Time War? Is the idea that the violence will make their favoured shows more masculine, thus making them more masculine? Aside from the Doctor's "push the button" moment at the end, which was basically done in Parting of The Ways, what's the point?

Personally I would like to see more of Time Lord society and culture, the progression from denial to proportionate reaction to eventually becoming twisted and desperate, maybe some crazy and interesting gambits used in a war that barely makes sense in linear terms. However the writing would have to be substantially better than 'the end of time' to make this worthwhile.

[mr friendly guy]

Why are people so nuts about wanting to see the Time War? Is the idea that the violence will make their favoured shows more masculine, thus making them more masculine? Aside from the Doctor's "push the button" moment at the end, which was basically done in Parting of The Ways, what's the point?

I think we should ask why people are interested in seeing the Time War in general or the Time War as done with the same creative flair as the current team. I don't think anyone here gives a damn about the latter. For the former I think it could have storytelling potential in the sense that it should have been an epic confrontation between two great powers, who actually fight a war where you can change history the way Enterprise wished it could have done. Plus it can answer a lot of questions which RTD deliberately left vague when he left.

[Starglider]

Plus it can answer a lot of questions which RTD deliberately left vague when he left.

RTD left it vauge because for once, he admitted his limitations and knew that vauge cool-sounding terms ('nightmare child' etc) conjured better imagery in the imaginations of the viewers than he could ever hope to put on screen.

For the former I think it could have storytelling potential in the sense that it should have been an epic confrontation between two great powers, who actually fight a war where you can change history the way Enterprise wished it could have done.

We absolutely do not need an attempt at giving a full picture of the war, Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine style. Doctor Who is just not set up as a franchise to give that anything like the depth, detail or cohesiveness it needs. What would work well (given reasonable writing) is having a season arc related to the fallout of the war, with each 'arc episode' containing flashbacks giving little vignettes into the time war. Viewers could get an impression of it without having to make the whole thing comprehensible (and thus dumbed down).

[Scrib]

How is the Time War not going to end up being a bigger version of the Asylum of the Daleks? Seriously, all I heard was how the story could never live up to the premise there, and now we want to put the Time War on screen?

[mr friendly guy]

RTD left it vauge because for once, he admitted his limitations and knew that vauge cool-sounding terms ('nightmare child' etc) conjured better imagery in the imaginations of the viewers than he could ever hope to put on screen.

I knew he deliberately left it vague because he felt it would be better than putting it on screen. Obviously that would depend on how well the productive team does. Not that I have much faith in the current or previous batch, so it was most probably the right decision not to. Or maybe not to even hint at such things in the first place.

We absolutely do not need an attempt at giving a full picture of the war, Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine style. Doctor Who is just not set up as a franchise to give that anything like the depth, detail or cohesiveness it needs. What would work well (given reasonable writing) is having a season arc related to the fallout of the war, with each 'arc episode' containing flashbacks giving little vignettes into the time war. Viewers could get an impression of it without having to make the whole thing comprehensible (and thus dumbed down).

I am not sure you need a B5 or DS9 style to give a better impression of what happened. For example the show could have the Doctor's adventures, but not the whole war and bits of pieces of what is happening elsewhere is hinted at. Eventually some spin off material like a source book would start filling in the gaps, just like how they have been doing with current source books.

I am just going to reiterate that I am pretty ambivalent towards the current creative team exploring the Time War, but realise it could have great potential if done right. I am just not hopeful.

[Batman]

If I have to buy source books to understand what's going on in a TV series, you're doing it wrong. It's a TV series. Everything required to understand the TV series should be in the TV series. The source books expanding on it is perfectly fine. Me having to buy them to understand what the hell is going on is not.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The thing is, the Doctor was hardly the only person fighting the Time War, so you can show his actions as a small subset of the overall conflict without having to show every detail.

[Stark]

If the writers weren't hacks they could certainly do as Starglider suggested (perhaps with a year devoted to stories about people investigating, finding or otherwise being affected by Time War fallout and having their brains exploded/need to be saved/having their preconceptions challenged/etc) but this probably would have been a better idea five fucking years ago. Doing it now would probably have to build on the filth they've vomited over the audience, when writing for Doctor Who is like trying to build a lego castle with lego blocks made of shit.

There's heaps of scope in the vague ideas, and you certainly don't have to explicitly cover the war in some kind of documentary or clumsily linear way. It's just... well... DW writing is so bad it can kill.

The real question is, would an arc about the time war written by bad writers actually be any worse than an arc about anything else written by bad writers? While it would suck because it'd ruin the cool vagueness like all the other horrid time war stories, I doubt the episodes themselves would be especially bad.