posted
Fanwank! See the "Dimensions in Time" special for how poorly that would look. Only Pertwee was able to look convincing, with everyone else getting fat and/or bald. Love the actors, but there IS a limit on credibility, in this current series even moreso.
I wouldn't want any previous Doctors unless they looked like they still could when they WERE the Doctor... And that basically leaves 8 and 9 at this point. McGann is willing to entertain the possibility (there was no "last" story with him, so theorhetically he could play the doctor at any time), but Eccleston apparently hated his time as the Doctor and for the present is not interested in doing anything related to it ever again.
Personally, I'd like to see a feature film or TV special with McGann, which would cover the Time War itself. The actor certainly has the chops, and I'd like to finish it with a regeneration (but not seeing Eccleston), since we know what happens next anyway.
posted
Here's Peter, a year and a half ago when he met the then-new David Tennant on set for "The Christmas Invasion":
And here's how he looked in 1980, when he first took the role:
I'd say he's in pretty good shape for a man of 57. He could play a Doctor of age 57 - but not his fifth Doctor when he was still 30. And have you heard his voice in the audio plays? It's a good half octave lower and much gravelier than it was a quarter century ago.
As for Troughton's appearance in "The Two Doctors", I personally explain it away with the popular fandom "Season 6B" theory: that after his capture and conviction by the Time Lords, he actually went on for a couple centuries doing their dirty work - including his three appearances in the multi-Doctor stories - before being exiled to Earth. This explains how he (and Jamie!) managed to look so much older by the time he met his sixth incarnation, as well as dealing with a number of plot holes (not the least of which was Troughton's refusal to dye his hair for his last appearance).
I was 3 years old in 1973. I can remember 1973. This show is even being marketed at people my age. But I haven't seen it. I'm pondering whether to splash out �15 on the DVD, or spend the next week getting a 4GB torrent off the net. Before the new series - dammit, no way can you call this a season! - starts.
"Life On Mars" is the best cop drama I've ever seen. That it's about a time travelling / comatose / nutcase cop who wakes up in 1973 is almost secondary. See the link for my thoughts on the first series. The second and final series begins in a matter of days!
quote: I was 3 years old in 1973. I can remember 1973. This show is even being marketed at people my age. But I haven't seen it. I'm pondering whether to splash out �15 on the DVD, or spend the next week getting a 4GB torrent off the net.
Get the DVDs. The commentaries are pretty interesting, as is the behind the scenes stuff. Can't wait for the next series, this is easily the best sci-fi/cop/time travel drama ever made. No, really.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Torrented it (in the end, only took two and a half days, running my laptop for that long probably cost about �15 in electricity, bastard British Gas), watched, then saw last night's ep. And got the power up and won the game for good measure. The phone call at the end could be a way of moving away from the "he's in a coma" angle that was really at the fore in this ep.
posted
Sorry to bring this topic up again after so many months, but after watching Mark's YouTube links to the series 3 trailers, something kinda bugged me about this whole "Master No. Six" thing.
According to my count, there seem to be either five or six Masters, depending on your point of view (Note: I'm only using the televised material).
Master No. 1. Roger Delgado. This is the first time we see the Master.
Master No. 2. Peter Pratt. This is the guy who wore the horribly disfigured Master costume in "The Deadly Assassin." Here's the problem: Chancellor Goth explicitly stated that he'd found the Master in that state, dying on some planet because he'd run out of regenerations. Until now, I'd always assumed that the "horribly disfigured" Master was supposed to be Roger Delgado's Master, and that RD was the 13th regeneration. But unless there was some line in the Pertwee era that stated otherwise, apparently Peter Pratt's Master was actually the final 13th incarnation, and RD's Master was perhaps the 12th (Note: There was some other guy playing the disfigured Master in "Keeper of Traken" but it's obviously supposed to be the same incarnation).
Master No. 3. Anthony Ainley. He's actually Nyssa's father Tremas, who's body the disfigured Master stole. Why he became younger, and with different clothes and already-styled hair & goatee automatically coming into existence, we'll never know.
Master No. 4. Eric Roberts. I'm going under the assumption that the person the Daleks executed on Skaro in the TV movie was supposed to be Anthony Ainley's Master (although it wasn't Ainley playing him, but you couldn't see his face, so who cares?) And the less said about Eric Roberts, the better.
Master No. 5. Derek Jacobi?
Master No. 6. John Simm?
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
The idea is that "Master No. Six" refers to the sixth ACTOR to play the role; that the second guy to play the crispy Master does indeed count even if it's intended to be the same character. Inasmuch as there have been three actors to play Davros, etc.
As for which incarnation of the Master we may or may not be encountering, it could be up to the twentieth depending on how you think of it. Most fandom accepts that Delgado was the thirteenth and final NATURAL incarnation of the Master. At some point, he was wounded or otherwise forced a regeneration upon himself and got the monster case of excema. That's fourteen, unless you think that it's still Delgado underneath the crispy exterior and that's just how Time Lords look if they get too old.
Next, some count the "Traken" version of the Master as a separate incarnation (as walking corpses go he DID look completely different and the personality was also different due to the actor's take on the character), so that could be fifteen. Ainley would therefore be sixteen. At the top of the TV Movie, a bearded figure is executed by the Daleks, but even if his face is obscured (his eyes at the time may not have been unlike the cat's eyes he developed in "Survival", but it IS another actor under the koopa hood), he's clearly younger and thinner than Ainley was when he was last seen in Perivale. It's not inconceivable that the Master had found a way to regenerate again. Seventeen.
Finally, if you count the slimy snake thing as a brief incarnation , the camp Master in the TV movie could be the eighteenth or ninteenth Master. Fast forward to John Simm. QED.
posted
Indeed. The only way logically for this 'Master No. Six' business to actually fit with the available facts is it it's the Master from early on in his personal timeline, a regeneration prior to that of Delgado. But again, that's not been how they've portrayed things with Timelords previously so even that has problems. The most realistic explanation is that Saxon isn't the Master...
Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Ah, but for the most part the Doctor and various other Time Lords have been locked into concurrent time lines - they don't bump into each other from past or future versions of themselves except in extreme circumstances. My personal theory is that the time streams of advanced time-travelling races are somehow outside of linear time; so whenever they encounter each other it's always in a linear format. This is why the Doctor is always coming back to Gallifrey AFTER the last time he was there (except for "The Five Doctors"), and why he keeps running into Davros as he gets perpetually more pissed off. The novels throw this out the window, but I'm not counting them.
quote:The idea is that "Master No. Six" refers to the sixth ACTOR to play the role; that the second guy to play the crispy Master does indeed count even if it's intended to be the same character. Inasmuch as there have been three actors to play Davros, etc.
But that wouldn't work. That would make it:
1. Roger Delgado 2. Peter Pratt 3. Geoffrey Beevers (the second guy to play crispy Master) 4. Anthony Ainley 5. Gordon Tipple (executed Master at start of TV movie) 6. Eric Roberts 7. Derek Jacobi? 8. John Simm?
So Master No. Six would be Eric Roberts (unless they just aren't counting number 5. But even then, John Simm would be either Master No. 7 or 8, if Jacobi is also an incarnation.
Personally, I think my theory works. Peter Pratt's disfigured Master acts nothing like Roger Delgado, and is way more vicious and demented than RD ever was (of course, looking like a walking corpse will do that to you...), so I think he's a separate incarnation.
Registered: Jun 2000
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Maybe they are counting in Gallifreyan Number Base where 7 or 8 or 20 = 6 numerically....yeah...that's the ticket.
So....as numerology goes, with Six representing evil, will this be the most dastardly of Masters?
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
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