-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
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Eccleston continues to be a bit of a grumpy pants about Doctor Who. Apparently Moffat met with him to try and persuade him to appear in "Day of the Doctor", but he said no. Shame. I'd have liked to have seen the less patient 9th Doctor deal with the slightly goofier 10th and 11th versions.
And no, we don't need to rename the numbering system. As Hurt said, "Doctor no more". He's something else.
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That seems like it would be even more wrong. I mean, he's still the ninth incarnation of the guy who is normally known as "the Doctor". If you changed your name for a year, then changed it back, you couldn't say, for example, "today is Liam's thirty-fifth birthday" when you turn thirty-six, claiming that one of them didn't count because you weren't "Liam" during it.
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I'm with TSN. Just because John Hurt's incarnation is one that his future incarnations are not proud of, how does that affect the regeneration cycle in any way? He's still technically the ninth regeneration. Although they'll probably come up with some bullcrap to explain it away, just like they did with the Valeyard (i.e. as originally envisioned, the Valeyard was supposed to be the Doctor's final incarnation, who had gone insane like the Master did in "Deadly Assassin" because he was out of regenerations).
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The thing is with the whole regenerations thing, we may have been presented by another way out of the whole scenario...in that this regeneration is a bit more unique, in that The Doctor died and was resurrected by the Sisterhood before it could happen. You've got the potential there for calling Hurt the first regeneration of a new cycle.
With The Valeyard, it wasn't as simple as him being the final incarnation...but rather an incarnation somewhere between the 12th and 13th incarnation. This could be anything from another "Not the Doctor" regeneration, to another incarnation akin to The Watcher that existed between Tom Baker and Peter Davison.
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Of course, now that they've stuck Hurt in there, the Valeyard ought to exist between Smith and Capaldi, so they'll have to address it in the Christmas special if they don't ignore it. I mean, it would probably get awkward for them to address it directly and have to explain what's going on. But, frankly, I'd be happy enough if they just do something like, say, during all the regeneration glowing and whatnot, we sort of vaguely see the Doctor split in two, and then one of them just disappears. We can assume that was the Valeyard and something transported him off to wherever so that "Trial of a Time Lord" could happen later. That is to say, we don't need to explicitly see the Valeyard, but I hope they'll at least add something in there to make it implicit.
Of course, this is all assuming they don't kick the issue down the road by retroactively making Hurt's Doctor never exist or something.
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: That seems like it would be even more wrong. I mean, he's still the ninth incarnation of the guy who is normally known as "the Doctor". If you changed your name for a year, then changed it back, you couldn't say, for example, "today is Liam's thirty-fifth birthday" when you turn thirty-six, claiming that one of them didn't count because you weren't "Liam" during it.
But that's the whole point. The show, especially recently, has made a big deal about how he calls himself the "Doctor" as a deliberate choice, because he wants to be the "man who helps people". It's partly his name, but also partly his job, his calling, who he is on the inside. Therefore although John Hurt is playing a regeneration of the same character first played by William Hartnell, he is playing a version who ISN'T the Doctor.
Let's say his real name is Ian Who. Hartnell played a person who's real name was Ian Who. Ian Who liked to be called "The Doctor". When he regenerated, he was still Ian Who, and still liked to be called "The Doctor". Same for Pertwee and so on.
This regeneration is different. Although he is still Ian Who, he has chosen NOT to be the Doctor, because the person who he defines as being The Doctor doesn't have what it takes. So he is the 9th incarnation of Ian Who, but he is not the 9th Doctor. Eccleston plays the 9th Doctor, but the 10th incarnation of Ian Who. (And if you watch season 1, I think it ties in with this well. The 9th Doctor appears to have surviror's guilt and possibly PTSD. He's a passive character, making others save the day rather than directly doing so himself. It's like he's earning permission to be "The Doctor" again. And when he dies, his redemption is complete and he regenerates into a person who immediately starts shouting at the bag guys and sword fighting in order to save the day.)
Anyway, that's why I don't think we have to renumber the Doctor's. Tennant is still the 10th Doctor, Smith the 11th. There's just another regeneration of Ian Who in the middle who is not the Doctor.
Of course, fans being what they are, they are slightly more obsessed with "DOES THIS COUNT AS A REGENERATION!?" And I think you could argue that both ways. It was artificially bought on, after all. And if we're going to count regeneration, there are plently of others that also save suspicious moments that you could use to discount them (the second Doctor saying that his was "part of the TARDIS", the third being a forced "change of appearance" by the Time Lords, whatever that crap with the Watcher was, the meta-crisis Doctor, hell, Hundrell's Doctor if you really wanted to be picky) We could probably pick a figure between 6 and 14 and argue that as the number of properly used regenerations.
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: ...as originally envisioned, the Valeyard was supposed to be the Doctor's final incarnation, who had gone insane like the Master did in "Deadly Assassin" because he was out of regenerations.
That may be the original intention, but that's not what is actually said in the episode. The quote is
"There is some evil in all of us, Doctor – even you. The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation, and I may say you do not improve with age."
So, it's not between 12th and 13th. It's between 12th and final. So since the Doctor is almost certainly going to have more than 13 incarnations we've got YEARS for the production staff to figure out a way of making him interesting. (Never mind that 12th incarnation can refer to "the 12th Doctor" or, to go back to my original line, "the 12th Ian Who", which would be the 13th Doctor...)
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: That may be the original intention, but that's not what is actually said in the episode. The quote is
"There is some evil in all of us, Doctor – even you. The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your twelfth and final incarnation, and I may say you do not improve with age."
So, it's not between 12th and 13th. It's between 12th and final. So since the Doctor is almost certainly going to have more than 13 incarnations we've got YEARS for the production staff to figure out a way of making him interesting.
Yes, I know all that. That was my point, that they were originally going to have the Valeyard be the Doctor's 13th life, but instead they decided that they didn't want the Doctor to be evil, so they made up some BS about "an amalgamation of the darker side of his nature," which totally absolves the Doctor of any wrongdoing (and a complete cop-out, IMHO...they didn't even bother to explain what the hell that even meant or how the Valeyard was even created. They could have just said that he was the Doctor from a evil parallel universe where the Brigadier wears an eyepatch and Spock wears a goatee and it would have made better sense). Now compare that to what we're talking about with John Hurt. Instead of just owning up to the fact that JH is the 9th Doctor who we previously thought was Eccleston, and that he was a very bad person who did very bad things, it sounds like Moffatt is making another cop-out like back in "Trial of a Time Lord."
Oh, and BTW, the quote about the Valeyard existing between the Doctor's 12th and "final" incarnation: In the context of TOATL, "final" is obviously supposed to mean 13th life. To say that "final" actually means, say, life #507, is just semantics.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: We could probably pick a figure between 6 and 14 and argue that as the number of properly used re generations
Strictly speaking, from onscreen evidence the upper limit would be at least 21 regenerations or so, given that the images (or at least some of them) shown during the Doctor and Morbius's "Mindbending contest" were (and I always thought this without being told by the commentaries) meant to be previous incarnations of "Ian Who".
Also, Richard Hurndal's doctor was clearly meant to be the same as William Hartnell's and was a casting issue due to the laters inability to be there, although arguably so was Patrick Troughton. Oh it's all so confusing!
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
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quote:Originally posted by The Ginger Beacon: Strictly speaking, from onscreen evidence the upper limit would be at least 21 regenerations or so, given that the images (or at least some of them) shown during the Doctor and Morbius's "Mindbending contest" were (and I always thought this without being told by the commentaries) meant to be previous incarnations of "Ian Who".
True. And fans (and production staff) have ignored that for years, despite it clearly being the intention of the program makers at the time (which itself possibly contradicted "The Three Doctors"). Fans are perfectly capable of ignoring certain things, like the Pertwee Doc being thousands of years old, or the Federation conquering the Klingons before TNG...
(And yeah, Hundrell is supposed to be Hartnell. Having watched some First Doctor stuff recently, he isn't actually that much like him, though.)
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: Instead of just owning up to the fact that JH is the 9th Doctor who we previously thought was Eccleston, and that he was a very bad person who did very bad things, it sounds like Moffatt is making another cop-out like back in "Trial of a Time Lord."
Oh, and BTW, the quote about the Valeyard existing between the Doctor's 12th and "final" incarnation: In the context of TOATL, "final" is obviously supposed to mean 13th life. To say that "final" actually means, say, life #507, is just semantics.
I don't think it is a cop out. The Valeyard was, because they had an idea for a character and changed their mind half way through. Hurt's Doctor is the whole story pitch. "If he calls himself the Doctor because he wants to help, what happens if there's an incarnation who doesn't want to be 'The Doctor'" He's not just a missing incarnation, he's the one who went against what the character is supposed to be about. As I said, the show has made repeated references to his name being something deliberatly chosen, so having an incarnation who didn't want the name isn't something that's just been pulled out of Moffat's arse.
And yeah, the production staff clearly meant "final" to mean "13th". But that's not what they said. Fans and production teams have worked around flimsier permises than that.
Of course, we'll all know more in a few hours. And I can't watch it, because the wife is away at a conference and my Who watching friends are at the Thought Bubble convention in Leeds. Damn their eyes!
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
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If the show's too scary to watch by yourself, there's always the back of the couch, right?
Anyway, even aside from the fact that they obviously meant for "final" to indicate "thirteenth", there's the fact that, if "final" meant something else, no-one talks like that. It makes perfect sense to say "between the twelfth and final" in a system where the final thing is generally known to be the thirteenth one. It also would have made sense to have told the Doctor that the Valeyard exists somewhere between his current incarnation and his last one. But to basically say "yeah, I'll tell you specifically that you've got at least six more bodies to go through before you have to worry about him, and he'll obviously show up before you die forever, but I'm going to be incredibly vague about where in that time he'll exist" would be ridiculous. It would be like giving someone directions to a house and saying it's between the twelfth and last houses on the block when there are twenty houses.
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