[number3fac]

I don't see that for Davies.

Season 1: Two words--ontological paradox.  Or "Bad Wolf", but it's the same thing.  Moffat gets a lot of attention for all the time-split shenanigans these days (sometimes good, sometimes bad), but this was a good realization of the idea.  The Soul of the Time Vortex/TARDIS (acting through Rose) sees the Bad Wolf phrase on the station, knows that Rose saw it throughout her travels and in the past as a message to open up the TARDIS, so she takes the words and spreads it across time and space so that Rose will see it throughout her travels so that she can open up the TARDIS so that the Soul of the Time Vortex/TARDIS will come to the station, save the Doctor, see the Bad Wolf phrase, and spread it across time and space so that Rose will see it....etc.  It's a form of stable time-loop, being its own beginning and end and therefore resolved, even if it is with a literal handwave.

Season 4: In the Library episodes, Donna gets teleported into the mainframe, where she's made to forget everything about her life with the Doctor and goes on to have a happy life.  In the Agatha Christie episode, A.C. (who the Doctor lauds as a woman with an acute perspective on fully-human matters) had a grandiose adventure with the Doctor but then found herself robbed of all memories of these events, yet still continued on with her life and even had small bits come out in some of her prose.  This is Chekhov's gun for the big finale, where Donna (our all-too-human-perspective "Earth Girl" as foil for the Doctor's weird-alien "Space Man") loses all her memory of the Doctor and her adventure(s) with him but at least goes on to have a good life even with little bits of her Time-Lord consciousness leaking out later.

As for Moffat...

Well, unfortunately I can't defend (or even explain) much of what's going on.  It does look to me like he's littered the landscape with a ton of scenes and dialogue that could all be used as Chekhov-gun hints for what's going to happen, but I actually see that as poor plotting--I don't know that he actually has a firm plan in mind, but because he's got all this random junk strewn about he could cobble together just about anything for a grand finale and *claim* that it's something that he'd been building to all this time.  An easy example: in the Pandorica Opens, the Van Gogh painting sets everything in motion, but it only comes to the Doctor's attention through River's actions.  But at this point, Rory's been erased from history--presumably both past and future, so that he could never get Amy pregnant, which means that River should no longer exist.  Furthermore, after the Big Bang 2 reboot, the Doctor and the cracks should no longer exist in the universe, which means that Rory and Amy won't be celebrating their honeymoon on the TARDIS, so again River shouldn't exist--or at least not in such a way that she'd be able to visit their wedding and drop off her book.  All this suggests that Moffat really didn't have a complete idea of who River was during season 5; he dropped hints about her killing someone (easily guessed to be the Doctor himself), but apart from that and her previously-established flirting/out-of-sequence-ness with the Doctor there still wasn't anything more.  I expect the entire storyline of her being the Ponds' daughter was entirely invented for season 6, though I honestly don't see why other than to add "domestic" drama to the TARDIS...which I simply don't care for, and obviously I'm not thrilled with the fact that it makes those previous adventures unresolvably complicated.  All this on top of the plotline where River kills the Doctor as a fixed point against some future calamity around his name (which is even more convoluted reasoning).

And even the season 6 stuff isn't where it began...consider in season 5, after Rory gets crack-eaten: if Rory truly never existed, then the Doctor would not have been able to alert the Atraxi to all of Prisoner Zero's forms, which meant he had no way of getting the Atraxi to finally locate it, and thus the Earth would've been burned along with the Doctor and Amy.  So either there's some other convoluted explanation for how the Eleventh Hour was resolved (which is never offered, of course), or the Crack doesn't operate in the way we've repeatedly been told it operates (an explanation for which is also never offered).  Getting hung up on it is futile, because at this point it doesn't seem like Moffat has even the slightest inclination to really, fully, and coherently explain all this stuff.  It still annoys me because I prefer my scifi (even those that lean heavily into semi-fantasy territory like Who frequently does) to at least attempt some consistency.

Anyway, as for Amy and the Crack...probably the best analogy I read for this is to think of Amy's mind as a USB drive for the computer that is the Universe.  The exploding TARDIS caused the Universe to require a reboot, so the Doctor saved himself and all his adventures up to when he flew off in the Pandorica (and somehow the un-exploded TARDIS too) into young Amy's mind (the USB drive, password-protected with the Wedding Rhyme).  The Universe rebooted, and when grown Amy thought of the Wedding Rhyme all the saved data (the Doctor and his adventures) was accessed and imported to the system.  So up until the wedding reception, Amy and Rory are both flesh-and-blood humans (as they were at the beginning of the Eleventh Hour) with a full, ordinary life in the rebooted system (Amy now has a history where she grew up with her parents, even though apparently she has EXACTLY the same personality, because having parents is no different from having no parents, right?  ).  But when the Wedding Rhyme gets cued, the Doctor gets installed from the USB drive with his TARDIS, and somehow all the rest of that saved data gets imprinted onto Amy, Rory, and River so that Rory remembers being a 2000 year old plastic Roman (even though he's none of those things anymore), River's book is now full of adventures with the Doctor (getting past the idea that she shouldn't even exist without the Doctor in Amy and Rory's lives...), and Amy...is STILL the EXACT same person even though she now supposedly remembers two completely different personal histories.  So...yeah, you can probably guess that I'm not thrilled with Amy.  I like the actress and there's been good scenes and dialogue, but I never got a good sense of her as a person and the fact that she didn't change one bit even with a drastic alteration to her personal history didn't help.

So far, I'm happier with Clara...not even considering her reincarnation-history, I felt that they did a better job establishing her character in the first two episodes with her attachment to the family she's living with and the flashbacks to her mother.  It's both deepened the mystery (as it seems that she's just an ordinary girl despite the other incarnations) while also demonstrating who she is, what she cares about, and why she cares about it, which is more than I feel we ever got with Amy.  I'm not sure what the payoff for Clara will be, but I'm still hoping it's good.

[MunchWolf]

Speaking of Chekhov guns .... they still haven't explained why the Tardis exploded ... but they showed in Journey to the Center of the Tardis how it could explode (even though they managed to undo it mid-explosion).  I think either this season ender, or the next one, will have the beginning of the Tardis explosion which completed in The Big Bang ... and then he makes a new Tardis, which was seen in The Lodger.

-Munch "he's doing the whole 11th Doctor episodes backwards" Wolf

[Breasts]

Ok that was kinda epic! 
Awesome seeing all the previous Doctors too!

[Starscream]

Ok that was kinda epic! 
Awesome seeing all the previous Doctors too!

I'm new to the whole Doctor Who thing, started with the 2005 series. This episode made me want to see the old ones but man they are hard to find.
As for this episode, nice handling of his name thing, there was set up for the 50th anniversary if you use Who-logic... And that ending.... DAFUQ!?

[Breasts]

I'm new to the whole Doctor Who thing, started with the 2005 series. This episode made me want to see the old ones but man they are hard to find.
As for this episode, nice handling of his name thing, there was set up for the 50th anniversary if you use Who-logic... And that ending.... DAFUQ!?

Well worth checking as many as you can out as it's been going 50 years for a good reason. Oh and this'll be well worth a watch for you if you've not seen it. http://youtu.be/iN5jPQdJXYE

And yes very much a wtf ending 

[salem]

Overall I have to say that I was happier with this series than the previous two. A better mix of stories, more diverse storytelling. On the whole, loved it, and Matt Smith is brilliant as the Doctor. he showed just how good an actor he truly is in last night's episode.

As for the ending, in a way it makes sense, given that there is one regeneration that we never saw, it is very plausible. Something from the Doctor's past that he is definitely not proud of and has repressed. Bring on the 50th anniversary!

Lovely to see old Doctors, and the beginning was terrific! A great way to use the episode to look forward AND back.

[rtpoe]

Just saw "The Rings of Ahkaten" (yeah, I'm behind - never had cable, so I'm watching the illegally posted online videos).

Not a bad story. A wonderful idea, decently executed. Clara got to show how independent she is, and that The Doctor really does need a Companion who can think and act on their own. Perhaps overly sentimental, but that's the way things roll with New Who.

In "Rings", you've got a religion/cult that sings a lullaby to a godlike being (that appears as a dwarf star) so it won't suck their "souls" away. The Doctor offers his own memories and experiences ("A man is the sum of his memories you know, a Time Lord even more so." - Peter Davison in "The Five Doctors") in the hopes that he will sate the being. Matt Smith gets a great little speech, and the day is saved.

That's "New Who". Sentimentality, religion, mysticism.... "Classic Who" is more scientific. I figure the same story would have gone something like this:

A race or races builds a number of settlements/outposts/tourist resorts in the ring system around a dwarf star. It's such an awesome view, what with the turbulence visible in the star. For safety, they install some sort of computer AI system to control and moderate the very dangerous flares of the star. Over the centuries, the maintenance of the AI system has taken on aspects of a religious cult with all its rituals. The "changing of the guard" ceremony becomes a huge tourist draw, so The Doctor brings Clara to one to show her the "something amazing" that she asked for. But this time, something goes wrong, and the system starts to fail just as a flare starts. The Doctor has to fix everything before everyone is destroyed.

Anyway, I still think the story was rather well done. Matt Smith seems to have matured (in more ways than one) in the role. This old Whovian is content.

[Cris_H]

Why didn't the TARDIS translate what all the aliens were saying, including the salesbeing that sold them the transport?

(Yeah, I know: Eliza already asked this question on a previous page of this thread.  Sorry, I still find it odd)

[number3fac]

Why didn't the TARDIS translate what all the aliens were saying, including the salesbeing that sold them the transport?
(Yeah, I know: Eliza already asked this question on a previous page of this thread.  Sorry, I still find it odd)

Well, Clara seems to think the TARDIS doesn't like her and that's also shown in later episodes, so apparently it didn't share the translation with her outside of the "necessary" conversations she had with the Queen.  Although even with the Big Reveal of Clara's Secret in the finale, there's still no good explanation as to *why* the TARDIS doesn't like her, and only Moffat knows if we'll get one.  To be fair, the TARDIS didn't translate the Hath language for Martha in "The Doctor's Daughter" so it has happened before, even though it was a bit more plausible there because of the water-breather doohickeys they had.

In "Rings", you've got a religion/cult that sings a lullaby to a godlike being (that appears as a dwarf star) so it won't suck their "souls" away. The Doctor offers his own memories and experiences ("A man is the sum of his memories you know, a Time Lord even more so." - Peter Davison in "The Five Doctors") in the hopes that he will sate the being. Matt Smith gets a great little speech, and the day is saved.

That's "New Who". Sentimentality, religion, mysticism.... "Classic Who" is more scientific. I figure the same story would have gone something like this:

A race or races builds a number of settlements/outposts/tourist resorts in the ring system around a dwarf star. It's such an awesome view, what with the turbulence visible in the star. For safety, they install some sort of computer AI system to control and moderate the very dangerous flares of the star. Over the centuries, the maintenance of the AI system has taken on aspects of a religious cult with all its rituals. The "changing of the guard" ceremony becomes a huge tourist draw, so The Doctor brings Clara to one to show her the "something amazing" that she asked for. But this time, something goes wrong, and the system starts to fail just as a flare starts. The Doctor has to fix everything before everyone is destroyed.

Anyway, I still think the story was rather well done. Matt Smith seems to have matured (in more ways than one) in the role. This old Whovian is content.

Well, don't forget that old Who had psychic-feeding beings like the Mara too, who was defeated (I think) with its own mirrored reflection...not exactly scientific.  Point being that classic Who had the potential to be just as quasi-magical as science-fictional, and how much you got of one or the other depended on the writers and/or showrunners.  I recently read through the blog formerly known as The TARDIS Eruditorium, whose author analyzed the cultural progression and storytelling techniques of the series from the beginning (the first post in the archives is about The Unearthly Ch!ld), and he makes a pretty good case over the course of his analysis that David Whitaker (one of the original story editors, and a writer for several of the black-and-white adventures) drew a lot of inspiration from the principles of alchemy.  There are references to the TARDIS needing mercury (an important alchemical element) to operate, and there's a story in which a Victorian alchemist actually invents a time machine using mirrors (which then happens to find Daleks).  So it could be argued that the principles of weird/kooky/crazy fantasy-land are actually a valid part of the roots of Doctor Who, just as much as amok-tech/super-sciencey sci-fi is.  Moffat's sensibilities seem to tend towards magical-fairyland, which I don't have a problem with as long as there's still some attempt at logical consistency (which...sometimes he manages very well, others not so much).

The story that you proposed, while workable as a plot, would probably involve a lot of screentime with the Doctor and Clara figuring out that the rituals, chants, and so on were all centered around a malfunctioning AI that they would have to repair over the protestations of the believers, which might make for some good tension but would take away a lot of character-establishing/developing moments for Clara, the Doctor, and their relationship.  That's passable in the classic series which didn't make a lot of effort to explore those elements, but in the new series it'd be a shortcoming.  By making the solar entity an actual creature that needed to be appeased with personal mementoes, it becomes less about "solve a technical problem" (with whatever roadblocks along the way) and more about "triumph by strength of character" (which helps us gain insight into our protagonists and invest more in their actions and adventures).  So again, it boils down to how the storytelling is being done; and in this case, I think it works even though there are some shortcomings.

[Breasts]

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22741493 

[number3fac]

Oof, already?  While I haven't been thrilled with all the craziness Moffat's put the Doctor through, Matt Smith has always managed to sell it.  I was hoping he'd be around at least until Moffat stepped aside.

[salem]

According to newspaper reports Rory Kinnear has been 'offered the role of Doctor Who by the BBC'. I'm taking it with a pinch of salt since it hasn't appeared on the BBC website, it didn't say that Steven Moffat offered him the role and last time Doctor Who was cast the newspapers also reported someone was to be the Doctor (Patterson Joseph).

Unfortunately whenever the Doctor changes (moreso now than at any time before) the press endlessly speculates and the PC brigade wants to see a black/Asian/female Doctor Who. I'm sorry but the day a Doctor Who is picked purely to satisfy the PC nuts who want equality is the day I stop watching the show.

I'm not aversed to a Black actor playing Doctor Who as long as their audition is the best one, although I would prefer it to be once the Doctor has used up his original 12 regenerations, then they can make out that once he has used them up, anything can happen. Although I'm sure if they remade Shaft with a white man it wouldn't go down well.

I would prefer not to see a female Doctor Who simply because I believe TV show characters should NEVER change gender just to make things more 'interesting'. Which they admittedly do at first just simply for the novelty value, but novelties tend to wear off after a while. So we have had a female Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, a female Dr Watson in Elementary (although you could argue that technically it is not the same character since it is John in the books and it changes to Joan in Elementary) it doesn't mmean we are ready for a female Doctor Who. Would you see a male Miss Marple?  A female Hercule Poirot?

My personal preference for Doctor Number 12 would be either Kris Marshall or Richard Coyle.

[TheZookie007]

There is nothing "PC" about wanting the Doctor to be a non-white person, or a non-male person. After all, "he" is an alien, and does not have to conform to earthly prejudices and bigotry of what he "should" look like. IIRC the Doctor was played by a white woman in one of the Christmas specials.

Casting decisions like this (I recall the same noise being made about Idris Elba playing Heimdall in the first Thor movie) prove to be more of a litmus test for the people watching the result.

[salem]

There is nothing "PC" about wanting the Doctor to be a non-white person, or a non-male person. After all, "he" is an alien, and does not have to conform to earthly prejudices and bigotry of what he "should" look like. IIRC the Doctor was played by a white woman in one of the Christmas specials.

Casting decisions like this (I recall the same noise being made about Idris Elba playing Heimdall in the first Thor movie) prove to be more of a litmus test for the people watching the result.

I have to disagree...

It is ENTIRELY the PC brigade that brings up this 'we need a black Doctor' argument every time we are due a new actor in the role. My reasoning? Because they always use the phrase 'It is TIME we had a black actor in the role'. They never state an actor who is black and give a good actual reason WHY he should be the Doctor, simply that there should be a black actor in the role. This sort of arbitrary posturing gets on my nerves.

Personally if the role was given to someone like Chiwetel Ejiofor (who I consider to be a tremendous actor who could carry off the part well) I would not be throwing a hissy fit, on the other hand, give it to a woman and I might!

It is always the same argument too for why there should be a female Doctor, always that it SHOULD be and that it is TIME we had one? Why? Unless you can give a valid reason why the Doctor should be a woman and can name a woman who can carry it off, it's just an equality exercise.

For your information, the Doctor has NEVER been played by a woman in a Christmas special. I believe you are referring to a comic sketch done for Comic Relief entitled 'The Curse of Fatal Death'. In that instance the Doctor became female after he used up his twelve regenerations. The Doctor was played then by Joanna Lumley. Incidentally, it was written by showrunner Steven Moffat himself, before he wrote for the series proper.

The Doctor is a Time-Lord, and while there was a throwaway line in 'The Doctors Wife' about a Time-Lord called Corsair who was female AND male, I simply do not think making the Doctor female would be a good idea. You have Time-Lords and you have Time-Ladies, if Time-Lords could become Time-Ladies then you would not need to use a gender description for your people, you would just be Time-People! No Lord or Lady suffix required.

Time-Lords (and Ladies) can regenerate 12 times, giving 13 incarnations. Now, given that the show is going to go on for (hopefully) some time to come it is plausible that there will be some way for our eponymous hero to regenerate again after he has done it 12 times.

OK, so what if when a Time-Lord says he has 12 regenerations and 13 lives, and he is referring in this to 13 lives of ONE gender and once he has used up those regeneration, a new life cycle begins with a DIFFERENT gender... Now that could work.. I could live with that, you would have a female Doctor and an actual REASON behind it. Then you would have 13 WOMEN playing the Doctor before it becomes male again.

Ultimately though, since Doctor Who began he has always been male, and that is how he should stay. You wouldn't make Sherlock Holmes female or Miss Marple male would you?

If the PC nuts are that intent on a female oriented Sci-Fi show, then create a new one! You could introduce a female Time-Lord (or simply bring back Romana and give her her own Spin-Off series), after all The Sarah Jane Adventures worked well enough didn't it? Why mess with a tried and tested formula like Doctor Who just because some people who barely watch the show can only find as an argument for a female Doctor the fact that it 'is time we had one'. Do me a lemon!

 

[rtpoe]

Actually, Romana does have her own "spinoff" series:

http://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/v/gallifrey

And I agree with Salem. If you want a black/female/whatever Doctor, find an actor who is black/female/whatever, and promote them for the role.

Frankly, your blathering about needing a black/female/whatever Doctor says more about you than the show.

As far as extending the cycle of regenerations, there's a precedent. In The Five Doctors, the Time Lords offered The Master a new cycle in exchange for his help. So it is possible....