Is this Spearhead From Space, cause we’re in color now

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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

115 Comments

  1. Scott
    January 20, 2014 @ 12:18 am

    I've always thought that this was something of a missed opportunity (albeit one for entirely understandable reasons), since we've had multi-Doctor episodes where the present Doctor has met his past selves but we've never had one (with the possible exceptions of the Watcher and the Valeyard) where the present Doctor has encountered one of his future selves. Perhaps more than a bit impractical I'll concede, but how cool a recurring thread would it have been throughout all of the specials to have the Tenth Doctor, the Doctor who feared his regeneration more than any of them, be constantly haunted Watcher-style by his own future incarnation rather than a prophecy or the Ood or whatever. The confrontation in "The Waters of Mars" would have been way cooler if it had been the Eleventh Doctor glaring silently at the Tenth Doctor rather than the Ood at the end, IMHO.

    It doesn't even need Matt Smith to have fully worked out a character or been given a proper costume yet — just dress in him a tatty version of the Tenth Doctor's suit and shove him on set at a crucial moment in the shadows on the sidelines.

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  2. Scott
    January 20, 2014 @ 12:19 am

    It would have also neatly resolved the dilemma Phil discusses about (how the whole actual "Next Doctor" thing just disappears from the script); Jackson Lake turns out to have been a misdirection. We actually see the real next Doctor right at the end, foreshadowing the end of the Tenth Doctor's journey.

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  3. Unknown
    January 20, 2014 @ 12:27 am

    Small typo: "the ongoing progress o Doctor Who as a cultural object in the UK at large."

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  4. John Callaghan
    January 20, 2014 @ 12:47 am

    Once he gets his sense of self back, it should have been Jackson who rescues his son, rather than the Doctor performing another needless Superman act of heroism. Even better: they find Jackson's son in peril; the Doctor rushes in like a swashbuckler; and he ends up getting trapped himself. So Jackson saves his son and the Doctor. That's the I-learnt-something-today moment of triumph the character and story seemed to be leading to.

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  5. Sean Case
    January 20, 2014 @ 12:57 am

    Let us not forget the Cybershades, which are one step away from combining a diver's helmet with a gorilla suit.

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  6. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:18 am

    Oliver Twist was something of a Christmas regular movie on TV in the UK over the decades, so child labor and workhouses is not an entirely unexpected setup for a Victorian-era Christmas story.

    In fact just the year before "The Next Doctor" aired, the BBC premiered it's 5-part adaptation of Oliver Twist on BBC 1 over December 2007.

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  7. Carey
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:23 am

    Interestingly enough, Davies himself points to The Next Doctor's shortcomings on the episodes' commentary, and solves one of them. The first problem, that of the mystery of whether David Morrissey is actually the next Doctor or not, Davies admits to fumbling because he says he actually hasn't the patience as a writer to write mysteries. he was far more interested in exploring Jackson Lake's mental state.

    The second is the ending and no, i'm not talking about a whopping steampunk Cyberman stomping over Victorian London: this is Doctor Who and that sort of thing runs through the programme like the word Blackpool through a stick of rock. If you want serious sci-fi you're watching the wrong programme. Doctor Who is, and always has been, silly. It's iconic enemy does nazi salutes with a sink plunger, for gods sake!)

    The problem with the ending is that the Doctor essentially says a few words, there's a meaningless explosion and then he points something he just picked up a few scenes before to rid London of the Cyberking. Davies realised, during the commentary, that the better way of ending the story was for Miss Hartigan, instead of simply having breakdown and blowing up the Cyberking, instead realising what a monster she has become and sending the Cyberking back into the void instead. It would have been a fitting end for her, and one more becoming of her character.

    Indeed, that is partly the problem with the story: too many ideas and not enough time to fully explore them.

    Still, we had the huge media frenzy around whether Morrissey was indeed the next Doctor (he wasn't, and neither was David) and a huge stomping steampunk Cyberman stomping over Christmas Card Victorian London. Not a bad story, all said and done. But not the best story either.

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  8. dm
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:24 am

    One can construct explanations as to why the Cybus-style Cybermen have an infostamp containing information on all ten Doctors, but anything one comes up with is a slapdash fan explanation to cover a clear gaffe

    There's definitely a line about how it was stolen from the Daleks in the void. It's a crap line, and Davies agonised over how crap it was, but it is in there.

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  9. Dave Workman
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:30 am

    "Still, we had the huge media frenzy around whether Morrissey was indeed the next Doctor (he wasn't, and neither was David)"

    Reading Morrissey's autobiography at the moment (and ejoying it despite what I'd heard), it was strangely bizarre seeing him describe his childhood television watchig, including Doctor Who and The Generation Game – I just assumed this sort of thing had completely bypassed him! He reveals he was asked to play Dot Cotton's long-lost son in Eastenders but turned it down because he couldn't see how anyone could have such a stupid idea, so I guess being asked to play the Doctor could't have been any weirder…

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  10. Whittso
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:46 am

    I thought they were great. Possibly best thing about this… nice sense of spooky steampunkiness.

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  11. Bennett
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:17 am

    "It’s hard to argue seriously that this is the nadir of the Davies era."

    I'm not going to argue seriously that this is the worst story to come out during the Davies era, but only because I don't like arguing seriously about anything.

    But I personally find it the least watchable, and least redeemable, of the entire New Series (with the possible exceptions of Aliens of London and Voyage of the Damned, depending on my mood). It putts along for a whole hour without delivering a skerrick of threat, intrigue, joy or wit until it stops. And worst of all it wastes a great idea in doing so.

    No other story has teased so much and delivered so little. About the only interesting thing I can think of is that Tennant is mistakenly credited as 'Doctor Who' for the first time since The Parting of the Ways.

    Oh, and sod the 'Christmas' defence. Just look at what we got for Christmas two years later…

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  12. Callum Leemkuil
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:26 am

    This is personally the only Doctor Who story I've ever watched that I've never been able to finish. I've tried multiple times. It's not even particularly bad, just painfully mediocre and completely uninteresting.

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  13. Kit Power
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:34 am

    Paddling in the shallow end for a second, I almost cried with joy when the giant steampunk Cyberman arrived. For the first (only?) time, I saw the Cybermen as a credible threat on a planetary level, and I thought it looked about one thousand kinds of awesome stomping over Victorian London.

    Not saying it redeems the episode or anything, but blimey it was a good moment.

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  14. Daibhid C
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:35 am

    it’s worth noting that this is a Victorian-era story about child labor and workhouses, which is, to say the least, not the most expected setup for “Victorian-era Christmas story.”

    A fact which would doubtless depress Charles Dickens, since that was the whole point.

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  15. Daibhid C
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:43 am

    Day of the Doctor comes very close to this in two different ways.

    Firstly, and most obviously, there's the quick flash of Capaldi, even though he never interacts with the three main Doctors.

    Secondly, and more interestingly, I thought the episode was structured much more as a War Doctor story guest starring Tenth and Eleventh, than as an Eleventh Doctor story guest starring Tenth and War. He's got the main storyline, the others enter his timeframe initially, he even gets the character thread while the others do their "this is what the 10th/11th Doctor is like" turns, in the way past Doctors usually do in these stories. (Although that may be because he doesn't have any past characterisation to draw on.)

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  16. Sean Case
    January 20, 2014 @ 3:12 am

    The Day is definitely an Eight-1/2th Doctor story. He's the one who has to decide what to do. The others argue it with him but end up respecting his decision.

    But before they carry through, they see a ram caught in some thorns and sacrifice it instead. Or something.

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  17. Katherine Sas
    January 20, 2014 @ 3:26 am

    "The end of the Davies era is something worth considering – it is, after all, still very good, and certainly has a glorious finale in it. The beginning of the Moffat era is something worth considering. But this middling moment that is unwilling to commit to either camp is, in some ways, the most disposable and ephemeral bit of the Davies era."

    This (above) nails my problems w/ The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead. They don't feel enough part of the emotional story we've seen progress from series 1-4, but they don't yet feel part of the Tenth Doctor wrap-up that is Waters of Mars/End of Time. The just…exist in the middle, filling time, which is disappointing when I (as a fan of the Tenth Doctor and his era) want to get the most out of his last episodes as I can.

    I also wish that the Morrissey = Doctor mystery had been more weaved into the fabric of the episode itself. I actually quite like the first half of this story. However, as you note, the mystery is pretty much resolved at the halfway mark and a more integrated storyline would have made the episode more interesting and created a better repeat-viewing factor, I think.

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  18. dirkmalcolm.com
    January 20, 2014 @ 3:43 am

    That's a great idea Scott. Here it could've started with just a flash of 11 at the end of the Doctors montage, Capaldi-style (there's no reason why the Dalek owners of the infostamp haven't met him). And in Waters of Mars, a vision of 'Eleventh Hour'-11 would've made as much sense as that random Ood.

    "Missed opportunity" sums up the whole Specials year really. Most of the stories have grown on me since first viewing, but it still seems like a unique chance to try something more ambitious that was squandered. I seem to remember an online rumour that the TARDIS was going to be destroyed in the first special and he'd be without it until the finale; there was lots of that kind of stuff flying about late-2008. What we ended up with has even less of a linking narrative than most of the regular seasons.

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  19. J Mairs
    January 20, 2014 @ 4:02 am

    "The confrontation in "The Waters of Mars" would have been way cooler if it had been the Eleventh Doctor glaring silently at the Tenth Doctor rather than the Ood at the end, IMHO."

    I like this idea.

    Maybe the Eleventh Doctor is inside the Teselecta, which is disguised as an Ood… xD

    There has been a lot of speculation since the Time of the Doctor that the big pay-off to the hologram clothes schtick was the reveal at the end that the Eleventh Doctor died on the clocktower, and appears in the end as a "data ghost" to say goodbye, having already regenerated.

    But would that have worked? Although I like the idea, there's the suggestion that neither Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi would be well served by this because the first/last scene they're in is being upstaged by a narrative trick.

    And, ultimately, this is a big problem with Doctor Who – there's the idea that the actor has to get a swansong as much as the character. And that the actor has to have his "First Episode". There's very little that supports this historically, but somehow this has crept into the vocabulary of the show as something which Must Happen.

    They get away with the scene of Capaldi in Day of the Doctor because he isn't actually required to do anything – but I don't think the show could sustain a scene or an episode in which the future Doctor interacts with his past self. Instantly you are overshadowing the current “brand”, by advertising a future “brand”.

    Besides, this just compounds the problem that Steven Moffat talked about recently in which regeneration can potentially look like a new Doctor nobody has warmed to yet, dancing on the grave of the Doctor you love, and have just watched die.

    If the Eleventh Doctor is shepherding the Tenth Doctor to his grave… It would take a LOT to justify that, and I think the only reason we can speculate about this now is the benefit of hindsight; It turns out we quite like Matt.

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  20. J Mairs
    January 20, 2014 @ 4:05 am

    "Davies realised, during the commentary, that the better way of ending the story was for Miss Hartigan, instead of simply having breakdown and blowing up the Cyberking, instead realising what a monster she has become and sending the Cyberking back into the void instead. It would have been a fitting end for her, and one more becoming of her character."

    Plus it would chime really well with Jackson Lake's story as well: you can sort of spin a "Remember who you are – not who They make you" story out of this, which could chime with the Doctor, named forever! The Destroyer! Of Worldssss!

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  21. J Mairs
    January 20, 2014 @ 4:06 am

    I just love the idea of the Cybusmen in domino masks running raids on Dalek encampments, whilst stuck in a place that doesn't exist.

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  22. David Ainsworth
    January 20, 2014 @ 5:50 am

    Interesting that Ms. Hartigan receives no mention (except in comments), given that she's the most fleshed-out as a character. She's also some sort of feminist critique, or critique of feminist critiques of the program, or something similarly complicated which I hoped to see worked through by those better positioned than I to do so.

    This special marks a point where the Internet fandom's influence over the show reaches new heights, not in the sense that the showrunners were monitoring web forums and Twitter (although one gets the sense they were and are), but in the sense that the showrunners conceptualize what they do in relation to spoiler-threads and trolling behavior. The whole premise of introducing the "next Doctor" is trolling of substantial sort. Hartigan herself exhibits some gloating behaviors familiar to anyone who has spent time online, and her fate seems like a potential troll of feminist fans (maybe? Heavy ambiguities here). The "magic wand" resolution seems almost a caricature of criticisms of Davies's episodes. Even the Cyberking itself is a bit Internetish, a collective electronic steampunk monster that threatens to bestride the world.

    It's quite possible to troll online fans in dramatically interesting ways (The End of Time offers several examples), but I don't think Davies manages that here. And it's hard to read the Cyber-apes in a way aligned either with Poe's Rue Morgue story or the original body-horror of the early Cyberyears, and not as a comment on Cyberculture in the online sense of the word.

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  23. peeeeeeet
    January 20, 2014 @ 5:52 am

    Not sure if this really counts, but wasn't there a glimpse of McGann in Damaged Goods?

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  24. Spacewarp
    January 20, 2014 @ 5:58 am

    After reading "The Writer's Tale" which covers the whole of these two years, and seeing how Davies' writing is born out of agony, desperation, and sheer mind-numbing terror at how far over the deadline he is, it continues to surprise me that these aren't actually worse than they are.

    And don't say "They couldn't be!" A lot of the time people don't realise how much of the series was actually resting on RTD's shoulders at this time. If he'd had a heart attack at any time the show would probably have collapsed.

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  25. Ross
    January 20, 2014 @ 6:38 am

    And it’s a past that only narrowly makes sense. One can construct explanations as to why the Cybus-style Cybermen have an infostamp containing information on all ten Doctors, but anything one comes up with is a slapdash fan explanation to cover a clear gaffe

    I… What?

    How is it "slapdash" when they clearly and explicitly state that the infostamps are information they stole from the Daleks?

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  26. Ross
    January 20, 2014 @ 6:42 am

    Addendum: I went back to check to make sure I hadn't just made an ass of myself by substituting my own memories for fact.

    I'm not.

    DOCTOR: The Cybermen's database. Stolen from the Daleks inside the Void, I'd say, but it's everything you could want to know about the Doctor.

    This is the line of dialogue that the doctor says while the montage of all ten doctors plays.

    One might generously consider the inclusion of Eccleston here a gaffe (The exclusion of Hurt is, of course, an anti-gaffe, since the void Daleks were presumably put into storage before The Doctor became involved in the time war), but that seems kind of petty.

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  27. jane
    January 20, 2014 @ 7:56 am

    I think this story serves plenty of notice as to what's coming with the next Doctor, and the Moffat era in general. That notice, interestingly and telling, is subtextual.

    First, there's the matter of Jackson Lake. As we now know, characters named for bodies of water are the staple companions of the Eleventh Doctor. And water, of course, is nature's mirror. Fitting, then, that it's through a mirror that the Doctor first discharges the info-stamp, revealing its nature. The info-stamp itself is found in a desk bearing a cross, which marks the information itself as sacred, while the room itself has a Christmas tree in the background — the World Tree or axis mundi represents the connection between Above and Below.

    It's at this point that Lake remembers having seen such a device before, the night he "regenerated" and lost his memories — the "conscious" mind above makes a connection to the "subconscious" below. This depicts breaking through repression in mythological terms — pure Moffat.

    Of course, this is kith and kin to Moffat's concerns as showrunner, which is, in part, an exploration of the nature of memory, as well as Identity. One of the primary ways Moffat conducts this investigation is by setting up characters who function as mirrors to each other. Lake is a "mirror" to the Doctor.

    This scene also includes some of the significantly repeated phrases of Moffat's tenure: "Who are you?" and "Help me." (An earlier scene even pays homage to Blink.) Another Moffat trope rolled out is a concern with children: "Children stolen away in silence." Indeed, the next Doctor will be a patron saint of children. Heh, this whole bit takes place while the Cybermen wipe out the gathered at Reverend Fairchild's funeral.

    I should point out that this is also an Ascension story. "One day soon I shall ascend," says Lake, but the real ascension takes place with Mercy Hartigan. Another interesting name — "Hartigan" means "descendant of Art," commonly associated with King Arthur, but for our purposes we can take it more literally.

    Hartigan's ascension notably takes place in a Chair, a symbol recently seen in Moffat's Library story, which also featured the ascension of women. "I can see the stars, the worlds beyond, the Vortex of Time itself, and the whole of infinity. Oh, but this is glorious!" she says, "there is so much joy in this machine." Her ascension is marked by a union of opposites, a woman who is king. Another Moffat trope, the deconstruction of gender roles.

    So this story functions as prophecy. The Doctor has to save the child (as opposed to Lake doing it) because the Doctor will be the patron saint of children. The Doctor's solution to Hartigan is to open her mind that she may see herself clearly: "Look at what you've become." This is the power of the Mirror.

    (Also, "lost" is an oft-repeated word.)

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  28. Alan
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:03 am

    I suspect in light of where RTD was going with the next three stories that he wasn't planning on have Ten learn anything at all before he regenerated. An epiphany of any sort would have undermined the build-up to the Time Lord Victorious. Here, he recoils from the idea that he needs companionship, ignoring Donna's insistence that he needs "someone." In Planet of the Dead, the story gives him that someone and he refuses to take her along (to the point of betraying her to the cops), explicitly rejecting Donna's advice and warnings. In Waters of Mars, we see the culmination of that decision, when he decides to rewrite history to suit his whims because there is no one at hand in a position to tell him no (until the surrogate companion tells him "no" in the most direct way possible).

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  29. Alan
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:10 am

    And, ultimately, this is a big problem with Doctor Who – there's the idea that the actor has to get a swansong as much as the character. And that the actor has to have his "First Episode".

    You make it sound like that's a new thing. Tenth Planet was clearly written as Hartnell's swan song and Power of the Daleks invented the concept of a "First Episode" for Troughton. The transition between Doctors has always about vaguely sad endings and exciting new beginnings. It's just that now we have 13 episodes over the course of a series that's been meticulously planned out in advance rather than 26 episodes slap-dashed together by a production staff largely uninterested in character arcs.

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  30. jonathan inge
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:11 am

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  31. jonathan inge
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:14 am

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  32. Alan
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:15 am

    Really? I thought the idea of a giant steampunk Cyberman attacking Victorian London was so silly that I was relieved when Moffat basically retconned (retcracked?) it out of existence in Victory of the Daleks.

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  33. BerserkRL
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:28 am

    Davies’s usual multiracial historical fantasy is in play

    Well, depends precisely what that means. It's the usual all-white portrayal of Europe that's the historical fantasy.

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  34. BerserkRL
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:30 am

    this is a Victorian-era story about child labor and workhouses, which is, to say the least, not the most expected setup for “Victorian-era Christmas story.”

    Given what the most famous Victorian-era Christmas story is about, that's not obvious.

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  35. BerserkRL
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:34 am

    we've never had one (with the possible exceptions of the Watcher and the Valeyard) where the present Doctor has encountered one of his future selves

    Well, we had one last month.

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  36. BerserkRL
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:36 am

    Firstly, and most obviously, there's the quick flash of Capaldi

    And I meant Baker.

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  37. Galadriel
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:53 am

    I agree that Day of the Doctor was Hurt's story–even with Eleven sparking the narrative change, the focus was on Eight's choice "and the men that day will make of [him]."

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  38. Galadriel
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:55 am

    Although I started watching Doctor Who with series five, I was also caught off guard by the fake regeneration in Stolen Earth/Journey's End–but not the "Next Doctor" trick.

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  39. Ross
    January 20, 2014 @ 10:01 am

    I wouldn't say it was Hurt's story so much as his climax, the culmination of a story we're never going to get to see.

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  40. GeneralNerd
    January 20, 2014 @ 10:05 am

    They also get mentioned, although not depicted directly, in A Christmas Carol.

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  41. encyclops
    January 20, 2014 @ 10:32 am

    I remembered this one as being unremarkable, even silly, but then when I watched it again recently, I was surprised how much I liked it. That Jackson's wife and companion aren't further developed is unfortunate, but I found his plight fairly moving nonetheless. I think the story's full impact does depend on its timing, as you say — the proximity to the regeneration many if not most people were anticipating — but it could have worked anytime, and I think it does work. I say this as someone who typically has to be sold on Victorian stories; it's not a time/place in history I find particularly appealing. (I have a similar problem with Western stories, which is one reason why my least favorite new series episode is probably going to be "A Town Called Mercy" for a good long while.)

    I'm also hoping the hints I'm picking up that you won't come to bury "Planet of the Dead" are real. That's another slight but mostly enjoyable episode for me.

    The whole new-series history of Cybermen still makes my brain hurt. Has anyone mapped out the circumstances (or at least a theory) of how they've ended up proliferating in "our universe" and either supplanting or merging with "our" Cybermen?

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  42. encyclops
    January 20, 2014 @ 10:33 am

    Incidentally, I'd remembered disliking "Stolen Earth / Journey's End" as well, and that was NOT a story I liked better the second time. This may be unambitious but given the alternative I'd count that as a virtue.

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  43. jane
    January 20, 2014 @ 11:01 am

    "Planet of the Dead" gives us a metaphor — Christine de Souza, a mirror to River Song. (Sousa is a toponym for a Portugese river, as well as the name of a fairly well-renowned composer.) "Come on Doctor, show me the stars." Who steals a bus?

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  44. jane
    January 20, 2014 @ 11:02 am

    Oi, what's wrong with silly?

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  45. Elizabeth Sandifer
    January 20, 2014 @ 11:03 am

    Iris Wildthyme.

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  46. Alex Antonijevic
    January 20, 2014 @ 11:04 am

    In hindsight, the thing that gets me is that the Doctor wasted a regeneration that only lasted for the specials year, and a few off-screen adventures while avoiding the Ood.

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  47. Ross
    January 20, 2014 @ 11:21 am

    The whole new-series history of Cybermen still makes my brain hurt. Has anyone mapped out the circumstances (or at least a theory) of how they've ended up proliferating in "our universe" and either supplanting or merging with "our" Cybermen?

    As far as I know, there's never been an official declaration. But this episode seems to pretty straightforwardly assert that the Cybermen from the void leaked out during the events of Journey's End, and, thanks to having upgraded themselves with stolen Dalek tech, they got splattered across time and space and ate their "Basically fucked at every moment in history" counterparts.

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  48. Bennett
    January 20, 2014 @ 11:22 am

    I think it's fair to call that a "slapdash fan explanation" – with Davies being the fan in question.

    According to the podcast commentary it wasn't his idea to include the montage of all the Doctors to date – it was suggested to him at a script meeting. That line, I assume, must be a late insert to explain the inconsistency.

    And it is a little slapdash (exactly how voidy is the void if the Cybermen can board a Dalek ship and nick their biscuits?).

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  49. Ross
    January 20, 2014 @ 11:38 am

    Well, except that it comes up again what with the macguffin machine they Cybermen have also identified as having been nicked from the Daleks.

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  50. John
    January 20, 2014 @ 12:36 pm

    England in the 1840s was a lot closer to all white than it was to England's racial composition today.

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  51. J Mairs
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:00 pm

    "You make it sound like that's a new thing. Tenth Planet was clearly written as Hartnell's swan song and Power of the Daleks invented the concept of a "First Episode" for Troughton."

    I've never got the sense that the Tenth Planet is a swan song for Hartnell OR the Doctor.

    Similarly, The Power of the Daleks isn't a "First Episode" – It's doesn't focus on introducing Troughton, it focuses on the mystery of where the Doctor has gone. The answer being, of course, nowhere.

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  52. Nicholas Tosoni
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:06 pm

    Not entirely fair, Sean. The horror comes not from what they look like, but from wondering what's inside them.

    Also, Ro-Man is, in the best possible way, one of the most absurd visuals to ever come out of moviemaking. It's like, "Am I really watching a man in a gorilla suit with a diver's helmet plonked on?"

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  53. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:07 pm

    And that the actor has to have his "First Episode".

    Not sure I agree with this: Rose was more about Rose than the Ninth Doctor, Christmas Invasion had the Tenth mostly unconscious – only the Eleventh has had a real showboating first episode in NuWho to date.

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  54. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:10 pm

    Agreed, from what I've gathered (probably somewhere on this blog) the first draft of the Tenth Planet was a standard story insofar as Hartnell's survival was concerned.

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  55. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:17 pm

    I felt stressed just reading "The Writer's Tale", he's brutally honest about his own shortcomings.

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  56. Aaron
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:34 pm

    Can someone explain to me how he "wasted" a regeneration? He was going to die if he didn't use it, so it seems to have done it's purpose. And it' snot like he's stolen the regeneration from anyone or shortchanged anyone, since they're all his regenerations.

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  57. encyclops
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:37 pm

    I think it's fair to call that a "slapdash fan explanation" – with Davies being the fan in question.

    We can call Davies a "fan" in reference to an episode he wrote as long as we can call me a "writer" in reference to an episode I liked. 🙂

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  58. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:51 pm

    Nothing wrong with silly, but it's disheartening how Cybermen seems to go hand-in-hand with Silly these days, when the concept is rich with potential for social metaphor and horror.

    Children forced by Victorian society to do repetitive work in the factory workhouses, performing tasks the machines themselves cannot – the both working together in a coherent fusion of movement. Flesh and Metal, Human and Machine combined in harmony.

    But while the metal needs the flesh, it needs the flesh to work mechanically or the flesh will get torn off in the unforgiving machine. Flesh is easily replaceable.

    Is the machine working for it's fleshy overseers or does the flesh work for the machine? It looms them wonderful clothes, while they feed it the flesh it needs to function. Perhaps neither is in control: they are working in terrible harmony, feeding each others needs – needs that have no real ambition, only appetite.

    True, we see some kids briefly working in a cyber-overseen workhouse, but it's more Temple of Doom basic child slavery than the dangers, downfalls and immorality of fusing child and machine so closely and unforgivingly.

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  59. John Callaghan
    January 20, 2014 @ 1:53 pm

    Doubtless you're correct. My thinking was that Jackson would discover that he was a hero himself all the time, rather than needing the mask of a made-up identity…
    but OF COURSE it's much more important for the show to tell an ongoing story about the Doctor. 🙂

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  60. encyclops
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:00 pm

    They're one of the cuddliest monsters since the Mandrels. I'd quite like a stuffed version.

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  61. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:06 pm

    Agreed, where the excels at all is with Morrissey – at first he is funny, charming and an interesting mystery to be puzzled over (a perfect Doctor in that respect) but Morrissey and the script really nail the tragedy of Jackson Lake's recent past – it's quite the most affecting emotional acting I've seen on Doctor Who for some time, grounded as it is in the real-world horror of the death of his wife (his entire family as he believes), hollowing him to the core until there is space enough to be filled with The Doctor's imprint.

    I think perhaps – as usual – the Cybermen were one idea too far. Whenever a story is not primarily about them, they are wasted… the story would have been better served with a new threat, or perhaps no threat at all: the infostamp itself could have been made to be drive the tale just as the nanoprobes were enough to drive The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

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  62. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:31 pm

    Miss Hartigan is possibly the most interesting aspect of all in The Next Doctor, and it would take more thoughtful person than me to give her character the analysis she deserves.

    However there is one horrible speech I have trouble with: the Cybermen have only recently been on Earth. Miss Hartigan herself has been aiding/leading them utterly unconverted, of her own volition and with her own strength of mind. She is finally partially cybernised only at the very end, to control the Cyberking.

    The Doctor knows all this, but when he breaks Miss Hartigan free of the cybernisation, he says:

    "I wasn't trying to kill you. All I did was break the cyber-connection…. leaving your mind open. Open, I think, for the first time in far too many years. So you can see: just look at yourself. Look at what you've done. I'm sorry Miss Hartigan, but look at what you've become."

    And then she screams like a little girl, her strength and will gone. The Doctor has 'cured' her of… what? Not just the cyber-connection, but something deeper within Miss Hartigan that was there before the cyber-connection, before the Cybermen. I guess in playground terms The Doctor has made her "not a baddie anymore", but it troubles me that the strongest female character to appear on Doctor Who in a long time gets "cured". Not punished, not defeated, not thwarted like so many male villians before. It's as if being a strong woman is inherently wrong, rather than her actions and choices.

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  63. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:43 pm

    Interestingly, when The Doctor and Rosita confront Miss Hartigan, Hartigan tells Rosita to "You can be quiet! I doubt he paid you to talk."

    I'm not sure Miss Hartigan is insinuating that Rosita is a prostitute or a slave, either works as an insult in the context.

    Reply

  64. 22ef1bd6-8235-11e3-b060-000bcdcb5194
    January 20, 2014 @ 2:44 pm

    How much better would that story have been if they had the guts to not make that a fake regeneration?

    Reply

  65. jane
    January 20, 2014 @ 3:00 pm

    Oooh, is there an Iris/River connection? I admit, I know diddlysquat about Iris.

    Reply

  66. jane
    January 20, 2014 @ 3:01 pm

    "I doubt he paid you to talk."

    If Moffat had written that line…

    Reply

  67. heroesandrivals
    January 20, 2014 @ 7:14 pm

    RTD agonizes about the is-he-or-isn't-he mystery on the commentary track — in the second-to-last draft they held the mystery until the midway point but then RTD just broke down and had Tennant check his heart in the first 15 minutes because, in his words, "Of COURSE he isn't the Doctor. We all know he's not the Doctor and it seems silly to suspend the story just to serve an artificial mystery the audience figured out after 10 minutes."
    He didn't think that anyone would take Morissey-is-the-Doctor seriously except as a larf and played it as such, and he didn't have the patience to meticulously structure the episode around such a pretend mystery when he could be dealing with Ms, Hartigan and giant steampunk Cybermen.
    I think the people who get riled up about this story are the ones who ever took seriously the idea that RTD would frontload the introduction of the new doctor. That's a Moffat thing!

    Arguably the special is faulted for what it's not; actually exploring the possibility of he Doctor meeting his own future self. But it was never meant to be that, IIRC the original germ was "Let's do Cybermen in Victorian times! Their new design is very steampunk don't you think?" and the not-Doctor came second.

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  68. heroesandrivals
    January 20, 2014 @ 7:35 pm

    It was the BBC's straightfaced assertion circa 2011 that the Doctor Who Adventure Games 'counted' as episodes, just like they insist that Neverland was part of TV canon. (Which, to be fair… it is. The Sarah Jane Adventures picks up elements from Neverland for two different episodes.)

    Blood of the Cybermen has non-Cybus-branded versions of the Cybus-bodytype Cybermen and specifically identifies them as Mondas Cybermen. (We wouldn't see nuWho Cybermen lacking the Cybus-C chestmark onscreen until 'a Good Man Goes to War' several years later.)

    Basically the Cybus Cybermen seem to have popped up in history some other time and fallen in with the Mondas variety at some point. Presumably the "Pandorica Opens" Cybermen would take place early on in this process because they represent the Mondas faction, but still have the Cybus-C (which got removed from the props a year later.)

    I hope Phil is reviewing Neverland, and at least one of the Adventure Games. I liked "the Gunpowder Plot" but I also find Sontarans delightful and thus am not a reliable arbiter of good taste.

    (NOTE: No one has ever made a similar assertion of canonicity about The Infinity Clock. Thank God.)

    Reply

  69. heroesandrivals
    January 20, 2014 @ 7:40 pm

    My favorite thing about Day of the Doctor is when Smith first meets Tenant; the entire scene is shot like they were digitally doubling one actor. All split-screen setups and over-the-shoulder shots that could plausibly be a stunt double… all the visual 'language' associated with one actor playing two parts. It was definitely on purpose and it made me laugh aloud when I saw it.
    (Stupid clever Moffat. It's not like I like you or anything.)

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  70. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 7:53 pm

    As a father, it strikes an off chord in The Next Doctor – Jackson Lake stands there and does nothing, and the Doctor makes him look impotent. It felt like he should have being doing something – even if it was something futile, stupid, or even counter-productive.

    To just stand there and do nothing, saying "What re we going to do Doctor, what are we going to do!" made me briefly stop believing in Jackson Lake as a character, and up until then Morrissey had made him very convincing indeed.

    Possibly, to tick all boxes at least partially, they should have had him head for the stairs again while the Doctor did his rope trick ("We need a quicker way!" or something), and let the Doctor get there first. Would have been better than what was broadcast.

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  71. Matthew Blanchette
    January 20, 2014 @ 8:50 pm

    He used it only to keep himself as Ten, which goes against the whole concept of regeneration entirely.

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  72. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 8:59 pm

    It's certainly a good decision on RTD's part – he quite wonderfully has his cake and eats it in that Tennant doesn't blow the mystery wide open: he gives the nod to the audience, but goes along with Jackson Lake in the meantime, turning it into a different mystery for the audience: why does this guy/how does this guy think and act like he's a future incarnation of the Doctor. It stops the tale being too silly in it's "next doctor" aspect and gives Morrisey's character room to breathe: we stop wondering about his Doctorishness and start enjoying it instead, then sympathising for him (as even before the tragedy is revealed we know he's a human tha's lost his mind)

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  73. ferret
    January 20, 2014 @ 9:11 pm

    And did it make him happy? Seemingly not.

    In all seriousness thought, could Journey's End have played out successfully (for The Doctor and the Human Race) if he had regenerated there and then, without the metacrisis Doctor being on hand (pun not intended but very much welcome) for the DoctorDonnaDenouementThankyadavros? It's been a while since I watched those episodes.

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  74. Scott
    January 21, 2014 @ 12:20 am

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  75. Scott
    January 21, 2014 @ 12:24 am

    Good points about "Day of the Doctor", all; if we could all pretend that, like the blog says, it actually was Christmas 2008 when I wrote that and "Day of the Doctor" hadn't aired yet, that would be absolutely dandy. This would also have the added bonus of making me look a bit less like I have problems remembering things that only happened a couple of months ago.

    Speaking off…

    "Well, we had one last month."

    Two months ago, surely?

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  76. Carey
    January 21, 2014 @ 12:58 am

    @John

    "England in the 1840s was a lot closer to all white than it was to England's racial composition today."

    England, yes. But we're talking about London here, the central dock town in a world empire with little to no competition and when, although slavery was illegal in the Britain, the country had profited immensely from it (the ships went to trade with Africa before moving slaves to the colonies, and then picking up sugar from the Caribbean to bring back to Britain) and only stopped doing so since the end of the Napoleonic Wars . So there is no multi-fantasy at play here: Victorian London was multi-cultural.

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  77. Ross
    January 21, 2014 @ 2:49 am

    It certainly couldn't have gone the same way it did, but that's not to say it couldn't have played out in some other successful way. Presumably, it would have to play out so that the solution that saved the day highlighted something about the new doctor that was different from Ten. I would think they'd have to work it so that it was the new doctor's humility that somehow saved the day, to highlight that Ten's hubris was the Fatal Flaw for which he had to die.

    (I can understand the storytelling and production reasons why it's unlikely to ever happen, but I would LOVE it for them to do a regeneration story where the regeneration happens in the middle of the story. Spend the first half of the story showing the old doctor being systematically dismantled by a Thing That He Just Can't Handle, then he regenerates and we spend the rest of the story finding out who the new guy is in the form of showing how he can meet the challenge his predecessor couldn't.)

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  78. Lewis Christian
    January 21, 2014 @ 5:49 am

    I totally agree – mystery's still there, but it's "how/why" rather than "is he".

    Although I liked when Ten mentioned that he could be "the next one, or the next-but-one"… not too dissimilar from Moff's recent "mayfly" idea. They could've gone down the route of "he is the Doctor, but an unspecified future incarnation".

    Reply

  79. Lewis Christian
    January 21, 2014 @ 5:52 am

    The Void becomes less of a Void as the series goes on. Love the line from above: "exactly how voidy is the void if the Cybermen can board a Dalek ship and nick their biscuits?" <3

    Reply

  80. Lewis Christian
    January 21, 2014 @ 5:55 am

    Has anyone explained how the Doc knows what a "CyberKing" is? Are we to assume he had off-screen Cybus Cybermen stories somehow? Or do we just assume the Mondas fellas had CyberKings too and the Cybus versions co-incidentally built the exact same kinds of ships?

    RTD wanted to redo the Cybes in Series 2 to avoid the complicated backstory that the classic series created – here, though, one could argue the Cybus history is equally as muddled.

    Reply

  81. Lewis Christian
    January 21, 2014 @ 5:56 am

    I love that idea, Ross. But as you say, it probably won't ever happen.

    Reply

  82. liminal fruitbat
    January 21, 2014 @ 6:07 am

    Nothing to add to the discussion, but you've just put into words why I love Moffat's use of empty Cyber-shells. Thanks.

    Reply

  83. liminal fruitbat
    January 21, 2014 @ 6:11 am

    This. And why raise the possibility of taking her and her new race of Cybermen to another world to start a new civilisation if it's just going to be the typical "kill anything threatening precious humanity" resolution?

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  84. liminal fruitbat
    January 21, 2014 @ 6:20 am

    I thought the Doctor said it was a Mondasian thing that the Cybusmen just happened to develop as well (like the teardrop eyes and handlebars) – maybe I just head-canoned that. (I also remember RTD saying in an interview somewhere that he assumed the Cybermen built all their tech humanoid for ideological reasons because why else would they retain their own humanoid forms; whether that makes it more plausible a deduction or just incredibly stupid is up to you.)

    Reply

  85. Alan
    January 21, 2014 @ 7:57 am

    In a way, this feels like a prelude to Time Lord Victorious. Earlier in Ten's career (and definitely in Nine's), he might have stepped back and helped Jackson to be the one to save his son. But by this point, the thought simply doesn't even occur to him.

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  86. Alan
    January 21, 2014 @ 8:05 am

    And holy crap, I just had an epiphany! Early, during discussions of Time of the Doctor, I had complained that the retcon of Matt Smith really being the 13th Doctor had short-circuited the possibility of explaining what the deal with the Valyard was. But now I see it — The last gasp of the Time Lord Victorious, bitter at the premature ending of his life, so much so that he delays his regeneration long enough "to get [his] reward," unwittingly sends the manifestation of that bitterness back in time to steal Six's life and take a mulligan on his personal history over the last six regenerations.

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  87. Anton B
    January 21, 2014 @ 9:19 am

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  88. Anton B
    January 21, 2014 @ 9:21 am

    For a while I really thought that was the way Moffat would wrong-foot us with Smith to Capaldi.

    Reply

  89. Anton B
    January 21, 2014 @ 9:57 am

    Moffat has stealthily introduced two new concepts into the regeneration canon which have generated surprisingly little comment. Perhaps because he's done this in his usual way, presenting them in plain sight while obscuring them in a smokescreen of fanservice.
    The first is that there is now an element of choice in the process. Gone is the uncertainty of Eccleston's "I'm gonna change..and you never know what you're gonna get".* We've now had the retcon of Tennant's hubristic decision to regenerate into himself and the Sisterhood of Karn's potions of choice producing the Hurt War Doctor. Not to mention the ability of the Time Lords to gift further regens via magic pixie dust.
    The second is Tom Baker's cameo as a future Doctor 'revisiting' an old familiar face, thus cementing the idea that the Doctor is eternal; that stretching on into the future far beyond his limit of thirteen or even the next thirteen is a long line of Doctors, perhaps including some more 'mayfly' non-Doctors, Caretakers or Curators.
    This last surely makes possible a potential story where the Doctor can meet a future incarnation of himself who we, as viewers, may never see happen. I love how this could open up the opportunity for any actor to give their reading of the Doctor role without being tied to the part.

    *Incidently, I always thought Eccleston's semi-joking "I may have two heads", Matt Smith's checking his legs and fingers and Capaldi complaining about the colour of his kidneys kind of answers all the 'where did he get a second heart from' continuity bores. Obviously the number and make-up of a regenerated Time Lord's limbs, organs, heads etc is mutable.

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  90. David Anderson
    January 21, 2014 @ 11:14 am

    Presumably one could find out by reading Henry Mayhew.

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  91. ferret
    January 21, 2014 @ 12:49 pm

    Certainly the Sixth Doctor could have strangled his way out of the Caves of Androzani 🙂

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  92. encyclops
    January 21, 2014 @ 1:02 pm

    Alan: I love it. Particularly since that regeneration was so messy, with some of the energy redirected into the hand and Donna and maybe some overspill sent somewhere else in time….

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  93. encyclops
    January 21, 2014 @ 1:04 pm

    There's always been an element of choice in process for some Time Lords (Romana) but I like your observations about how Moffat has expanded on that and given the Doctor a chance to try it, just a little bit.

    Reply

  94. jane
    January 21, 2014 @ 1:52 pm

    'The Doctor has made her "not a baddie anymore", but it troubles me that the strongest female character to appear on Doctor Who in a long time gets "cured". Not punished, not defeated, not thwarted like so many male villians before. It's as if being a strong woman is inherently wrong, rather than her actions and choices.'

    What Hartigan is "cured" of is not her ability to be strong, but her lack of empathy, restoring the self-awareness that comes with an interdependent perspective. Lost, of course, because Cybermen lack empathy — but also because she was raised in a deeply patriarchal society (indeed, kyriarchal society) that must destroy the ability to empathize in order to perpetuate its inequitable power relations.

    Unfortunately, Hartigan had become that which she most despised — simply sitting atop the ladder of hierarchy did not, in the end, destroy that toxic system of power relations; to be "king" perpetuates the throne.

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  95. Daibhid C
    January 21, 2014 @ 2:29 pm

    If it hadn't been a fake regeneration, it would just have been a regeneration. We'd already know this was a regeneration story and whoever the new Doctor was (would it be Matt Smith, in this altered history?) would have been splashed over the cover of DWM six months earlier.

    The idea that the Doctor might regenerate unexpectedly simply isn't tenable.

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  96. Ross
    January 21, 2014 @ 2:43 pm

    You joke, but Androzani could probably work that way; the fifth doctor is doomed from pretty much the moment he sets boot on the place, and the story is largely him just trying to stay alive while surrounded by various flavors of psychopaths. It'd be feasible (probably wouldn't make as good a serial, but I think maybe we could afford to sacrifice some percentage of the goodness of Androzani in exchange for getting rid of the Twin Dilemma) to move up the bat-milking scene an episode or so, have the Doctor die, and then spend the second half of the episode having Colin Baker psychopath-off against the locals.

    He could strangle someone who isn't Peri, establishing him as a scary and not-quite-right incarnation, but he'd still come off as something less than a complete monster because (a) we'd be comparing him to the guest cast and (2) he wouldn't be trying to strangle Peri.

    Like I said, not as good as Androzani as it stands now, but workable, and a way to start Colin Baker out without an exorcism.

    Reply

  97. ferret
    January 21, 2014 @ 5:37 pm

    He comes out from the dark caves into the light above, and strangles no more!

    It could have been put across as a horribly claustrophobic experience for the Doctor, regenerating in those narrow, cramped tunnels and fissures deep down with the sleeping bats – no wonder he's a little unhinged at first. Presumably Davison would have done the actual milking, but only manages to get enough for one – still a heroic death.

    It would have packed the serial with that much extra that they could probably have been convinced to drop the lava monster.

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  98. heroesandrivals
    January 21, 2014 @ 7:35 pm

    The book Amy Pong wrote when she was transported to the past featured a different version of the Curator who was young and skinny (Eleventh Doctorish I'd say.)
    Since the book itself featured in "The Bells of Saint John" I'm inclined to take it at face value; at some point Amy encountered a Curator. (Just because the area is time-locked doesn't mean he couldn't take the long way 'round!)
    Of course logical analysis cannot be applied to "The Angels Take Manhatten," due to the fact it's a gibberingly incoherent mess of scenes that all track from one to the other but make no sense when you line them all up together.

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  99. Kit Power
    January 22, 2014 @ 1:09 am

    Alan – Yeah, really. I don't know what to tell you. It's the kind of thing I would have written or imagined when I was eight years old as being the coolest thing ever, somehow understanding instinctively that Doctor Who would never have the budget to do it but that the show's [i]idea[/i] contained the possibility of it, any many other massive things… And then as a 30-something year old man, I got to SEE It, and I was eight again and in love. And it looked WONDERFUL. The snow, the cogs, the stomping and blowing up and Victorian London and arghh, my brain is still just so in love with that maybe ten second overhead 'crane shot' through the swirling snow that all critical faculties and higher brain functions shut down and I just do whatever the repressed 30-something male nerd version of 'squee' is.

    I'm not proud of it, and I'm certainly not trying to convert anyone. It's just a thing that happened to me. 🙂

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  100. Daibhid C
    January 22, 2014 @ 2:02 am

    A quick skim of London Labour suggests Mayhew wasn't really that interested in ethnic groups as we'd understand them today. He writes "Among them are to be found the Irish fruit-sellers; the Jew clothesmen; the Italian organ boys, French singing women, the German brass bands, the Dutch buy-a-broom girls, the Highland bagpipe players,and the Indian crossing-sweepers" but beyond that seems more concerned with regarding "Costermongers" as a distinct group, possibly related to the Irish.

    I'm reminded of a story I read somewhere, but now can't find. There was a costume drama based on a true story, and it was criticised for "politically correct history" for casting a black actor as a judge.

    And the producer explained that the casting was based on the fact the judge in the real case had been black.

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  101. Anton B
    January 22, 2014 @ 2:23 am

    @encyclops
    Yeah, I'd consider the Romana 'fashion show' regeneration scene and, for that matter, the Master's ad-hoc body-napping as a precursor to Nu-Who's take on the process. In fact, thinking about it, it was RTD who wrote Jacobi's regenerating Master saying "If he can have a young body then so can I!" Implying an element of choice. One could argue it's been there from the start. Hartnell rejuvenated, Troughton had Pertwee imposed on him by the Time Lords after being unable to choose from the options presented to him at his trial, There's nothing to suggest Pertwee couldn't have chosen to become Tom Baker who in turn had the Watcher to help him 'prepare'. Really it's only six, seven and eight who seem totally random.

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  102. Anton B
    January 22, 2014 @ 2:31 am

    @heroesandrivals
    I made the same connection to the, really rather good, Summer Falls when Matt Smith says "I could be a curator" prior to merting old Tom in Day of the Doctor. In fact my head-canon says he got the idea from meeting the impressively bow-tied curator of the Van Gogh exhibition in Vincent and the Doctor. Try telling me that Bill Nighy isn't also a future Doctor!

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  103. Anton B
    January 22, 2014 @ 2:48 am

    I can never get beyond he fact that the Doctor MILKED A BAT.

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  104. Seeing_I
    January 22, 2014 @ 3:25 am

    Reply

  105. Seeing_I
    January 22, 2014 @ 3:39 am

    @ jane: "Oooh, is there an Iris/River connection? I admit, I know diddlysquat about Iris."

    Inasmuch as River is a mash-up of Iris and Benny Summerfield, yeah. While the "archeologist" aspect and not a lot else was imported from Benny, River plays a similar story function as Iris, which is to infuriate the Doctor by seeming to know more about his past & future than he does, to outrage him by willfully going about her own business without caring much for his pious rules, and to treat him with an over-familiarity that makes him uncomfortable around his other companions.

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  106. Seeing_I
    January 22, 2014 @ 3:42 am

    I agree, it's really a shame we've never had that kind of thing happen – for Peter Davison to really be The Watcher, or Capaldi to turn up midway through "Time of the Doctor" to battle it out with his prior self. I figured if anybody could pull that off, it'd be the timey-wimey mind of Moffat, but hey-ho.

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  107. Seeing_I
    January 22, 2014 @ 3:43 am

    I loved the CyberKing!

    And speaking of silly, I remember that, at the time, I was really hoping this would turn out to be a riff on "The One Doctor" from Big Finish, which is really one of the most delightful of their offerings.

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  108. jane
    January 22, 2014 @ 5:17 am

    @Anton
    The Nighy Curator's halting speech then becomes an attempt to remember the lines he heard all those centuries ago, while simultaneously trying to hide the fact that he is the Curator.

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  109. Anton B
    January 22, 2014 @ 5:33 am

    Count me in too! I have no problem with the CyberKing. As a visual metaphor it worked a treat. With its echoes of The Iron Giant and a kind of Manga/Steampunk aesthetic. It represents the idea that any society will percieve an incursion from the 'other' in terms of its own technology. In the 21st century we get Post-Modern Cybermen and their micro nano-mites infecting humanity via mobile phone technology etc. In Victorian England of course we get the low-tech macro version. In allegorical terms it represents the apex of the distorted class structure the Cybermen retain as a remnant of their human origins; mirroring Victoria the Widow Queen, Empress of all she surveys whose era Nu-Who seems fatally drawn to. In its mythic imagery this King of the undead empire of the Cybermen bestrides the Thames, a mechanical Colossus also bearing echoes of Poseidon and Hades. The fiery factory that powers it a direct image of both Hephaestus' forge and Blake's dark satanic mills. Inside its head is Miss Hartigan rewarded for her collusion by being forced to serve the heirarchical patriarchy this 'King' represents. The Cybermen always have a lovely sense of irony and an eye for a retro futurist aesthetic.

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  110. Anton B
    January 22, 2014 @ 6:44 am

    @jane
    Exactly. And the comparing and admiring of bow ties is a version of the hilarious 'ooh I like your glasses!' mime in Day of the Doctor.
    I wonder are there any other Doctors/Curators/Warriors we might have unwittingly met in past stories?
    Back on the subject of choosing your regenerating body I suspect the War Chief in The War Games might have had a go at the Sisterhood of Karn's potions and chosen Warrior. Blimey! Does that mean Phillip Madoc's War Lord is also Morbius?

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  111. Mark Patterson
    January 22, 2014 @ 10:31 am

    There are some indulgences, some elements to 'Stolen Earth'/'Journey's End' that leave me pretty cold. But I can forgivea lot for that ccliffhanger – even though I knew Tennant was going to be in 'the Next Doctor' a few months later, it still blew me away as an end to an episode. I know some people aren't satisfied by the convenient way it was resolved, but the consequences of that resolution play out across the entire second half of the story – it's certainly not just a cheap distraction, it's central to the story.

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  112. heroesandrivals
    January 22, 2014 @ 5:15 pm

    @anton
    The BBC audios Tom Baker did make a lot more sense (IMHO) if he's a curator rather than the Doctor. He's been living in a cottage full of dangerous antiques he keeps watch over with a housekeeper — and has apparently been doing this for decades. That's a very Curator-y thing to do if Summer Falls is any indicator. (The Curator kept a small museum in a town for years and tracked down dangerous alien artifacts, appearing and disappearing from town intermittently.)

    Baker wasn't calling himself the Curator in the BBC audios though, he was calling himself the Doctor. But we don't know quite how that works from his POV.

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  113. ferret
    January 22, 2014 @ 5:32 pm

    THEY NEVER SAW IT COMING
    A list of the last thing the Doctors did before the fatal moment:

    1 – has a walk in the snow
    2 – gets told off
    3 – gives back what he stole
    4 – networks some computers
    5 – milks a bat
    6 – drinks some carrot juice
    7 – reads a book
    8 – has a chat
    war – has some tea
    9 – does some wiring
    10 – goes skydiving
    11 – carves a toy

    Reply

  114. Nicholas Tosoni
    January 22, 2014 @ 7:44 pm

    "I can never get beyond he fact that the Doctor MILKED A BAT."

    He was having a past-life flashback to the days when he called himself Tristan Farnon. 🙂

    Reply

  115. liminal fruitbat
    January 23, 2014 @ 7:43 am

    What Hartigan is "cured" of is not her ability to be strong, but her lack of empathy, restoring the self-awareness that comes with an interdependent perspective.

    Which would come across a lot better if she transformed her Cybermen similarly, reinfusing the qlippothic with divinity. Dying from the horror of what she's become weakens both the character and the metaphor, imo.

    (Also, associating the kyriarchy's destruction of empathy with Cyberconversion such that reverses the one undoes the other is a brilliant redemptive reading and really deserved a fuller treatment.)

    Reply

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