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[McDohl]

I'm caught up.  Holy shit.  What the fuck is John Hurt doing there?  I avoided clicking all the links for the discussion of The Name of the Doctor. 

[Smiler]

The title of the episode is probably my favorite thing because it wasn't at all about the Doctor's name, so you had tons of dumb teenagers getting really confused when John Hurt's title card popped up.

[McDohl]

I can see where Moffett has a reputation for juking and misdirection, and that being one of the things that pisses off fans.

[Mothra]

It was weird of him to build up the Doctor's name, and then never reveal it. If he was doing something clever, clearly, I missed that.

I think the Moffat era's had some of the best running storylines the show has ever had, but their execution is, often, not done quite right. I guess part of it is trying to cram too much into too little time... it all feels rather frantic and rushed. Again, though, it's such a step up from the norm in terms of complexity, ambition, and charm, that I can't really fault it.

[Thad]

I'm caught up.  Holy shit.  What the fuck is John Hurt doing there?  I avoided clicking all the links for the discussion of The Name of the Doctor.

Well, if you don't want to know, you'll probably want to drop out of the rest of this post.  But it's been pretty conclusively explained at this point, in advance of November's special.

John Hurt is a lost regeneration.  We never saw McGann turn into Eccleston -- and now we know that's because he didn't.  McGann turned into Hurt; Hurt turned into Eccleston.  So whatever it is the Doctor did in the Time War that he's been agonizing over for the past 8 years, John Hurt is the guy who did those things.

It was weird of him to build up the Doctor's name, and then never reveal it. If he was doing something clever, clearly, I missed that.

Well, what's clever is he's found a way to introduce a lost regeneration of the Doctor without actually bumping the count -- the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors are still the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors -- because Hurt forsook the name.

I'm pretty enamored with the elegance of the solution, to be honest; enough so that I got over my initial disappointment at it being pretty much a straight-up copout from something he's been teasing us with since Silence in the Library.

And for McDohl, if you've read this far: the original show's lore held that Time Lords only get 13 lives.  Sticking an extra incarnation in between 8 and 9 means that the Twelfth Doctor is actually the thirteenth incarnation, which is something the show's bound to deal with given how important a recurring theme "Doctor has to face his inevitable death and then find a way to cheat it" has been in Moffat's run to date.

Obviously the show is going to find a way around the Only 13 Lives rule -- hell, it already has, multiple times, with the Master, though presumably the Doctor's solution will be less evil than stealing someone else's body.  But it'll do just fine for continuing the current drama.

[Mothra]

Ahhh, that makes sense. That's a nice twist.

[Sharkey]

I hate to be the "I don't like people I don't like liking things I like" guy, but I'm mostly just relieved that an older lead might chase off Teen Girl Squad.

Also, more quarries, styrofoam rocks, velvet jackets, and monsters made of bubble wrap and dryer hose. Hell, would it be too much to ask for subterranean space maggots realized as mud-filled condoms? Just as a callback? Because that'd be pretty fucking boss.

[Thad]

Oh hey, apparently the Who comics are already having fun with the Hurt reveal.

Via Bleeding Cool, Doctor Who #12 depicts a scene from the Time War that explicitly references the Doctor rejecting his name, and a page from Cornell's upcoming The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who shows a shadowy figure between McGann and Eccleston in a Warhol-style photo montage.

I haven't read the comic in a couple of years -- I dropped it around the time they switched to the Eleventh Doctor; it felt like it was treading water and I was unemployed.

But that bit of the Time War looks interesting, and I fully intend to pick up the Cornell comic because I love Cornell.  Though I have to admit I'd rather see him writing for the show again.  I think he'd do great with Capaldi.

[McDohl]

Also, doesn't John Hurt have costume elements between both McGann and Eccleston?

[Thad]

Yeah, you're right; he's wearing McGann's waistcoat and Eccleston's leather jacket.  Pretty clear, and obviously intentional, visual cues.

[Sharkey]

The show has always been keen on illustrating how fucked up the time lords are. From day one, pretty much. They're introduced as something the Doctor is scared shitless of back at the end of Troughton's run. They turn up as manipulative, coprolitic bureaucrat bastards for a while after that. Then the big season ender a couple years ago hinged on "the time lords are even more fucked up than that."

"Stand back, Wilf. I'mma take that gun and shoot those motherfuckers after I jump through a shitload of windows and fall a few thousand feet. That's how serious this shit just got."

Meanwhile, I love all the little "no, you look time lord" punchlines. Just once I'd like to see this put together.

There has to be a great reason for that, even if it's a tongue in cheek throwaway. But ideally I'd love some use of the idea that a very old race with unfettered access to the entirety of time and space did some fucked up things even they don't remember. Even their discovery of time travel is so subjectively long ago that it has become vague myth. They have symbols of office that actually possess incredible functionality they've long since forgotten about. Hell, as far as Gallifrey itself is concerned that could have happened in billions of years or an instant. Figures they'd have the most boring, indolent, stable society possible. They probably had several other boring, indolent societies which persisted for interminable millennia before this last one. And then billions upon billions of retconned pasts before that. They've simply been fucking with time for a long fucking time.

Meanwhile, every other sentient alien race in the universe happens to look exactly like them. And the few that aren't some puppet made of dryer hoses, bubble wrap and condoms are identical except for giant green eyebrows or some such shit. At this point someone has to confess that somewhere in their insane spaghetti of racial history, a bunch of time lords, either alone or as part of a movement, have fucked with the development of every other sentient life form in the universe so as to make them more Gallifreyan.

Which is, you know, super fucking crazy narcissistic, but I wouldn't put it past them.

I just like the idea.

[Bal]

I always had the impression that upon mastering time travel Gallifreyan history became extremely fluid for what I guess you could term as "a long time", even though that's part of the problem, resulting in a culture that, essentially, has always had time travel, because linear history is for dorks.

[Lottel]

Gallifreyan History 101 - Chameleon Circuit

[Bal]

Yeah, I knew about everything in that song, but that's the thing. Gallifreyan history basically goes. Rassalon and Omega master the technologies essential to time travel then there's a huge mass of timey-wimey stuff and then the present Time Lords, who, by the way, we never actually know when the Doctor is interacting with them. Not to mention that, during the Time War, Rassalon was their leader again, even though he'd been long dead. So apparently the Time Lords pulled their best and brightest from all through history for the occasion, indicating once more that their timeline, as a species, is fluid as fuck.

[McDohl]

It's kinda odd.  Tennant has a baby face when put side by side with Smith's mega chin.

[Sharkey]

And here I was holding out for Two and a Half Doctors.

The Christmas special had better be Dawn of the Dead Doctor.

[McDohl]

I dunno. Unless the story goes back to when before Nine met Rose in "Rose", it's going to mean Rose is coming back from the alternate dimension, which could mean that Tennant is the Meta-Crisis Doctor from the Season 4 finale.  It's unlikely, but holy crap.

I'm still bummed out that Eccleston isn't coming back for this.  Dude should realize that he started a legacy for this new era, and he should be a part of it.  He's honestly my favorite Doctor, though I haven't seen any of 1-8.

[Thad]

I dunno. Unless the story goes back to when before Nine met Rose in "Rose", it's going to mean Rose is coming back from the alternate dimension, which could mean that Tennant is the Meta-Crisis Doctor from the Season 4 finale.  It's unlikely, but holy crap.

Possible, but it's likelier that, from her and Ten's perspective, it takes place somewhere between episodes in season 2.  That's how they usually do these things.

(Though The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors managed to introduce so many plotholes and inconsistencies vis-a-vis Troughton's timeline that fandom has invented an entire "season 6b" between the end of Troughton's run and the beginning of Pertwee's to explain them away.  Not canon, of course, but it's actually close enough that the licensees have published officially-sanctioned novels that take place during season 6b.

(EDIT TO ADD: I believe I said recently that McGann's regeneration into Eccleston is the only one we've never seen.  I misspoke; we never see Troughton regenerate into Pertwee, either, which is what makes the 6B theory possible.)

As I noted a few pages ago, the biggest inconsistency I can see the special introducing is if Tennant knows that Smith is his next incarnation before meeting the Governor.)

I'm still bummed out that Eccleston isn't coming back for this.  Dude should realize that he started a legacy for this new era, and he should be a part of it.  He's honestly my favorite Doctor, though I haven't seen any of 1-8.

I'm disappointed too.  But hey we're getting John Hurt out of the deal.

There are definitely some highlights of TOS that are worth checking out (I'm going to once again tip City of Death as my favorite) -- see other thread.

[Thad]

BC links a Moffat interview and quotes this bit about reconciling Capaldi's previous appearances:

    We are aware that Peter Capaldi’s played a big old part in Doctor Who before and we’re not going to ignore the fact… and Torchwood. I’ll let you in on this. I remember Russell [T Davies] told me he had a big old plan as to why there were two Peter Capaldis in the Who universe, one in Pompei and one in Torchwood. When I cast Peter and [Russell] got in touch to say how pleased he was I said “Okay, what was your theory and does it still work?” and he said “Yes it does, here it is.” So I don’t know if we’ll get to it… we’ll play that one out over time. It’s actually quite neat.

    The big fun question is, we know that the Doctor when he regenerates, the faces… it’s not set from birth, it’s not that he was always going to be one day Peter Capaldi. We know that’s the case because in The War Games he has a choice of face and all that. We know it’s not set so where does he get those faces from? They can’t just be randomly generated because they’ve got lines and they’ve aged. When he turns into Peter he’ll actually have lines on his face – sorry Peter – so where did that face come from?

Neat.  (Also, Romana intentionally regenerated herself to look exactly like Princess Astra from the previous serial.  But Romana's regeneration so heavily contradicts all the other regenerations -- which contradict each other quite a lot, too -- that it's probably best to ignore it.)

And also the premier will play in US theaters, and a bunch of other theaters worldwide too, but no info yet on which specific theaters.  At an educated guess, I'd probably figure the US ones will be the same ones that do Fathom Events and the like, since they've got the equipment for it.  So if you've seen a Rifftrax at a local theater, there's hope.

[Royal☭]