Doctor Who Series 7.13 - The Name of the Doctor (Spoilers, Obviously)

[Dryk]

quote="Sonic Doctor" post="18.408349.17062228"]At least the Clara mystery ending makes sense, unlike the ending of series 5(wish magic form and ordinary girl with no powers)[/quote]
All time-travellers in the show are resistant to the mental effects of timeline changes but she's explicitly said to be the most resistant of all due to prolonged exposure to the crack in her wall. It comes up again in The Wedding of River Song.

 

[Soulrender95]

And never..*ever*...ponder the question....
If Time Lords sometimes regenerate and come out as a different sex/gender, what does Susan's husband think when he wakes up one morning next to....??????

They didn't up until Smith, they used to be asexual (not sure how canon that is).

Also, nowdays regeneration makes a mess of the place.

What I'd like to know is, can people ever think the Doctor is dead again? Cause apparently when he dies they will be a weird glowy time thingy. If it isn't there, it's just him faking. Also, shouldn't River have known the Doctor wasn't dead when he pretends to in "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Impossible Astronaut"?

Different points of time, the River we see in those episodes is Pre-Silence in the Library I.e no knowledge of Trenzalor, the one in Name of the Doctor is post-library and hints that she also isn't dead.

and it also depends on which River in Impossible Astronaut, The one standing with the ponds had her memory of lake silenco erased therefore not realizing the Doctor's trick, the one that reveals the truth at the end of the episode is the River from after Time of Angels/Flesh and stone a later version who learned the truth at some unseen point in time.

 

[Little Woodsman]

And never..*ever*...ponder the question....
If Time Lords sometimes regenerate and come out as a different sex/gender, what does Susan's husband think when he wakes up one morning next to....??????

They didn't up until Smith, they used to be asexual (not sure how canon that is).

Also, nowdays regeneration makes a mess of the place.

Umm, I always thought it was just that the Doctor was at a point in his life/lives where he wasn't very interested...
if you live an average of 12,000 years your species had *better* have a pretty low sex drive for most of that time....
But if they were asexual it would make no sense for Susan to stay behind/get married at all...also Leela wouldn't
have stayed on Gallifrey to marry a Time Lord.

I think that recent regeneration scenes have been making a mess because the characters regenerating were all
show-offs {grin}.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Umm, I always thought it was just that the Doctor was at a point in his life/lives where he wasn't very interested...
if you live an average of 12,000 years your species had *better* have a pretty low sex drive for most of that time....
But if they were asexual it would make no sense for Susan to stay behind/get married at all...also Leela wouldn't
have stayed on Gallifrey to marry a Time Lord.

I think that recent regeneration scenes have been making a mess because the characters regenerating were all
show-offs {grin}.

As I understand it, you have Time Lords and you have Gallifreyans. I think some Gallifreyans are augmented into Time Lords. Leela married a guard captain, not a Time Lord...in that episode Rodan says there's a forcefield between her and the Time Lords.

Now, exactly how canon that ever was I'm not sure, but I've heard that it had been accepted.

 

[Requia]

Isn't there a prophecy that doctor #13 is evil? Something about that incarnation is Terrifying to the Dr and he doesn't want to have to regenerate into him.

Since the doctor seems to be aware of his future (and has seen his entire timeline) then he knows about 13 and what he's like, and he hates it.

I prefer it to a 'missing regeneration' that's not talked about, Clara saw all 11 doctors but not him, implying he comes later.

I believe that is the Valeyard. It's a version of the 12th Doctor that is a personified combination of all the darkness the Doctor has within him.

I thought that too, but it seems Moffat has already confirmed that John Hurt is playing the actual 9th Doctor.

Damn, I really wanted them to payoff the Valeyard prophecy, and they were doing an evil(ish?) Dr anyway :/

 

[Thaluikhain]

Damn, I really wanted them to payoff the Valeyard prophecy, and they were doing an evil(ish?) Dr anyway :/

Hopefully when the next Dr comes around, he's more evil, or at least ruthless. I'd love to see a different Dr come up and have a go at Smith for all his power of love rubbish.

 

[sanquin]

Once again so many unexplained things and stuff being possible/happening just for the sake of the plot...

-The great intelligence knew a TON about the doctor. Things no one else knew. Why? The only explanation we got was because the great intelligence IS knowledge. Which to me translates to 'because of reasons'. In other words no reason at all.

-The whispering things, what were they? Never explained. They were just there for the sake of the episode working.

-The prisoner in the beginning. Who was he? How did he know what he knew? Never explained once again.

-The doctor's grave is all of the 'wounds' he leaves in the universe because of his time travel. Well...that's quite sudden to just throw in there isn't it? I'm calling deux-ex on this one.

-Who didn't figure out who Jenny was the moment they heard what was inside of the doctor's grave?

-It is explicitly said time and time again that a time traveler should never cross their own time stream. It's implied that doing this would mean something hugely cataclysmic that would at the very least kill the doctor and probably a lot of people around him too. Yet he does exactly that. Even worse, he enters his entire time stream, everything he ever did, all at once. Yet he's not dead yet, and the universe hasn't exploded yet...

-The 'time travel has always been possible in dreams' thing. Another thing just thrown in there because, imo, the writer was too lazy to find a good way within the lore to let those people meet. No, he had to invent a new one that, even though it would have been very useful in the past, has never been used before.

All of that being said, I still liked the episode. Let's just say that I've gotten used to all of the problems that each episode brings. It's kind of also a part of Doctor Who's charm. More about 'let the writer's imagination run wild' and less 'stick to the lore as much as possible'. It's at least in the top 3 of best episodes of the season for me. The other two would be the Asylum of the Daleks when we first meet Jenny and The angels take Manhattan. (I love all episodes with the weeping angels in them.)

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

While I'm no expert on the lore, there were a few things that annoyed me about the final episode. Simeon shows up practically out of nowhere, the Whisper Men are either actually related to the Silence or just very unimaginative considering, and I'm probably missing something major here, but why wouldn't the Great Intelligence have killed the Doctor (and thus necessitated Clara's saving him) in all his incarnations, especially the Time War? Either Clara doesn't remember what she did in her copies (which sounds about right) or the Great Intelligence didn't have the time to kill him every opportunity he got before he was destroyed. As you can see, I'm not very well versed.

My other criticism is pretty common across this series. I practically have to take the show's word for it when the Doctor is in intense pain, because it's often from some sort of nebulous source. As in he's never in any physical pain I can relate to. Apparently he was dying all at once, but what does that even mean? Is he just feeling all the individual sources of pain? Why would he not just die practically immediately due to the circumstances of the quickest death? I just find it really hard to believe he was literally killed in many different ways at once and that caused him a merely monumental amount of pain instead of...killing him.

Last thing, which could just be a bit of character building, he's not very insistent about Clara not saving him. He just sort of goes "No. No, please. No". Doesn't offer any arguments. If he'd really wanted, he probably could have summoned the strength to restrain her or kill himself somehow. I choose to think that he secretly just knew it was the only way he was going to live and let her do it.

-The whispering things, what were they? Never explained. They were just there for the sake of the episode working.

-The prisoner in the beginning. Who was he? How did he know what he knew? Never explained once again.

As far as I know, the Whisper Men are forms the Great Intelligence can control and serve as replacements for Simeon's body if it is destroyed (which it seems to have been already seeing as the Simeon that shows up is empty), and the prisoner could have been the Great Intelligence taking on a form other than Simeon? I've got no idea if it can do that, but it imitated Simeon well enough so I don't see any reason why not.

 

[Little Woodsman]

Umm, I always thought it was just that the Doctor was at a point in his life/lives where he wasn't very interested...
if you live an average of 12,000 years your species had *better* have a pretty low sex drive for most of that time....
But if they were asexual it would make no sense for Susan to stay behind/get married at all...also Leela wouldn't
have stayed on Gallifrey to marry a Time Lord.

I think that recent regeneration scenes have been making a mess because the characters regenerating were all
show-offs {grin}.

As I understand it, you have Time Lords and you have Gallifreyans. I think some Gallifreyans are augmented into Time Lords. Leela married a guard captain, not a Time Lord...in that episode Rodan says there's a forcefield between her and the Time Lords.

Now, exactly how canon that ever was I'm not sure, but I've heard that it had been accepted.

I'm pretty sure that what you're referring to was canon...
and then the Doctor's Daughter and River Song fired that canon out of a cannon....
I also thought that to be a member of the Capitol Guard you had to be a Time Lord or at least attending the Academy,
which would pretty much mean "Time Lord in training...".

 

[WickedFire]

-Who didn't figure out who Jenny was the moment they heard what was inside of the doctor's grave?

...

The other two would be the Asylum of the Daleks when we first meet Jenny and The angels take Manhattan. (I love all episodes with the weeping angels in them.)

I believe when you say Jenny you mean Clara. Was confused for a minute then.

 

[PsiMatrix]

Isn't there a prophecy that doctor #13 is evil? Something about that incarnation is Terrifying to the Dr and he doesn't want to have to regenerate into him.

Since the doctor seems to be aware of his future (and has seen his entire timeline) then he knows about 13 and what he's like, and he hates it.

I prefer it to a 'missing regeneration' that's not talked about, Clara saw all 11 doctors but not him, implying he comes later.

I believe that is the Valeyard. It's a version of the 12th Doctor that is a personified combination of all the darkness the Doctor has within him.

I thought that too, but it seems Moffat has already confirmed that John Hurt is playing the actual 9th Doctor.

Damn, I really wanted them to payoff the Valeyard prophecy, and they were doing an evil(ish?) Dr anyway :/

Maybe Moff really is trolling and John Hurt IS Valeyard. 'Confirming' John as the 9th could be a way to disguise the plot for the next 6 months, stocking the flames only to turn it all around in the 50th anniversary.

I'm kinda hoping that he is, showed up in the Time War to do whatever the Doctor couldn't do leaving 9th trying to deal with how he'll eventually have to become a blood-soaked killer that destroys his entire race bar the Master along with all the other horrors of the Time War trapped forever in an eternal battle.

 

[klown]

My other criticism is pretty common across this series. I practically have to take the show's word for it when the Doctor is in intense pain, because it's often from some sort of nebulous source. As in he's never in any physical pain I can relate to. Apparently he was dying all at once, but what does that even mean? Is he just feeling all the individual sources of pain? Why would he not just die practically immediately due to the circumstances of the quickest death? I just find it really hard to believe he was literally killed in many different ways at once and that caused him a merely monumental amount of pain instead of...killing him.

Well, imagine for a moment, that your entire timeline, every second of your life up until now, was turned into pain and misery. Not just that you lived through it, but now you are experiencing every second of pain from your life at once. While this would probably kill you, the minutes you were alive for, would be like years to you.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Umm, I always thought it was just that the Doctor was at a point in his life/lives where he wasn't very interested...
if you live an average of 12,000 years your species had *better* have a pretty low sex drive for most of that time....
But if they were asexual it would make no sense for Susan to stay behind/get married at all...also Leela wouldn't
have stayed on Gallifrey to marry a Time Lord.

I think that recent regeneration scenes have been making a mess because the characters regenerating were all
show-offs {grin}.

As I understand it, you have Time Lords and you have Gallifreyans. I think some Gallifreyans are augmented into Time Lords. Leela married a guard captain, not a Time Lord...in that episode Rodan says there's a forcefield between her and the Time Lords.

Now, exactly how canon that ever was I'm not sure, but I've heard that it had been accepted.

I'm pretty sure that what you're referring to was canon...
and then the Doctor's Daughter and River Song fired that canon out of a cannon....
I also thought that to be a member of the Capitol Guard you had to be a Time Lord or at least attending the Academy,
which would pretty much mean "Time Lord in training...".

I don't think that changed the canon, the Doctor was surprised by both, as if they didn't usually happen, especially with River.

Dunno about the guards. OTOH, Runcible the newscaster went to the Academy with the Doctor, and he wasn't that important.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

snip

Well, imagine for a moment, that your entire timeline, every second of your life up until now, was turned into pain and misery. Not just that you lived through it, but now you are experiencing every second of pain from your life at once. While this would probably kill you, the minutes you were alive for, would be like years to you.

The difference being that this is occurring over the space of a few minutes and leaves me weak and aching at the end instead of over the span of a split second and leaving me dead from dozens of different things. I think that's my main contention. Although there are other circumstances where the Doctor is experiencing pain due to some other thing (leaking time energy or something) that don't seem to be that painful, and it's especially bad when he puts himself in pain as a heroic sacrifice and the pain is some nebulous thing that causes him to yell a bit, but doesn't, say, skin him alive or have any other corporeal effect.

 

[sanquin]

-Who didn't figure out who Jenny was the moment they heard what was inside of the doctor's grave?

...

The other two would be the Asylum of the Daleks when we first meet Jenny and The angels take Manhattan. (I love all episodes with the weeping angels in them.)

I believe when you say Jenny you mean Clara. Was confused for a minute then.

Argh, yea, you're right. x.x Well, shows how much of an impression she has left on me.

 

[Berithil]

Maybe Moff really is trolling and John Hurt IS Valeyard. 'Confirming' John as the 9th could be a way to disguise the plot for the next 6 months, stocking the flames only to turn it all around in the 50th anniversary.

I'm kinda hoping that he is, showed up in the Time War to do whatever the Doctor couldn't do leaving 9th trying to deal with how he'll eventually have to become a blood-soaked killer that destroys his entire race bar the Master along with all the other horrors of the Time War trapped forever in an eternal battle.

It's always a possibility, but I believe they're doing the whole "Real 9th Incarnation" thing because they originally tried to get Christopher Eccleston back but couldn't get him, so they had to come up with a work-around.

I would like to see the Valeyard show up, though.

 

[klown]

snip

-snip*

The difference being that this is occurring over the space of a few minutes and leaves me weak and aching at the end instead of over the span of a split second and leaving me dead from dozens of different things. I think that's my main contention. Although there are other circumstances where the Doctor is experiencing pain due to some other thing (leaking time energy or something) that don't seem to be that painful, and it's especially bad when he puts himself in pain as a heroic sacrifice and the pain is some nebulous thing that causes him to yell a bit, but doesn't, say, skin him alive or have any other corporeal effect.

Hrmm, I can see where you are coming from. To me, I see it as a gap for him in his timeline. For the doctor, you have a couple of minutes of intense pain where his timeline is being rewritten completely. then it stops because Clara rewrites it to be normal again. From The Doctors point of view, Clara's rewrite doesn't stop the GI from doing his, so he feels and endoures the pain for a few minutes.