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It's technically not a swear word while still having the same effect as one. Or you could just call it swearing while avoiding the filter. Probably a bit naughty of me, but I've seen other people around the forums do similar things, and nobody really seems to mind. :/
RedJirachi - It's great that you want to join, but could you add a bit more to the why you like it? You can keep what you've already put as that's a good start; it just needs to be about twice as long, really. I know this is probably annoying, but it does say in the first post that it needs to be three or four lines, and I'm trying to stick to that.
Someone already took the Master -_- I pretty much reserved it, but it doesn't matter
Why do you like Doctor Who?
I love Doctor Who because of the great blend of humour, action and intelligence. I find some of the psycollogy (sp?) and alien. I love to ask questions and DW always seems to answer it, giving me more questions to ask and more answers to ponder over.
Who's your favourite Doctor?
Tennant. A genius, he can represent the Doctor in such a way that makes you feel like you know him
Desired character title? (Optional)
Well, the Master has already been taken, so, I'll go with the TARDIS. A living ship. How apt.
Gah. I'm starting to regret asking for so much; it seems so harsh of me to reject people when they clearly do like the programme. >.<; I just want to be sure people will be able to have some substance when they post here.
Gardevoir Girl: It's a nice surprise to see you here; I had no idea you were a Doctor Who fan. ^^ But could you just add another line or two to your reasons why? If you're having trouble working out why you like it, just add in a couple more possibilities and that should be fine.
Also... you did spell his name wrong. xD Two n's, but it's no biggie. I've seen far more people misspell "Eccleston" in my time.
cybermew: Same thing; I just need a tiny bit more from you, like one line's worth. I'm sure you'll be able to think of something given what I've seen of you in the old club.
I have no news, but in an attempt to make this club more alive, I'll post a much shorter and more managable topic seeing as the longer ones have been largely a flop. (Although I'm still going to keep encouraging people to have a go at the long topics if you have the time; just go back a couple of pages and look for the topics which involve really long lists of bolded headings).
If you met the Doctor and were allowed one trip in the TARDIS, and only one, where would you choose to go?
If you met the Doctor and were allowed one trip in the TARDIS, where would you choose to go?
I would choose to go to Athens in Greece to see the Parthenon when it was just built. But I'd probably wind up being chased down a street by a monster (running, I like running). Oh well, the Doctor could deal with it.
Gardevoir Girl: Brilliant, that's plenty. You're in. I 'specially like the point you made about the Doctor's sympathy; it's something I seriously like myself. (If you're interested in reading some of my rambles on it, a good chunk of my post at the top of page 3 is dedicated to that.)
The last club wasn't all too Torchwood-oriented, really; we mostly only talked about it when it was on. Technically this one still includes Torchwood (as well as the Sarah-Jane Adventures, because that's a spin-off, too), but I didn't put it in the title because Doctor Who encompasses everything in its fictional universe, basically. You'll just have to not join in the discussions if we ever start talking about Torchwood.
Also, your mother sounds awesome. I very rarely have conversations about Doctor Who with my parents, who do watch it; usually they just tend to lightly patronise me over how much I like it.
Answering my topic, then.
If you met the Doctor and were allowed one trip in the TARDIS, and only one, where would you choose to go?
I do agree that anywhere would be absolutely amazing, but if it was just one trip, I'd want to make it as memorable as possible. I'd prefer some kind of dazzling, far-out planet to a period of Earth's history, myself. Only problem is that we don't know about many of them bar the ones in the episodes, but there have been a few mentioned in passing. I quite like the sound of the "diamond coral reefs of Gatar Flor-Kor", or those Singing Towers that the Doctor is going to take River to in his future. Or maybe Feldspoon, the planet with mountains that move. But I'd probably end up just asking the Doctor to pick somewhere suitably breathtaking, because I wouldn't know all the available options.
Either that or I'd secretly plan somewhere that would end up turning the "just one trip" into several. If it worked for Martha...
storymasterb also has a rather good point in that wherever you go, you'd probably end up in mortal danger of some kind within two minutes of arriving, because this is the Doctor we're talking about. x3
If he had come in acting like a Time Lord, the Family would have been on him and extracting his Time Lord essence (however the heck they intended to do that) in a flash, before he'd have had the chance to press enough buttons. The pretending-to-be-John-Smith front was to keep them off-guard for long enough.
Besides, it'd have ruined the ambiguity of that scene in that I couldn't be sure whether it really was John Smith or whether it was just the Doctor acting until the same moment the Family realised for themselves.
No, but it sometimes can seem a bit, well, forced...
After a recent application of logic to my own ends, I've decided that it's in my best interests to believe that Billie really did know she was coming back and lied to the press about nothing being confirmed (which she did mention she'd enjoyed doing in one of her interviews). My logic is something along the lines of: if Billie Piper lied to the press about not knowing whether she'd be back later when she knew she would be, then a similar thing might be going on now with David Tennant. Which would mean that his insistence of knowing nothing about his presence in Series 5 as of yet could be a lie.
Eh, that doesn't give me quite the same spot-on vibe that your last one did. I can see that in your mind you're probably picturing the Doctor saying it all and it's coming out brilliantly, but I don't think you quite captured that Doctor-ness in text form. I reckon just little things like mentioning a cheeky glint in his eye or implying somehow in the narration how in control of the situation he is might give it more of his natural brilliance.
Trust me, it'll all make sense in the end... Because he's not in control, not this time...
It doesn't help that you've got tense confusion at the start, either. This reminds me that I still intend to send you a nice crit-filled PM about your preview on the previous page. =P
Sure, go ahead. I'll probably end up writing some of the story on holiday anyway
For the first two sentences there: yes, and it certainly worked on me. =D It still doesn't bother me, but I suppose I do find very occasionally that tiny little things during awesome scenes can jar me slightly. Like... I dunno, most times I rewatch Journey's End and Davros is screaming that nothing can stop his Reality Bomb, I can't help thinking "Nope, nothing at all... except that button there". But something like that doesn't stop it being awesome.
I dunno, I just preferred Stolen Earth to Journey's End. But then it's also because the Daleks are getting killed easily, and the explanations for Rose reappearing etc were quite sloppy and a cop out. If the Doctor couldn't do it, how could Pete's World?
Fine then, I'll do your awards =P (though you've still yet to do mine).
No, it means anyone who only appeared in one episode (or a two/three parter). If you met the Doctor and were allowed one trip in the TARDIS, and only one, where would you choose to go?
The 51st century, before the destruction of the Time Agents. Hello Vortex Manipulator
Okay, fair enough. But my point still stands that you should try and add more Doctor-ness to it - if he still thinks he's in control (which seems to be the case), then he's going to be acting with his usual brilliance. 'Cause when he's not in control of the situation, the Doctor starts behaving slightly differently (see Midnight). If he's not in control and knows it, then he probably shouldn't be acting like that in the first place, methinks.
I dunno, I just preferred Stolen Earth to Journey's End. But then it's also because the Daleks are getting killed easily, and the explanations for Rose reappearing etc were quite sloppy and a cop out. If the Doctor couldn't do it, how could Pete's World?
Pete's World is a few years ahead of ours (this was established back in Doomsday), so the walls between universes were starting to break down from that side before they did so on our side because in that future, the Reality Bomb had happened.
No, it means anyone who only appeared in one episode (or a two/three parter).
How do you differentiate between "companion" and "random one-off character", then? Because I highly doubt some random obscure-ish person like, I dunno, Dee Dee from Midnight would count.
I do realise now though that I completely forgot about River when I answered that one, and she definitely counts, more so than any of the others. I'd probably stick her up there with Jenny, too. She has the same advantage as Jenny in that she can get some very interesting reactions from the Doctor, her slightly inappropriately flirty nature amused me, and she was a really gutsy kind of person. Plus she gave us an interesting look into the future of the series.
If you met the Doctor and were allowed one trip in the TARDIS, and only one, where would you choose to go?
The 51st century, before the destruction of the Time Agents. Hello Vortex Manipulator
I've been watching the Runaway Bride on DVD lately and its made me think a lot about the Doctor.
The part that mosty gets me is the bit where he floods the room to kill the Racnoss. Becuase the Empress is screaming "My children!" and the Doctor is just standing there, watching it all like he doesn't care. That shows something about the Doctor that most of the time we don't notice, his ruthless side. The times where he will destroy whatever monster is threatening something, the times when he kills without mercy.
What I'm trying to say is, no matter how wonderful we all think the Doctor is and how long an essay Elyvorg could write on him, the Doctor has a dark side. He killed those Racnoss without caring what he had done. And in Dalek, he tortured that Dalek, again without caring. The Doctor has changed since then, but we see that dark side again with the other Doctor. He destroyed all of those Daleks and didn't care. The real Doctor tried to save Davros, the other Doctor didn't.
In fact that dark side is what truely makes the Doctor. Take that away and he isn't the Doctor any more. As I like to put it:
Every hero has a dark side
Part of being a hero is accepting that dark side.
I never said in my "essay" on the previous page that the Doctor doesn't have a dark side. In fact, near the end of it I pretty much said that while I think his compassion is a wonderful thing, it does have its limits - there is going to be a point where he has to stop offering to help and just destroy his enemies. And where exactly those limits lie is a very, very interesting question.
Yes, you're right, that dark side is very much a part of the Doctor. (If I were to write an essay on the Doctor in general, a good chunk of it would definitely be devoted to this darkness and ruthlessness that he sometimes has.) He's a very powerful being, as has been hinted at several times, so it's a very bad idea to push him over the edge. And yes, if you took that dark side away he would be very different: the dangerous, threatening manner he can often have would have nothing to back it up; he wouldn't have been able to make the Vashta Nerada back down if he hadn't had such a powerful reputation stretching back so far.
You also make an excellent point when you say that he didn't care about destroying the Racnoss. A lot of the time, the Doctor is forced to kill and destroy for the greater good, but almost every one of these times, he heavily regrets what he has to do. But that one time with the Racnoss, he'd been pushed so far over the edge by losing Rose that he simply did not care that he was committing genocide. And the Ninth Doctor harboured so much anger towards the Daleks after the Time War that he didn't care about that one Dalek. The blue Doctor had the same mindset when he destroyed all of Davros' Daleks, as the brown Doctor pointed out. So yes.
Yet my compassion-loving mindset still loves the fact that the brown Doctor tried to save Davros. :3
I hope this doesn't come across as though I didn't like your post, because I really did. A lot.
You also make an excellent point when you say that he didn't care about destroying the Racnoss. A lot of the time, the Doctor is forced to kill and destroy for the greater good, but almost every one of these times, he heavily regrets what he has to do. But that one time with the Racnoss, he'd been pushed so far over the edge by losing Rose that he simply did not care that he was committing genocide. And the Ninth Doctor harboured so much anger towards the Daleks after the Time War that he didn't care about that one Dalek. The blue Doctor had the same mindset when he destroyed all of Davros' Daleks, as the brown Doctor pointed out. So yes.
Could you perhaps be making a slight reference to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows there? Or was it an unintentional reference? Either way, you have just opened a gateway for a tidal wave of possible arguements.
From here on in, I shall post in Spoilers, because whilst Deathly Hallows has been out for a year, its always polite to make sure nothing is spoliered.
By admitting that The Doctor works for "The Greater Good", the reference to Dumbledore is astounding. Nobody who has read Deathly Hallows was NOT shocked by that moment, and the realisation that Dumbledore is not only flawed, but can think to the capacity of excusing mass slaughter by saying it is for "the greater good".
However this rings true for The Doctor too, who is prepared to excuse the cumulative slaughter he has comitted over the years as it is for "the greater good".
Then comes the phrase itself. "For the Greater Good". Who's Greater Good? If this is excusable for The Doctor, why would this not ring true for a mass murderer who slaughters his victims, only to state it is for "his greater good". By excusing the Doctor of such atrocities, surely that means we are excusing these people who kill for pleasure?
How far can you decide to take the phrase "for the greater good"? When can it not be used as a means of defense? When it is a beaten wife who cracks open her husbands skull with an iron to stop the abuse? When it is a doctor who delivers a dose of lethal poison to a terminally ill patient? When it is the judge who condemns a prisoner to sit on death row?
All of these situations have arguements for and against what is "right" and "wrong", and the same goes for the Doctor's actions in some of the situations he is in. In "Dalek", he was fully prepared to "commit genocide", going so far as to tell the Dalek who had seen the error of its ways to "go kill itself". In "The Runaway Bride" he DID commit genocide.
How can everybody accept this and still say what he did was "for the greater good"? Was it for the Racnosses "Greater Good", or any of the other creatures he has slaughtered that got in his way?
I'm going away tomorrow, so I can't really do a big reply. Sorry, gotta pack and all that jazz :/
Pete's World is a few years ahead of ours (this was established back in Doomsday), so the walls between universes were starting to break down from that side before they did so on our side because in that future, the Reality Bomb had happened.
Yes, but they built the thing that sent Rose and co back to our world. A dimension cannon - HOW?
How do you differentiate between "companion" and "random one-off character", then? Because I highly doubt some random obscure-ish person like, I dunno, Dee Dee from Midnight would count.
How's it cheating? If we were given one place, you pretty much stated we would have knowledge of the Doctor Who universe. So I chose there. Also happens to have sonic tech there. Yay
I think in terms of understanding the Doctor's temperament this series hit him on the head with just a couple of lines in Human Nature:
"He's like fire, and ice, and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe. And... he's wonderful."
"He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing -- the fury of the Time Lord -- and then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he had run away from us and hidden... He was being kind."
These was one of the true gems, in terms of understanding the Doctor, that the regenerated series has uncovered.
Yes he is wonderful; he can be merciful and forgiving. But if you step across that line, if you back him into a corner, if you make him angry... then you have a huge problem.
Because it is clear he is incredibly powerful, more so then he tends to let on most of time, and extremely smart... and all that pain and suffering he's seen & experienced has hardened him so much. Each incarnation is different; the 7th was truly ruthless and extremely dangerous at times, the 9th could be menacing but he only seemed dangerous once, the 10th possesses that same dangerous streak as the 7th but it only tends to surface when his back is against the wall and even then he tends to be more merciful.
I mean think about the Raconoss compared to say the Adiphosians; they were a monumental threat to Earth, he offered her a chance to leave ( "You get one warning" ) she refuses and he knows unless he stops them they'll devour the whole planet... Essentially he has no choice but to do what he does, and while there is a somewhat merciless rage on his face at the time I'd argue there's a horror at having to do it there too.
Arguably I think the 10th is an excellent character study of the Doctor and shows the truest parts of this amazing being.
Can't wait for The Doctor's Daughter this weekend in Aust ^^ I know it'll be great!
~"Oooh, I like it when you use my name"
(heh, couldn't resist... when's the Master coming back?!)
Just so everyone knows, this is not a part of any topic. This is me sort of showing what I believe to be the funniest lines in the Runaway Bride:
Doctor: Don't you have a mobile on you?
Donna: I'm in my wedding dress. Have you ever seen a bride with pockets? When I was getting it fitted the one thing I forgot to say was give me pockets!
I think that this was a running joke with the "Pockets" thing. As well as with the last one where they had a TARDIS reference "They're bigger on the inside."
Doctor: What do camoflagued robot mercenarys want with you? You're not special, you're not powerful, not connected, not important.
Donna: This friend of yours, before she left did she punch you in the face? Stop bleeping me!
I really laughed at that becuase he speaks the last bit into the microphone like hes trying to really get the point across.
Now this is not a funny moment, in fact its in here for my most remembered moment. Yes we had jokes, robot taxi drivers and sound systems. But this is something I won't forget for a long time.
Doctor: Oh, but I'm not from Mars.
Empress: Then where?
Doctor: My home is far away and long since lost. But its name lives on. Gallifrey.
That bit at the end is the one I won't forget. They showed it again in Turn Left and we saw how important Donna was in that bit. But the Gallifrey bit is really good as well, just the Doctor showing just how much power that word can have. Donna was more important than we could have seen back when this was on tv. We thought she was just a random one off character with no real importance to the rest of Doctor Who. How wrong we were.
Could you perhaps be making a slight reference to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows there? Or was it an unintentional reference? Either way, you have just opened a gateway for a tidal wave of possible arguements.
From here on in, I shall post in Spoilers, because whilst Deathly Hallows has been out for a year, its always polite to make sure nothing is spoliered.
By admitting that The Doctor works for "The Greater Good", the reference to Dumbledore is astounding. Nobody who has read Deathly Hallows was NOT shocked by that moment, and the realisation that Dumbledore is not only flawed, but can think to the capacity of excusing mass slaughter by saying it is for "the greater good".
However this rings true for The Doctor too, who is prepared to excuse the cumulative slaughter he has comitted over the years as it is for "the greater good".
Then comes the phrase itself. "For the Greater Good". Who's Greater Good? If this is excusable for The Doctor, why would this not ring true for a mass murderer who slaughters his victims, only to state it is for "his greater good". By excusing the Doctor of such atrocities, surely that means we are excusing these people who kill for pleasure?
How far can you decide to take the phrase "for the greater good"? When can it not be used as a means of defense? When it is a beaten wife who cracks open her husbands skull with an iron to stop the abuse? When it is a doctor who delivers a dose of lethal poison to a terminally ill patient? When it is the judge who condemns a prisoner to sit on death row?
All of these situations have arguements for and against what is "right" and "wrong", and the same goes for the Doctor's actions in some of the situations he is in. In "Dalek", he was fully prepared to "commit genocide", going so far as to tell the Dalek who had seen the error of its ways to "go kill itself". In "The Runaway Bride" he DID commit genocide.
How can everybody accept this and still say what he did was "for the greater good"? Was it for the Racnosses "Greater Good", or any of the other creatures he has slaughtered that got in his way?
Yay for having started some really interesting discussion! I'm calling it a discussion rather than a debate because, surprising as it may sound, I'm not actually defending the Doctor here. I'm just discussing him because, as we all know, he is one heck of an interesting character.
So to start off, I didn't intend "the greater good" as a Harry Potter reference. xP I have read HP7, but it was a while ago and I've forgotten a lot of it (seriously need to re-read it sometime).
I intended "greater good" to basically mean the entire human race, most of the time. He destroys these monsters because the alternative is that they'll wipe out the whole of humanity. One of the most emphasised choices about the "greater good" was in The Fires of Pompeii - wipe out twenty thousand humans and the remainder of an ancient alien race, or have the entire population of Earth turn to stone and become Pyrovile? It is interesting to note that there wasn't much focus put on the fact that the Doctor was slaughtering the Pyrovile and basically committing genocide at that point because the focus was largely on the twenty thousand people whose deaths he was now responsible for.
Sometimes it does come down to the choice between letting the Earth's population of humans live or letting a new species which is trying to colonise Earth for the sake of survival do so. So it's probably a good thing for us humans that despite all our faults, we're the Doctor's favourite species.
But it should be noted that the Doctor is almost never indifferent about killing off all these creatures. He almost always does it with large amounts of regret.
Presumably a similar kind of tech to the ones used in Doomsday - it definitely looks similar, at least. 'Fraid I can't help you on how they built those, though. xP
I think in terms of understanding the Doctor's temperament this series hit him on the head with just a couple of lines in Human Nature:
"He's like fire, and ice, and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe. And... he's wonderful."
"He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing -- the fury of the Time Lord -- and then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he had run away from us and hidden... He was being kind."
These was one of the true gems, in terms of understanding the Doctor, that the regenerated series has uncovered.
Yes he is wonderful; he can be merciful and forgiving. But if you step across that line, if you back him into a corner, if you make him angry... then you have a huge problem.
Because it is clear he is incredibly powerful, more so then he tends to let on most of time, and extremely smart... and all that pain and suffering he's seen & experienced has hardened him so much. Each incarnation is different; the 7th was truly ruthless and extremely dangerous at times, the 9th could be menacing but he only seemed dangerous once, the 10th possesses that same dangerous streak as the 7th but it only tends to surface when his back is against the wall and even then he tends to be more merciful.
Some nice points there. I'm not so sure about the thing with the Tenth having his back against the wall, myself. Every time he's shown that ruthless side, to me, it's always seemed like he's been perfectly in control of the situation and could have chosen to be kinder if he so wished. I think it's more just down to how much something has angered him - such as the death of a certain person he liked in Forest of the Dead which made him seem pretty ready to destroy the Vashta Nerada if they hadn't accepted his offer.
I mean think about the Raconoss compared to say the Adiphosians; they were a monumental threat to Earth, he offered her a chance to leave ( "You get one warning" ) she refuses and he knows unless he stops them they'll devour the whole planet... Essentially he has no choice but to do what he does, and while there is a somewhat merciless rage on his face at the time I'd argue there's a horror at having to do it there too.
Arguably I think the 10th is an excellent character study of the Doctor and shows the truest parts of this amazing being.
The Racnoss example is an interesting one, I think. He offered her that way out and she refused, thinking his threat was empty. Then after he'd deactivated her Roboforms and told her his home planet, she most definitely had a change of mind and started begging him not to throw the explosives. His words? "I warned you. You did this."
He could have stopped at that point, gone back on the fact that the warning was supposed to be a final one and taken the Racnoss to another planet, because I reckon they'd have been pretty happy to go having realised who he was. But instead, he sticks by his "No second chances" nature and seems to be shifting the blame onto the Empress in his mind just so that he can live with himself for having killed them.
It's like the half-full/half-empty scenario - the "you have one chance" can be seen as both kind and merciless, depending on how you look at it.
About the horror on his face as he does it: I went and looked after reading that, and I wish I could have found it, but the amount of water cascading down makes it very hard to read his face. The only time we get a proper look is after Donna tells him to stop, at which point there does indeed seem to be some horror at what he's done, as well as some kind of internal battle going on as to whether or not he should stop.
That bit at the end is the one I won't forget. They showed it again in Turn Left and we saw how important Donna was in that bit. But the Gallifrey bit is really good as well, just the Doctor showing just how much power that word can have. Donna was more important than we could have seen back when this was on tv. We thought she was just a random one off character with no real importance to the rest of Doctor Who. How wrong we were.
I'm glad not everyone is miles ahead of me... I keep hearing about things I don't have a clue about, and Australia has to get everything last... wish I lived in England.
When I saw the preview of that one though, I swear my jaw hit the ground. That was the last thing I expected!
Seriously. I absolutely loved looking forward to The Doctor's Daughter from the moment I saw its title and read that in it David Tennant gives his "most spellbinding performance yet". It is very, very good, I assure you (at least, I do - other people might not). And I think you in particular will enjoy it, Night_Walker; it contains a lot of the sort of thing you like. Time Lord-ness and warnings and a certain moment with a gun.
Also much envy for the fact that you lot are still in the middle of a series. It's not all over for you yet. :<
Oh, and by the way, the Master isn't coming back. Not in series 4, and not any other time that we've heard about yet. D:
Seriously, do those punishments he chucked on the Family of Blood count as kind? Being wrapped in unbreakable chains, trapped in every mirror, thrown into a black hole and being made into a scarecrow and put in a time lock.
Unless that was about him making himself human, which would mean he could have destroyed them anyway. But that is not how the Doctor works.
The Doctor. The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun.
Davros couldn't have said it better. The Doctor is not the kind of person who fights. He only opposes monsters like the Slitheen and the daleks becuase of his sense of right and wrong. Yes the Doctor is powerful, theres no doubt about that. But he chooses not to use that power until he has to. He always offers his foes one last chance. He only destroys them when there is no other way to resolve it.
Never forget, the Doctor ended the Time War becuase he had to. He only uses what power he has when there is no other way out. In that way, he is kind becuase he offers even the worst enemies a chance.
cybermew: Same thing; I just need a tiny bit more from you, like one line's worth. I'm sure you'll be able to think of something given what I've seen of you in the old club.
I love Doctor Who because of the great blend of humour, action and intelligence. I find some of the psycollogy (sp?) and alien. I love to ask questions and DW always seems to answer it, giving me more questions to ask and more answers to ponder over. I geuss to enhance my explanation I should explain my genetic reason really. My Grandad loved all the sciences, (he recently passed away) and I seemed to follow suit. He also loved history, another great trait I seemed to have inherited, giving me the love of the perfect mix of time travel, science and technology, and Doctor Who fufills that need.
If you met the Doctor and were allowed one trip in the TARDIS, and only one, where would you choose to go?
As long as it was nowhere dangerous, I would set iot to random, WAAAAAY to many to choose
Some nice points there. I'm not so sure about the thing with the Tenth having his back against the wall, myself. Every time he's shown that ruthless side, to me, it's always seemed like he's been perfectly in control of the situation and could have chosen to be kinder if he so wished. I think it's more just down to how much something has angered him - such as the death of a certain person he liked in Forest of the Dead which made him seem pretty ready to destroy the Vashta Nerada if they hadn't accepted his offer.
Oh I think there are times he gets pushed into a corner and he has no choice but to do what he does (such as in The Fires of Pompeii when he has to take virtually germicidal action to protect the timeline). After all he is the sole Lord of Time, it is his responsibility to protect the time line from damaging changes so if those he's up against won't back down he has to do what is necessary.
Although yeah I think he has a 'point' that once he is pushed past he becomes extremely dangerous: "He never raised his voice that was the worst thing - the fury of the Time Lord" "No one's ever meant to have that power. If a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god, a vengeful god."
Arguably I think to understand why he is the way he is now you have to take into account just how much destruction he has witnessed in his life: "I'm so old now. I used to have so much mercy. You get one warning, that was it."
I think he'd kinda got feed up with the Vashta Nerada by that stage, as they'd killed so many people in the group by then, and he'd just discovered how to revive all the people in the computer and was not about to let the Vashta Nerada kill all those people too. After all we've seen he abhors bloodshed, and after all the death he's seen he tries to prevent it where he can. I mean we see his joy, as the Ninth and the Tenth, when he gets one of those rare days where "everybody lives!"
However in "Evolution of the Daleks" he tries to offer help to Caan having witnessed a genocide that day, that Caan committed and in "Journey's End" he tells his companions to stop their actions despite knowing what the plan of the Daleks was. So it sorta seems to vary from place to place.
The Racnoss example is an interesting one, I think. He offered her that way out and she refused, thinking his threat was empty. Then after he'd deactivated her Roboforms and told her his home planet, she most definitely had a change of mind and started begging him not to throw the explosives. His words? "I warned you. You did this."
He could have stopped at that point, gone back on the fact that the warning was supposed to be a final one and taken the Racnoss to another planet, because I reckon they'd have been pretty happy to go having realised who he was. But instead, he sticks by his "No second chances" nature and seems to be shifting the blame onto the Empress in his mind just so that he can live with himself for having killed them.
It's like the half-full/half-empty scenario - the "you have one chance" can be seen as both kind and merciless, depending on how you look at it.
About the horror on his face as he does it: I went and looked after reading that, and I wish I could have found it, but the amount of water cascading down makes it very hard to read his face. The only time we get a proper look is after Donna tells him to stop, at which point there does indeed seem to be some horror at what he's done, as well as some kind of internal battle going on as to whether or not he should stop.
Well he gives one warning to all his foes, sometimes offering some more chances then others, regardless of if they know who and what he is. The thing is some foes don't know who he is, or what he is because of the events of the Time Lord wiping almost all Time Lords from existence ( "Time Lord, last of. ...Heard of them? Legend or anything? ...Not even a myth? Blimey, the end of the universe is a bit humbling." ) so they don't appreciate the seriousness of his threat.
I'd argue the Empress of the Racnoss suddenly realised what she was dealing with but was merely angry, she only begged when she realised he did have a way to kill her children and had already started the process. Out of the few foes he's encountered, who know of the Time Lords only the Vashta Nerada actually realised the danger inherent in making him angry; the Krillitanes continued with their plan regardless, as did The Master however he's also a Time Lord so their abilities tended to balance out, The Daleks fear the Doctor but not to the point that they will back down (perhaps because of their behavioural 'programming').
I think it's sorta clear that the Doctor does regret the things he has to do, and the storm that follows in his wake. That's why what Davros says has such a huge impact on him in "Journey's End"
Seriously. I absolutely loved looking forward to The Doctor's Daughter from the moment I saw its title and read that in it David Tennant gives his "most spellbinding performance yet". It is very, very good, I assure you (at least, I do - other people might not). And I think you in particular will enjoy it, Night_Walker; it contains a lot of the sort of thing you like. Time Lord-ness and warnings and a certain moment with a gun.
Also much envy for the fact that you lot are still in the middle of a series. It's not all over for you yet. :<
Oh, and by the way, the Master isn't coming back. Not in series 4, and not any other time that we've heard about yet. D:
Heh, I envy people who get to see things on time... I HATE having to wait months for the eps
Yeah I've read up on the ep, even taken sneak peeks on Youtube... but it's not the same as seeing it on TV. Certainly sounds extremely interesting, and kicked up a huge debate about exactly what Jenny actually is I'll keep back my opinions and thoughts about her til it's aired here.
Can't deny I'm fascinated the ins & outs of the capabilities of Time Lords, but they are indeed a fascinating race.
~Citizens, rejoice. Your Lord and Master stands on high... playing track 3!
Heh sry gonna be my trademark I think cycling through his quotes.
Can't help thinking that hoping for nowhere dangerous when you set the TARDIS controls to random is pretty wishful thinking. Like I've said before, this is the Doctor.
Seriously, do those punishments he chucked on the Family of Blood count as kind? Being wrapped in unbreakable chains, trapped in every mirror, thrown into a black hole and being made into a scarecrow and put in a time lock.
Unless that was about him making himself human, which would mean he could have destroyed them anyway. But that is not how the Doctor works.
To the first question: no. xD Definitely not - the kindness did indeed mean the turning himself human in the first place. It gave the Family a chance to just leave him alone and die peacefully at the end of their short lifespans, but nope, they had to go and be persistent.
He could indeed have handed out those punishments right from the start, but yes.
Davros couldn't have said it better. The Doctor is not the kind of person who fights. He only opposes monsters like the Slitheen and the daleks becuase of his sense of right and wrong. Yes the Doctor is powerful, theres no doubt about that. But he chooses not to use that power until he has to. He always offers his foes one last chance. He only destroys them when there is no other way to resolve it.
Never forget, the Doctor ended the Time War becuase he had to. He only uses what power he has when there is no other way out. In that way, he is kind becuase he offers even the worst enemies a chance.
Oh I think there are times he gets pushed into a corner and he has no choice but to do what he does (such as in The Fires of Pompeii when he has to take virtually germicidal action to protect the timeline). After all he is the sole Lord of Time, it is his responsibility to protect the time line from damaging changes so if those he's up against won't back down he has to do what is necessary.
I see what's meant by being dangerous when he's backed against a wall now, but I can't help thinking that this is less down to him being the Doctor and more down to him simply having no choice. Anyone in a lot of the situations he gets himself stuck in would quite likely end up doing similar things for the sake of saving the Earth. For instance, Donna helped the Doctor push that lever in The Fires of Pompeii, thus giving herself a hand in the killing of the Pyrovile and those twenty thousand villagers - does that make her a dangerous being, too? :/
In fact, those times when the Doctor is forced to kill by virtue of having no other choice are the times when he's been most clearly upset about what he's had to do.
I wholeheartedly agree with Night_Walker's next two paragraphs and think they make some great points, so I can't be bothered quoting them. ^^;
However in "Evolution of the Daleks" he tries to offer help to Caan having witnessed a genocide that day, that Caan committed and in "Journey's End" he tells his companions to stop their actions despite knowing what the plan of the Daleks was. So it sorta seems to vary from place to place.
This is the point which I think is the most interesting, you see - the question of how and why it varies.
I think with Evolution of the Daleks it was partly that he identified with Caan as he was now the last of his kind, and partly that the very fact that he'd already witnessed a genocide made him very reluctant to cause another. Dalek Caan wasn't in a position to start slaughtering more humans, so there was no reason to kill him just for the sake of revenge.
Then again, there are times when the sheer amount of deaths are what angers the Doctor in the first place rather than doing the opposite - like in The Family of Blood, where I think what might have annoyed him the most was how many villagers the Family pointlessly killed in their bombings. However, he didn't kill anyone when giving out those punishments - maybe the reason he did let them live forever, apart from the sheer irony of it, was because he didn't want to be responsible for any more deaths.
For the Journey's End example you gave, Martha's threat bothered him in particular because it involved the killing of every single human being bar the few on the Crucible, which the Doctor insisted couldn't have been the only way to save the universe despite there being no other obvious option at that moment. Jack's threat of destroying the Crucible was a little more reasonable, but I think by that point, the Doctor had become rather horrified at how far his companions were willing to go and the realisation that them becoming like this was largely down to his influence.
Well he gives one warning to all his foes, sometimes offering some more chances then others, regardless of if they know who and what he is.
You're the man with the examples - which foes does he offer more than one chance? I'm pretty sure there are a couple despite the Doctor supposedly not giving second chances, but I can't think of any off the top of my head. ^^;
I'd argue the Empress of the Racnoss suddenly realised what she was dealing with but was merely angry, she only begged when she realised he did have a way to kill her children and had already started the process. Out of the few foes he's encountered, who know of the Time Lords only the Vashta Nerada actually realised the danger inherent in making him angry; the Krillitanes continued with their plan regardless, as did The Master however he's also a Time Lord so their abilities tended to balance out, The Daleks fear the Doctor but not to the point that they will back down (perhaps because of their behavioural 'programming').
I think with the Krillitanes it was more down to them being used to the more peaceful, watching-from-a-distance-but-not-intervening kind of Time Lords, so they didn't quite realise how dangerous the Doctor was despite his threat.
The Master may well have turned down the Doctor's offer/warning due to simply being insane.
And yes, the Daleks have far too much "Exter-minate the Doctor! He is an enemy of the Daa-leks!" in their mindsets to even think about taking his offer. xP
I think it's sorta clear that the Doctor does regret the things he has to do, and the storm that follows in his wake. That's why what Davros says has such a huge impact on him in "Journey's End"
Sorry about my inactive-ness. I was inactive due to personal reasons, but as of today I'll be more active.
I have a question about something in Journey's end.
When the Doctor and Rose were talking about the doors being impenatreble (Sp?) he said " Last time we faced the Daleks, they were scavangers" and some other things. But the last time him and Rose fought the Daleks was with the Cult of Skaro in Doomsday. When the Genesis Ark opened, Time war Daleks came out. Those were the equivilent to a Dalek empire, but the Doctor said that Davros' empire could get through and they (Cult of Skaro Daleks) couldn't. I suppose he could of meant him, Rose and Jack, because that would be correct.
Crasher, I have no idea. Probably becuase the Cult of Skaro took just a tiny piece of the Dalek empire with them (the Genesis Ark). So they had to scavenge technology and stuff to open the Ark.
Anyway, heres a tip for you all. UKTV Gold have been reshowing series 2, one episode at 4 pm every day. Today I watched The Age Of Steel. Brilliant episode, with the Doctor standing and defending what humanity had. What the Cybermen had lost. I felt so sad when that electro-magnetic pulse bomb disabled that Cybermans emotional inhibitor and it remembered who it was. That made me so sad becuase of what it felt. It was cold and alone. I felt so glad when the Doctor killed it, just becuase it stopped it from feeling that.
I just loved the bit where the Doctor is making that speech to the Cyber Controller and hes actually telling Mickey how to get the shutdown code.
Doctor: One determined human, even an idiot tapping away at a keyboard. Thats all it can take to stop you. One human looking back in the Lumic family history to find that code. And all of the buttons humans have invented. My favorite one is "Send."
Rose: Doctor, its for you. (tosses the mobile phone to him.)
Doctor: And lets not forget how you seduced this lot into thinking you were the greatest genius in the world. By making all technology compatible with every other kind. Like this (slams mobile into slot).
He killed the Cybermen, but he regretted it despite all the pain and death the Cybermen had caused becuase he knew who they originally were. Humans. My favorite bit in the whole episode would be where the Doctor is making that speech to the Cyber Controller about the Cybermen just being stuck. Stuck in a rut becuase they have nothing to strive for, no goals to achieve.
) of us...