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The Doctor Who Club v.4

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Crasher

Well-Known Member
None near my town. Oh well, will be on the sofa on the 23rd November.

That's unfortunate. Luckily, I managed to get tickets; I'm going with two friends who watch it and two who don't. Steven Moffat has said that he's written it to be accessible (and, indeed, a good jumping in point) for new watchers, so hopefully it'll hook them.

"Anyone attending one of the theatrical events will get a bit of an extra treat in the form of bonus footage. According to BBC America, “The theatrical events will include specially shot introductions and The Day of The Doctor: Behind The Lens, a 10 minute behind-the-scene featurette directly following the special. The short features Matt Smith, David Tennant and Jenna Coleman with Billie Piper and John Hurt, as well as lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat, discussing their 50th Anniversary experiences.”"

Presumably it'll be the same in the UK and elsewhere, given that the BBFC has put one version of the 'Video' version of The Day of the Doctor at 76m 44s, the other at 80m 0s (not sure what's going on there), and the 'Film' version at 85m 24s.

I've been watching a few more Classic serials in preparation for the 50th. I've watched The Terror of the Zygons, The Tenth Planet, The Tomb of the Cybermen, and The Attack of the Cybermen. I also intend to watch An Unearthly Child when it airs on BBC4.

EDIT: More news.

Some 'additional material' for The Day of the Doctor has been approved by the BBFC. It's 3m 57s long and it's called 'The Last Day'. I wonder if this is the specially filmed trailer they talked about a few weeks ago.
 
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Two big pieces of news.

The official trailer for The Day of the Doctor will air on BBC 1 at 8pm GMT.

Here is an official, 14-second-long sneak peak. It won't spoil anything much so don't worry.

[video=youtube;7zM-mCt7Wfk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zM-mCt7Wfk[/video]
 

Aegon

Well-Known Member
Welcome, cwertle.

The official trailer for The Day of the Doctor will air on BBC 1 at 8pm GMT.
Tomorrow. ;) Then there'll also be a trailer released on Sunday. The special itself will air at 19:50, it has also been announced, meaning it'll run until 21:05. A live after-party will be broadcast on BBC Three immediately after. I almost feel like not watching the trailers since the 23rd really isn't too far off, but I don't think I'll manage. At least the production team have been successful in avoiding the leaking of spoilers, so there's only the official trailers to be wary of. I still can't quite get over how the trailer for The Name of the Doctor showed Clara entering the Doctor's time stream (though we didn't know it to be that at the time, it still made the reason behind her multiple incarnations far too obvious).

The limited edition Series 7 box-set arrived on Wednesday, after spending a torturous two weeks in the post (really, BBC Shop?). It was well worth the wait, I must admit. Considering it's only about £10 more than the standard version, I'd certainly recommend it. I watched The Name of the Doctor in preparation for Day that evening. I think it relies too much on the nods to the past, and the whole "You're always here to me" was a step too far for me. It's wonderful in terms of romance, but it makes no sense. Nevertheless, it's highly enjoyable and entertaining. "Sorry, it's just I never realised you were a woman." "Well, neither did I." gets me every time.

I also viewed some of the special features. The behind-the-scenes features showed Jenna in a light I hadn't seen before. Her personality really came across, whereas I hadn't gotten that from other interviews. I suppose after Karen, the next actor to play the companion would always seem tame. Clara and the TARDIS was the minisode I enjoyed the most, though I couldn't help but be reminded of Space/Time and the "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" for Flesh and Stone. Still, it's fun. Rain Gods, on the other hand, disappointed me. It's quite uninteresting and I can't find any comedic value in it. River could have made it fantastic, so that's a shame.

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams

e: The trailer (or a trailer) has leaked!
 
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If the Eleventh's trailer isn't what's about to show in 30 minutes, get on your sofas!

Here it is incase you missed it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01lb74r

Why isn't it the 23rd yet? I've waited so long for this, and this trailer only tells me there's not long to wait.

It was incredible. Seeing Ten in action again made me happier than ever: he was always the best Doctor and forever will be. Hearing "Exterminate" and watching Daleks explode in half only made it even more exciting, not to mention the Zygons returning. I haven't actually watched any Classic Who, though I tried to make a start of it by watching the first few Hartnell episodes, but then concluded that it'd take too long to go over every single classic doctor series, so seeing the Zygons would be interesting judging by how lots of people wanted them to come back.

I loved the quotes that Ten and Eleven share when they're together. Ten saying he doesn't like Eleven's TARDIS interior design being my favorite so far. But all in all, it's great to see some 50th footage and another worthy thing to hype up for. Good show.
 
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the3rdH0kage

Turn my Swag on!
So I found out that they are playing the 50th in a local cinema, so this girl I'm friends with wants to go, I guess it could be called our first date??? or something idk. But anyway I'm watching it Saturday then the cinema Monday probably.
 

fitzy909

Just another guy
OOOOOOHHHHHHHHH MMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYY GGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THAT IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh my GOD! that looks awesome. I am so glad that i will get to see it in the cinema. This should give us some insight into the last great time war. 'Geronimo, Allons y' so many quotes and i am absolutely pumped. 10 not liking the tardis...great.

also, anyone interested in The Science of Doctor Who? It sounds great and the preview was great.
 

C.y.a.n

Ace Trainer
Oh my GOD! that looks awesome. I am so glad that i will get to see it in the cinema. This should give us some insight into the last great time war. 'Geronimo, Allons y' so many quotes and i am absolutely pumped. 10 not liking the tardis...great.

also, anyone interested in The Science of Doctor Who? It sounds great and the preview was great.

in 3D too <3 This will be amazing............

I loved the preview for the Science of Doctor Who. it is on the 12th or 11th right? i have it set to record it anyways :p
 
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cwertle

Don't Blink!
Yes! Finally got acces to season 7. Need to finish it before 50th anniversary special. :3
 

Aegon

Well-Known Member
cwertle, please keep the rule regarding one-liners in mind.

in 3D too <3 This will be amazing............

I loved the preview for the Science of Doctor Who. it is on the 12th or 11th right? i have it set to record it anyways :p
It's on tomorrow night, the 14th.

I was recently informed by my friend that The Day of the Doctor will be shown in my local cinema, which surprised me. It's not listed on the official site, but it is featured by the cinema's website. He's not a fan, but I'm trying to convince him to accompany me (I don't want to go by myself!). I was initially unsure of seeing it in the cinema rather than on television, however I can't miss out on this opportunity. Doctor Who on the big screen! In 3D! In ten days! I'm actually somewhat more excited for An Adventure in Space and Time, since I've heard so much praise for it. There's just over a week to go until that airs.

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams
 

C.y.a.n

Ace Trainer
cwertle, please keep the rule regarding one-liners in mind.


It's on tomorrow night, the 14th.

I was recently informed by my friend that The Day of the Doctor will be shown in my local cinema, which surprised me. It's not listed on the official site, but it is featured by the cinema's website. He's not a fan, but I'm trying to convince him to accompany me (I don't want to go by myself!). I was initially unsure of seeing it in the cinema rather than on television, however I can't miss out on this opportunity. Doctor Who on the big screen! In 3D! In ten days! I'm actually somewhat more excited for An Adventure in Space and Time, since I've heard so much praise for it. There's just over a week to go until that airs.

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams
when is the An Adventure in Space and Time on? i haven't heard much about it honestly.

Did ye guys hear what jenna coleman said about the christmas episode yet?
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards.
Uh. Hi, guys! So I kinda haven't posted in here since ages, because as much as I will never stop loving this show, I've had so many other things on my mind that aren't Doctor Who. But hey, it's great to see all the conversation that's been going on regardless. It's nice that this place has enough people with enough things to talk about to keep it going through the downtimes even without its owner desperately trying to drag it along! And now that the anniversary special is so nearly upon us, and then it'll be barely a month until Christmas, I imagine I'll have plenty to say here for the rest of the year.

Before I get to the catching up with stuff, I should probably mention something about Peter Capaldi, huh, since I haven't posted since before the announcement. Well, I'm perfectly happy with him and look forward to seeing what he can do. It'll be a little strange that he was in both Who and Torchwood as separate characters, but that'll be easy to look past once he starts being the Doctor. I've heard good things about him as an actor, and I have absolute faith that Steven Moffat would have chosen the best man for the job, so no worries there. And I'm also happy to hear that he was a childhood fan of the show and will therefore understand how playing the Doctor is the best job in the world, so he can have a lot of fun with it! Yay.


Anyway, so, catching up on stuff. Welcome to new members PurpleTitan, MooseSmuggler, melonjaywalk and cwertle. SkywardZelda, if you would like to join, please read the first post and fill out the form and then I'll be happy to welcome you too.

melonjaywalk, I couldn't help but feel like I should respond somehow to the points you raised about this club not getting much classic series discussion. Yes, it's true that I haven't seen very many classic serials and don't know a huge amount about it, despite being the owner of this club. But that doesn't at all mean I don't acknowledge that Doctor Who comprises both the new and the old - especially in this anniversary year that's been celebrating that fact - and would be happy for there to be more discussion of older episodes between the members here who know enough about them. It's true that most of the discussion in here tends to be about the newer series, because it's recent and new and at the front of everybody's minds, added to which a lot of us were too young to have grown up with the classic series and may not know where/have the time to get hold of and watch many old serials. But that doesn't mean that we dislike the old stuff or are actively trying to ignore it. Of course not.

And, especially since recent episodes have been paying more and more homage to the older series, I myself have been trying to watch some of the old serials, too. So it'd be great to have your thoughts and recommendations on which ones to go for. I notice you mentioned The Caves of Androzani - that's one that I've heard a lot of good things about myself, and I definitely do intend to watch it some day. However, I gather that what really makes it great is seeing the Fifth Doctor acting considerably unlike his usual self in the face of his imminent regeneration, and therefore in order for that to have the maximum impact on me I'd like to watch a good few other Fifth Doctor serials first so I can get a better sense of how he normally acts. The only one I've seen so far is Castrovalva, which I enjoyed a lot, but it was his post-regeneration episode so I dunno how much it counts for getting a sense of him "normally".

But yeah, I will definitely watch Caves sometime eventually; I know how fun Doctors can be in the face of their imminent regeneration. I mean, while I love a lot of the Tenth Doctor's run, The Waters of Mars and The End of Time are some of my absolute favourites of his, for that same reason. (This is also why I'm really seriously looking forward to November 23rd and Christmas this year. =D)

I also feel like I definitely want to watch The Curse of Fenric at some point, because as far as I've gathered (I've actually picked up a lot of small snippets of information about the past series just from browsing TV Tropes; this means that I actually do notice a lot of the continuity nods you talked about) it has themes and situations that are kinda similar to stuff in The God Complex, which is a recent-ish episode that I absolutely adore. Do you have any thoughts on Fenric?

In other news, there were several short vignettes shot for the Series 6 DVD. I recommend that everyone watch them (in the order I present), as they're rather good. I shan't spoil them, but I will say that elyvorg in particular should most definitely watch them since she made a post about something that happens in them a few pages back.

Bad Night
Good Night
First Night
Last Night

Oh, believe me, I'd seen those the moment I got myself the Series 6 DVDs, which was soon after they came out. I did my obligatory rambles about them and everything, although they'd be somewhere back in the old club, so it's understandable that you might not have seen them. Suffice it to say that I inevitably seem to adore any short bonus scenes with the Doctor in them, and these were definitely no exception.


The Eleventh - there are minisodes on the series 7 DVD boxset? Hm, what am I missing? I'm just getting the series 7 part 2 DVDs since I already have the ones for part 1, and also because the full series was only available in Blu-Ray on Amazon when I looked, grumble grumble. I didn't think I was missing out on anything by not getting the full boxset, but, huh. Are these scenes interesting enough that you think I should, ahem, find them somewhere?

Did ye guys hear what jenna coleman said about the christmas episode yet?
I haven't, at least; tell us! (In a club like this, it's always better to err on the side of mentioning something that some people might already know than to not mention something some people might not know. I mean, look at how often my posts are full of stuff that people might have found out themselves.)


So anyway, down to business!

Wheee! The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors - in other words, my two favourite characters ever from the last eight years of my life - together! Geronimo and allons-y! Screwdriver envy! Comparing of brainy specs! (even though the Eleventh's aren't really brainy specs at all.) TARDIS redecoration dislike! (which I can kind of see the Tenth Doctor's point about, because the Doctor wasn't exactly in the most whimsical mood when he designed this TARDIS interior, was he?) And that moment where they act exactly the same, which I've read Moffat mentioning they occasionally do and aaaa.

(And in that same shot, isn't that two Kate Stewarts? Because that would be a thing.)

I'm also amused by that motorbike. Is that the same one from The Bells of Saint John (though didn't he leave it in the Shard?), or has he just gotten himself a taste for motorbikes after that episode? Heh. Motorbikes are cool, after all. And then the shorter trailer has the Tenth Doctor riding a white horse out of his TARDIS, very reminiscently of The Girl in the Fireplace. I wonder if that's his answer to the Eleventh's motorbike. xP

The Doctor and Clara are being adorable together! I'm sure their relationship is just going to get even more heartmelting from hereon in. Then there's Clara in tears. :<! I wonder how okay she is after the mind-explodingness of what she did to save the Doctor last series. D:


A speculatory thought: I'd previously assumed, given that Rose is with him, that this'd have to be a Tenth Doctor from somewhere in the middle of series 2. However, seeing Rose in the trailer, her hairstyle looks nothing like it did in series 2; you'd think if she was supposed to be straight out of that series they'd have kept it a similar length and style to how it was back then (and her clothes don't look like anything she'd have worn during that series, either). Added to that, we don't see her interacting with her Doctor at any point during the trailer, even though we see Clara and the Eleventh Doctor interact plenty. So this gives me the impression that this is a later-on Rose from Pete's World, somehow managing to influence the events here in an indirect kind of way... I guess kind of similarly to how she did in Turn Left, maybe? I dunno. It'd be kind of interesting, but maybe I'm just way overinterpreting and she and her Doctor are just from series 2 after all.

...but, wait, it can't be a mid-series-2 Doctor, regardless of anything to do with Rose, because of the "Allons-y"! He first said that and decided it should become his catchphrase of sorts in Army of Ghosts, which was past the point-of-no-return in terms of losing Rose. So therefore the version of him here must be from after that. Ha! Proven, by means of silly catchphrases. :3 And actually, not only that, but there's the fact that the redhead in the trailer is actually Queen Elizabeth I, and yes, she apparently does get romantic with the Doctor, so this'd have to be sometime after the Shakespeare Code at least (in which he had clearly never met her before).

So this'll actually be a Tenth Doctor from after he lost Rose, which could potentially result in some fun stuff from him knowing that she's sort-of here but he can't actually get her back. ...Unless this is after he'd packed her off back to Pete's World with his clone. Hm. Actually, given it's not series 2, that leaves it very open for exactly which point in his timeline the Tenth Doctor is at here. I don't know if that's ever actually going to be relevant, but I for one would be interested to know, since his attitudes towards things changed slightly throughout his run.


And incidentally I'm going to see the special at my local cinema! My friends, who are awesome, managed to get a ticket for me before they sold out in apparently like twenty minutes. So that's going to be an experience, I'm sure. =D


I've been watching a few choice Tenth Doctor episodes over the past few days, mostly just to remind myself how fun he is in anticipation of the anniversary special. And, because of this, it's finally hitting me how brilliant it is that we're going to be getting another canon appearance of the Tenth Doctor - like, a new one, that didn't first air years ago and that I haven't already watched countless times. =D Until now in the lead up to the special my mind had been too focused on the Eleventh Doctor to properly appreciate this, but, eeee! And and and having the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors together in the same vicinity and interacting with each other and aaaa I am probably going to explode with delight.


Also, for the more immediate future: they're going to be showing some kind of scene during Children in Need this Friday (I believe sometime between 7:30 and 8:00, if anyone plans on just tuning in for that). What I'm not so sure about is exactly what kind of scene; from some sources it seems it'll just be a preview clip of the actual episode, but at some point there's also going to be a prequel, titled The Night of the Doctor. That source doesn't actually say whether the prequel is going to be the thing for Children in Need, though, so I dunno.

And I see the Doctor's been hijacking some of the BBC idents to get out a sort of message. Hee. Reminds me of that one time when he completely took over the BBC idents for the Christmas period. That made me smile.

~Ten days to go!~ (it's funny how not having been in a massively Doctor Who mood for a long while makes it feel like the six-month wait has passed in a flash.)

-elyvorg/Amelia
 

Aegon

Well-Known Member
Welcome back, elyvorg.

I also feel like I definitely want to watch The Curse of Fenric at some point, because as far as I've gathered (I've actually picked up a lot of small snippets of information about the past series just from browsing TV Tropes; this means that I actually do notice a lot of the continuity nods you talked about) it has themes and situations that are kinda similar to stuff in The God Complex, which is a recent-ish episode that I absolutely adore. Do you have any thoughts on Fenric?
I know this isn't directed at me, but Fenric is fantastic. It's perfectly enjoyable on its own, but you might be better off watching some other stories with Ace first. Remembrance of the Daleks is an excellent place to start.

The Eleventh - there are minisodes on the series 7 DVD boxset? Hm, what am I missing? I'm just getting the series 7 part 2 DVDs since I already have the ones for part 1, and also because the full series was only available in Blu-Ray on Amazon when I looked, grumble grumble. I didn't think I was missing out on anything by not getting the full boxset, but, huh. Are these scenes interesting enough that you think I should, ahem, find them somewhere?
They're nowhere near as worthwhile as the Night and the Doctor shorts from the Series 6 box-set, but "Clara and the TARDIS" is entertaining. Here's "The Inforarium" and "Rain Gods".

The prequel/minisode for The Day of the Doctor, The Night of the Doctor, was released today. Prepare yourselves. I had to pause the video and take a moment to compose myself.

PAUL MCGANN! AT LAST! His appearance here makes me doubt that he'll be appearing in the actual anniversary special, but this is still amazing. I noticed that he's using a Classic-style sonic, which is somewhat weird, considering the new screwdriver his Doctor obtained, as seen in Dark Eyes promotional material. It was very nice to hear him name-drop his past companions, but it may seem odd in a few years' time when he has travelled with more, yet he didn't mention them before his regeneration. In a way, the Eighth Doctor is "the one who broke the promise", despite the War Doctor (that's what they're calling him now, apparently) doing whatever he did, presumably with the Moment, "in the name of peace and sanity". Also, it appears that Eight regenerated into a younger version of the John Hurt Doctor, so I'm guessing he spent a long, long time fighting in the Time War. Unless he aged due to other reasons. I just hope this opens the way for more on-screen McGann, because that was so exciting.

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams
 
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degausser

In the Cookie Jar
sup homes, we all pumped for next saturday?

Why do you like Doctor Who?
It's probably one of the better SciFi shows that are out there. The character of the Doctor is pretty amazing, he's a mixture of light and shade with a bit of grey thrown in. I started watching the new series with 9 however the show never got to me until 10 come along. The season where he travelled with Rose and Martha were quite good, but it was his travels with Donna that I really enjoyed. 12 is a fine Doctor however I don't seem to be as vested in his travels when compared to 10. Furthermore I never warmed to Amy either, whereas I have a fondness for Rose and Martha.
Who's your favourite Doctor?
10. He wasn't as dark as 9. Even though he still had guilt from the Time War, he was still uplifting when he needed to be. 11 is abit too childish for me. His youthfulness brought a new energy to the show but his Doctor lacked the seriousness and slight arrogance of 10 (and the darkness of 9) that I really enjoyed. 11's relationship with River Song annoys me to no end, she is an infuriatingly annoying woman. Of the OldWho I quite like 5 due to the Time Crash episode. Not a huge fan of 2 from what I've seen.

I watched the Two Doctors last night which explains my dislike of 2. He seems too prickly for my liking. The companions are alright - Jamie and Ace were ok, apart from Ace's annoying accent.

Confirmed everyone's beliefs lol
 
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fitzy909

Just another guy
well, well... that minisode...
Paul Mcgann. Well we had to get an explanation for his regeneration sooner or later. I wish he had stayed on for more, but oh well. Also, we have heard many say that doctor now also means warrior and this is the point where the Doctor breaks the promise that is his name. i was not expecting this, which is good, and i really like how they handled it. if the this is anything to go by the 50th special will be great.
 

Crasher

Well-Known Member
"I'm a Doctor, but probably not the one you're expecting."

Oh, Moffat must have been grinning madly when he wrote that line. That was brilliant. I'm extremely pleased that Paul McGann got more screen time; he certainly deserved to feature in the 50th celebration in some shape or form, given his criminally small amount of time spent of screen and the adoration of the fans. I just want to repeat practically everything he said because I enjoyed his lines so much. "Physician, heal thyself," and "Will it hurt?" "Yes." "Good." stand out in particular. Oh, and the line about getting bored in 4 minutes. I wonder if the potion has reset his regeneration limit.

So, we've learned quite a bit about the Time War. It's so sad that the Doctor just gave up running from it because he knew he had to fight; imagine just giving up your identity that you've had for hundreds of years to become the antithesis of yourself. Moreover, he went to join the side that has been equated to the Daleks by the common citizen. I don't remember the specifics too well, but it seems as though equating them to the Daleks is somewhat a step further than how they were in the End of Time. Sure, they were trying to blow up time, but that seemed like a final measure. That they're equated to beings of pure hate while simply fighting the Daleks is chilling.

The internet has essentially exploded.

I suppose I should make some perfunctory comment on the trailers, but I'm too busy thinking about the minisode. They were excellent.
 

Will-powered Spriter

Pokédex Complete!
Heya, long time no see! I've been mostly avoiding news of the special as I am terrible at avoiding spoilers when hyped. This is the first trailer I actually watched since the finale earlier this year.

OK, so my local doctor who society showed the episode with the sisterhood in it just the other week, completely coincidentally. Those in charge are now claiming omniscience.

It's nice I'm beginning to actually get classic references now.

Also I'm going to see the special in the cinema in 8 days! So exciting!
 

MooseSmuggler

#DeathToFascists
Okay, wow, that was incredible. I saw an article theorizing that this would happen, turns out they were right.

ANYWAY, the big thing I want to point out is that Moffat said that there was one detail from the Classic series we overlooked, and I think I found it...in Brain of Moribus, Four says he's in his FINAL INCARNATION, making him the actual 13th Doctor. There were 9 incarnations before Hartnell, in that case. So really, we're on, what? 21, counting Hurt? We've been counting the Doctors wrong this whole time. I'll still refer to them by their on-screen numbers (with Hurt as 8.5), but damn, I'm surprised no one else has caught that. I'll be getting a copy of Brain of Moribus ASAP, because I have to see this myself (I only know because someone else who saw it pointed it out).
 

elyvorg

somewhat backwards.
degausser, welcome! Hopefully there'll be plenty of discussion here for you to join in with.


Okay, scratch my ponderings last post. Apparently it is a preview clip we're getting for Children in Need, because The Night of the Doctor is already here! And wow, it is quite a thing. I most heartily recommend not reading mine or anyone else's spoilers about it until you've seen it yourself.
Well, hello there, Eighth Doctor! You definitely weren't the Doctor we were expecting to see. I haven't even seen/listened to/read anything with him in, and even I made incoherently excited noises at the screen upon seeing him. There's something so cool about having one of the Doctors from the great legacy of the past, onscreen here and now in entirely new footage.

Oh, Cass. It took, what, three sentences for the Doctor to ask her to be his companion? That has to be some kind of record. He had to have been pretty lonely, to be that much on the lookout for someone suitable. She'd probably have been a great companion, too, if it wasn't for her prejudice against Time Lords thanks to the Time War. I happened to have rewatched The End of Time just last night, making it fresh in my mind just how horrible the Time Lords became in the War, so I can regrettably understand where she's coming from. To think Cass would rather die than trust him even just long enough to get her off the crashing ship, though... D: That must've hurt, especially from someone he wanted to travel with him. I get the impression somehow that he's probably had this kind of attitude from people before - although I imagine this'd be the first time someone died because of it. But it's so very him to stay in there in the hope of saving her even if it just gets him killed too.

The woman on Karn - Ohila, I think - struck me as being a little manipulative. I mean, I get her point about wanting the war stopped and seeing the Doctor as the best person to do it and so needing to turn him into a less peace-loving man. But I get the feeling her people had already found Cass's body and were just waiting for the opportune moment to show it to the Doctor in order to most effectively change his mind: he's a good man, he's the Doctor? Look how much that helped Cass. Ohila even had the exact potion already prepared, like she already knew he'd say yes. And I don't think the Sisterhood were actually planning on Cass being there, but her presence and her death were exactly what they needed to convince the Doctor that all Time Lords are horrible, warlike people and any attempts by him not to be are just empty promises.

I guess it technically is the Eighth Doctor who actually broke that promise, then. I can only feel sorry for him, though, feeling he has no choice but to throw away everything he is and become a monster for the greater good. Especially the way he wanted it to hurt, because he felt he deserved that pain. D: It's very sweet how he thought of his recent companions before he went out; the Doctor's companions always mean so much to him. I wonder if his apology to Cass was for not saving her (because he totally blamed himself for that even though she never expected anything from him and was going to die anyway), or for what he was about to do? Also I didn't previously know but I went and looked up the phrase "Physician, heal thyself", and apparently it means something to the effect of "Solve your own problems before you go around solving everyone else's", which is pretty delightfully fitting.

So, huh, despite what my personal theory had been, seems like this new Doctor comes in between the Eighth and the Ninth after all. I guess for the sake of keeping the numbering intact, he'll have to be the Eight-and-a-Halfth Doctor? The reason I didn't originally think that the John Hurt incarnation would be the one that fought in the Time War was because it didn't seem to fit that that was the Doctor's big secret, considering he does willingly talk about the Time War if need be - even, at a push, the part where he ended it. So hopefully that'll be addressed somehow during the special and will make a little more sense to me in the end.


Even with just those seven minutes, I now really like the Eighth Doctor. Yay! Except that means now I wish there were Eighth Doctor stories that I could go back and watch, but all there is is the movie in which, by virtue of being post-regeneration, he's not really himself for most of it. D:

Thanks for the links to those other minisodes, The Eleventh. I agree they're nothing on Night and the Doctor, but they were still worth seeing.
Teehee, Clara and the TARDIS. You have a point that it's a lot like the second Meanwhile in the TARDIS, but this one revolves around the amusing little Clara/TARDIS feud and as such has the TARDIS herself as a participating character, which is always fun. I adore how she laughed at the notion that Clara was the first girl the Doctor had ever brought home. And the Doctor really needs to teach Sexy not to bully his companions when he's not around. That was kinda mean of her.

(Seeing how capable the TARDIS is of overlapping people's timelines here makes me all the more convinced that the horribly tortured old Rory from those scenes in The Doctor's Wife really was an actual version of Rory who thankfully became neverhadexistent, rather than just a hallucination of Amy's. DDD: )

The Inforarium I find pretty interesting. It's nice to get a glimpse of the Doctor while he was busy erasing himself from history; there's just that slight undercurrent of self-loathing in the way he acts. And of all the ways he could have phrased his explanation of why he was doing it, "I want to be alone" is so... gah. Oh, Doctor. No, you don't.

Then it had that fun little Moffaty twist with the realisation that the time we're being shown this isn't actually the first time this has happened. I love things like that.

And Rain Gods... yeah, is basically a rehash of the Planet of the Rain Gods scene which was supposed to be at the beginning of The Doctor's Wife but had to be cut, except with River instead of Amy and Rory, and a random lightning flash instead of the sudden appearance of the Time Lord cube. So... yeah. I don't feel this version quite lives up to the potential the scene would have had if it'd been at the beginning of TDW like it was meant to.


...so I guess roll on the preview clip during Children in Need tomorrow evening?

~Nine days!~
(Will-powered Spriter, I know we all have the number eight on the brain right now, but you did mean nine days, right? Or are you using your Oxford witchcraft to get the special a day early just like you apparently got the minisode a week early? :O )

-elyvorg/Amelia
 
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I couldn't believe my eyes. Paul McGann, finally returning after all. I'm so glad that one of the greatest mysteries ever has now been kicked to the kerb and solved. While the episode was a bit simplistic and slightly humorous in terms of dialogue, I literally had to comprehend the return of the Eighth.

So it's all true. Everything I read that night after seeing The Name of the Doctor was all confirmed in the end. Though one of my friends thought that Hurt was actually the Doctor before he started his regeneration cycle beginning with Hartnell, so I sort of went with that theory. But nonetheless, I'm glad Moffat decided to be nice and bust one of the biggest Doctor Who mysteries.

Unfortunately, I never watched the classic series, though I will at some point after the 50th.

Anyway, I think The Science of Doctor Who starts in less than 20 minutes. Time to get on the sofa again!
 
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