This review interests me in the Seventh Doctor's run, as I am a New Who fan and have seen Classic episodes here and there, but I am unfortunately anal retentive about chronology, so I wanna get through the previous Doctors beforehand. This masterplan is a good example of how retcons and bold ideas can get seriously out of hand. Interesting, nonetheless. I do like that Moffat is doing something similar though, as I have faith in him as a writer.

"This review interests me in the Seventh Doctor's run [...] but I am unfortunately anal retentive about chronology, so I wanna get through the previous Doctors beforehand."

We'll see you back here in a few years, then?

I love learning of the history of Doctor Who. I'm such a nerd.

We finally got a multi-fan/reviewer episode! Granted, I'd kinda like to see you and a few other get together and trash an episode (a la the "Wonder Woman" review), but this was awesome.

BTW, I live in the US, but I could swear the version of "Remembrance of the Daleks" I watched on tv lo those many years ago had the "...far more than just another Time Lord" line in it. I could just be misremembering, though.

Oh, during the Third Doctor's tenure is when we first find out about Omega (in "The Three Doctors"). It's also in one of this later episodes ("The Time Warrior") that we find out that the name of the Doctor's home planet is Gallifrey.

Personally, I don't know if the Doctor HAS to be "something more". I have a lot of issues with "The Other" as well as the Loom and if I ever get to re-read the book (I don't think the BBC has it on the Classic site anymore) I could go into that.

I was surprised that when you were talking about Ace you didn't bring up the controversial "Death Comes To Time" webisodes.

Same here. The whole idea of the Doctor as being SPECIAL just... meh. Especially in the new series; he's the last of his race, that alone makes him "special".

And given how lackluster most of Moffat's "shocking reveals" are*, I don't really trust him to give us anything terribly amazing. Honestly, I wish they'd just drop the whole bloody thing.

*I remember watching "A Good Man Goes to War" waiting to find out that the deal was with River Song. They reveal she's Amy and Rory's daughter, and I was like... ok, yeah, most of us guessed that months ago. And...? That's it?

Really the hints themselves can be taken in more than one way.
In order:

Brain of Morbius
- The Doctor was 236 when he stole The TARDIS, the earlier images could have simply been images of The Doctor at different ages in his first generation.
- Also it was established in the serial that Carn(?) was in the Gallifreyan system and that the witches had a long standing friendship with the Time Lords, despite their being primitive religious nutters.

Remembrance of the Daleks
"I am far more than 'just another Time Lord'"

1. The Doctor, like all Time Lords, and more than most really, is very conceited.

2. At this point he has been traveling the cosmos for over 718 years, not including the time before he stole The TARDIS, learning from other cultures, whereas most other Time Lords only do a couple of missions in their life, maybe 200 years in time and space at most.
As he explains to Romana there is book-smarts, and then there is experience.

3. He is The Lord President (twice deposed), he has been one with The Matrix, he is far more than other Time Lords.
In fact that can link in to the 'we have trouble with the protoptype' comment, but The Doctor had to be there, because of his access to the devices.

4. The Time Lords cannot be so easily dismissed, they are one of the most powerful races in the universe, just another Time Lord? any Time Lord is worth more than that casual dismissal.

- The Hand, and the Silver Nemesis being on Earth doesn't have to mean the Doctor is 10 million years old, which would be a continuity error, he's a Time Traveller.
Obviously there are safeguards built into TT Capsules to prevent them going back in time on Gallifrey - The Blinovitch Limitation, but if that was overridden, or was not working properly.
What did the First Doctor do before he arrived on Earth? Susan was iirc 9 years old when they first set off together.
There is mystery that doesn't retcon anything.

Battlefield
Its not the first time The Doctor has caught up with his future: The Face of Evil.
Other worlds don't have to enter into it.

Oh and missed opportunity to play the clip "There is nothing, more useless, than a lock with a voice print."

Ace's story arc.
I don't see it as the Doctor grooming her to be a Time Lord, there are major problems with that.
Species for one, and the xenophobia of the Time Lords for another.

Also it takes about a century for a Time Lord to pass the academy, and they can read a page a second, humans just aren't that smart. For Ace to become a Time Lord she'd have to study for centuries. But humans don't live that long.
Sometimes writers just go insane, like Miller for instance.

No, what The Doctor was doing was forcing her to confront her fears; the mansion, the myths and her home.
Survival establishes in the first episode that Ace's mother has gone out of her mind with worry over her, travelled all over Britain, spent her entire life savings trying to find her daughter, but despite visiting all her friends and old haunts Ace never goes home.
Despite the beautiful oratory of The Doctor's final speech I like to think that he lead Ace straight to her old house and made her confront her final fear, the home she ran away from.[1]


The Fanfiction.
Official stories or not they just aren't canon.
The Looms are stupid, they could only work in illogical fanfiction, and they challenge not just Susan's continuity, but also Leela's love interest and The Doctor's love interest with Romana.

The new series is also fanfiction.
Davies stories and story arcs are based on it, probably because Davies clearly despises the real series and everything about it.
Moffat builds on this setting, although its vastly improved, its still set in a completely different universe to the original (real) series.
There are at least three major continuity errors in every episode, and sometimes upwards of a dozen minor ones, everything from Teleporters to the Time Lords themselves.
Its even out of continuity with itself, Eccleston makes the teeth line, despite them showing in photos that he has had his form long enough to survive The Titanic and go island hopping.


[1] Yeah I know she was swept up by a Time Tornado, but she was running away from home anyway and does not want to go back, issues with her mother- rebellious teen.

Oh and Nash, Linkara is right, your Time and The Rani episode sucked. In places.

Awesome review of the cartmel masterplan
Also i absolutely loved the cameos especially linkaras
Regarding the 7th doctor i really did love the arc they was going for and it was so frustrating that it came to a end before anything could be explained i never really read any of the fan wank books as i dont consider them canon
I hope moffat can give us a great explanation and a great mystery to the doctor in his upcoming episodes
So keep up the good work nash

HAIL HAGAN!

Shit. No room at my Caern folks!

All I need is the Doctor.

And as for a story, We've still got the whole of history of the Universe to explore. And we've barely made a dent in that.

And never will I fear, the new series just doesn't like the idea of not being on Earth.
Virtually every episode is on Terra, or in orbit above it, or in our solar system, or featuring humans from Earth as the main one-shot characters.
Its ridiculous, anywhere in Time and Space, provided its on Earth, and 90% of the episodes in the present day at that.
Pertwee got off Earth more than the present Doctors do.

Ah, finally, an explanation of these "looms" I keep hearing about. And sorry Hagan, but I gotta side with the majority of fandom here; they sound like a pretty stupid idea.

No just no. You don't use them for ears. it messes up the wax in there and doesn't remove it properly and going too hard will damage them.

for god's sake your finger is better and even then your still putting wax in places it shouldn't go yeah mook.

You talk about an episode called "Ghost Light", and missed the opportunity to have a clip of Mater? My little girl will be sooo disappointed!

i foresee a grim future where diamanda hagans face replaces dougs on this site, and it changes into 'that crazy chick with a god complex'

Don't you mean an awesome future?

HAIL HAGAN!

Surprise there was no mention of the "Thin Ice" audio drama released by Big Finish, which was a non-canon What-If story that played out of the conclusion of the Cartmel Masterplan and was written by Marc Platt, one of the biggest contributors to said Masterplan (he wrote the mentioned "Ghost Light" and "Lungbarrow," as well as "Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible," where we actually see early history Gallifrey and the Sisterhood of Karn cursing everyone with infertility. Oh, and he also created Kate Lethbridge-Stuart, which we saw on TV for the first time last Saturday with "The Power of Three.")

That's not to say the "Thin Ice" is GOOD, it's not, but it's Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred acting out what was supposed to happen, so it's worth a listen if for that reason alone.

See, now I always thought I was in the minority when it came to fans who enjoyed the Classic era as well as the New, as someone who loathes the Looms with a fiery passion. I always thought that because I always see fans bring Looms up as if they are written-in-stone canon, as if RTD betrayed canon by having the Doctor say he was a father, when really all the Looms were were some bizarre idea floated out there in one book in one book series.

Besides being a fairly big middle finger to the 60's era of Who (and Susan specifically), it always seemed to me like one of two things: some fanboy stuck in the "Ew kissing! Gross!" mentality of their childhood, or someone trying really hard to make an already sci-fi-laden race even *more* (and unnecessarily) sci-fi.

The idea of making the Doctor essentially a "god" of the Time Lords also irks me because it pretty much kills his achievements. If he's a god, there's no question that he can defeat all the baddies in the universe. Instead of him being a man who saves worlds out of a sense of defending what's right, he turns into an all-powerful being crushing people who piss him off. It's just NOT the Doctor.

And yeah, I'm pretty sure Moffat is taking bits of the Masterplan. In his own way, he's giving River Ace's "Oh look, now I'm a Time Lord! Magic!" storyline from the Masterplan, by treating the TARDIS like a Time Lady Easy Bake Oven. Just add two humping humans and artron energy. Voila! Time Lady! .....NO. *goes into stabby rage*

(BTW, Did you say "School Days", LAG? For shame! It's "School Reunion." And you call yourself a fan... (I'm just teasing, btw.))

StormWolf, I want to shake your hand. My stabby rage manifested into slamming a 25 lbs mace into my tv. Of all the stupid storylines in New Who, the 'creation' of River Song is one of the worst.

And the fact they they devoted so much time to it. Argh. This is "Doctor Who", not the River Song Show!

Look, I like River when she's a kick-ass lady that the Doctor and his current companion(s) run into on their adventures. For example, I really liked her in the two episode Weeping Angel story in Season Five. But as someone who is a super-special part Time Lord because of TARDIS magic, and has some super-secret relationship with the Doctor (oh, wow, she's his wife... yeah, we all guessed that WAY before it happened, too)... no. Just no.

I think it will (or would) turn out that the "gods" of Galifrey weren't what they appeared to be. There's no reason for the Doctor to be some omnipotent god, just that he was involved in the creation of his own race.

I completely agree with all you said here.

I don't know why anyone would consider making the Doctor one of the founders of their society a theological issue. For starters, he's an alien. For another thing, he's a freakin' time traveler. If I met a guy with a time machine who later turned out to be Thomas Jefferson, it still wouldn't make him "God of America." Especially if all the founding fathers had TARDIS's.

Although personally I'd rather travel with Ben Franklin.

I see that Phelous still has skull of nostalgia critic around.

You said all plot threads from Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead were tied up.

Did you forget that we still haven't seen the Doctor tell River his name?

"There's only one reason I'd tell you my name. There's only one time I could."

I'd say that's a pretty important line you skipped over, Nash.

Didn't they explain it by saying that the Doctor's name was on the outside of his little cot/crib and that's where River learned it from.

They never said that.

It was written in Gallifreyan, which the Tardis doesn't translate.

We have no reason to believe River is capable of reading it, and besides, we were never even told if the writing was his name.

If it indeed was his name, it'd be way too easy for anyone who could read the language to figure it out, and seeing as the universe apparently ends if someone were to learn his name, that would be incredibly stupid to leave out in the open.

Again, the Doctor said that there is "only one time [he] could" tell her his name, and we haven't seen it yet.

Man I love the fact we get a lot about doctor who history. A lot of which I didn't know as a fan who came in with new series. Loved the crossover. :)

Eheheh, Starscream eh, that's a new one...

It's interesting that you would cover a subject that spans pretty much all of the incarnations of Dr. Who and that you would bring in all of the other TGWTG people to help you with it.

I never considered the possibility that the Doctor was more than just another Time Lord and just happens to have been the one that survived the Time War.

What you didn't touch on was that perhaps we saw a bit of that "Other" side of him in David Tennant's speech in the end of "The Waters of Mars" when he lets his ego get the better of him and he declares himself the "Time Lord Triumphant".

There's a lot of those hints if you look at it. Before the 9th doctor died, Rose, imbued with the Timestream, claimed to see all of time, what was, what is, what will be and what could be. The Doctor replied "That's what I see, every moment of my life". A Time Lord doesn't have that ability unless staring directly into the Timestream (explained in End Of Time, when they explain the Masters madness coming from him not being able to handle staring into the Timestream when he came of age).

Well, to be fair, it's been said many times before that Time Lords have other senses related to the time stream, so he could be referring to that.

"(explained in End Of Time, when they explain the Masters madness coming from him not being able to handle staring into the Timestream when he came of age)."

That's another stupid continuity error.
The Master's madness, specifically the drums he keeps hearing are a direct result of his transformation in Survival.

All this stuff about looking into the time-stream is pure rubbish, made up on the spot to offer an instant answer.[1]
Pure ordinary Megalomania obviously not being a good enough explanation for Davies, he has to retcon the entire character to having always been mad, with a mystical source for that madness.


[1] Unless he sourced it from the fanfic, either way its daft.

Needs more H... Oh, wait, there she is, carry on.

Seriously, though, very nice look back at whostory and good use of cameos. Feels kinda.. festive, really.

I really hope they bring Ace back for the anniversary.

I can foresee that bringing us Ace Adventures, a new kid-focused action spin-off show, but with everything exploding. The cross-demographic appeal would put [that show everyone on the Internet claims to like] to shame.

My theory on the big reveal?

The time lords are NOT extinct, not are they really trapped behind the time wall.

They HAVE NOT EVOLVED YET. And this is the reason the Doctor is SO frigging attached to Humanity.

The time lords, if I remember the fragments of the new adventures I read correctly, were survivors/refugees of the previous universe. They came in vast arks to colonize what would become Gallifrey.

I know of only one species in the new continuity that had an Ark, AND survived the death of the universe. And i am PRETTY sure the Master would have gotten a HUGE kick out of screwing with proto-time lords and making them into monsters for the Doctor to fight.

Human technology even foreshadows the Time Lord basics. The Lazarus machine. Cap Jacks wristwatch. The sonic gun Jack had for a while. The 'cloning' machines from the Doctors Daughter- sorry but those are LOOMS ffs. All from different eras, all tied to humans. All eventual mainstays of Time Lord technology. And humans themselves have been so many shapes and sizes and gas clouds and trees, that gaining a second heart is no great evolutionary leap compared to what they had already been through as a species. (Even the Thals mentioned something about the humanoid form way back in episode one/two.)

The human race will become the Time Lords. The Doctor will be instrumental somehow in engineering it. Hell, he could be part of an infinite paradox, where he becomes 'the other' who helps create the time lords and leaps into a loom, to become the Doctor who becomes the other...

I think you're confusing the Time Lords with the "Great Old Ones".

The Great Old Ones existed in the previous universe and crossed over to the current one.

The first question. The question that must never be answered. Hidden in PLAIN SIGHT! THE QUESTION YOU'VE BEEN RUNNING FROM YOUR WHOLE LIFE!

Boxers or briefs? Boxers or, briefs? BOXERS OR BRIEFS!

Are you kidding? The Doctor goes commando, baby!

Boy, what a fascinating piece of history this is. Thanks Nash, this was a wonderful video and great cameos.

This was exceptionally well done.

Well that was different... and quite informative! I never knew all that about the show... Man, I gotta try to find the old series...

I feel like I should have been taking notes

Given the various contesting and the arguments about Looming and Birthing on Galifrey, it gave me a personal 'Head Canon'- something that I think explains the contradictions and makes sense to the series as a whole. I could be wrong or others can disagree but this was my personal feeling on it:

While Galifreyans cannot birth naturally, they are able to, through the Looming process, choose whether or not they want the resulting offspring to be either an adult, a juvenile (somewhere in the teenish years), or an infant. I personally think that The Doctor's line always chose infants, so they could raise their children from babies onward. Also, some sources say that it takes a minimum of one genetic donor, and a max of 3 to make a Loomed child. Again, it is my head-canon that the Doctor might have either chosen a close friend or someone he thought was a genetic advantage to make a loomed child, and that the Doctor's offspring simply followed in family tradition, and we got Susan.

Sorry for the ramble. But that's just what I've always thought in regards to the Looming. In regards to 'The Question', I'm eager to see what they say. If it's answered, anyway.

I earnestly, honestly doubt anybody will have the stones to ever actually pin down the Doctor's name in the form of a word or any sound comprehensible to humans. Perhaps it will be like the true name of Jasmine from Angel: it will just be warbley echoing sound effect.

I mean, once you reveal the Who in Doctor Who, the title becomes a little meaningless.

i love doctor who...and i have to say, i agree...i mean after we know every last detail about the doctor, what's left? Except to see what the last regenerations look like, and how they die XD

I may not know who exactly he is, but the almost throw-away line from the Armageddon Factor, when Drax who was a Time Lord engineer met the Doctor in quite a long time revealed the Doctor went by Theta Sigma during his Academy days.

Yeah, but it was really just a nickname and not his actual name.

His original name is written (in Gallifreyan) in the first Doctor Who Companion where there is a transcript of the second Doctor's trial, and that transcript acknowledges that he is hereafter known as The Doctor.

I really don't see what the big deal is about his name, it really shouldn't matter, not unless he's really Rassilon, and that can't be because of The Five Doctor's.
Moffat seems to have decided for some reason that his real name is Yahweh, or Jesus I think, but really, who cares what his name was, why does it matter?

Gods, this naming nonsense reminds me of the Doctor still having is own original baby cradle in The TARDIS, I hate the new series.

Oh, I don't know. That was one of the few things Moffat has written that made sense to me. Maybe it's because I always envisioned Susan being still very small when the Doctor left, or maybe it's because it's not very unlikely that he'd keep some mementos. *shrug*

You missed something else that would make the Doctor more of a god, even if it was penned by RTD: what happens to him once he has a ton of psychic energy. And he gets that energy from people believing in him. He gets more powerful if people believe in him. Sounds a lot like many concepts of gods.