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I think the loom thing works because it could easily explain the fact that most Time Lords seem very asexual in comparison to the average human, the most perverse of whom can find innuendo in even the most innocent situations. Even Nine/Ten's relationship with Rose is purely emotional. Ten also seemed a little bit... what's the word... when Donna thought he just wanted to mate with her when he meant that he wanted a friend to travel with him more permanently who could manage not to fall for him.

One of the things that's interesting about the Doctor is that he often changes heart between whether his companions are more like useful, somewhat intelligent pets or good friends depending on the incarnation. "You're improving, Harry. Your mind is beginning to work" sounds very different from "Oh, you're brilliant!"

but I mustn't digress from the topic I started

It came from a Doctor Who novel called Lungbarrow. Apparently Time Lords are infertile in the story (because of some curse by the previous governing power), so in order for the Gallifreyan species to survive, they invented looms. They're sort of like the progenation machines in "The Doctor's Daughter" in that they produce a fully developed Gallifreyan, except that it requires two donors rather than one, and it takes a much longer time.

But eh, whatever you want to believe. Perhaps I went a little far in my last post, because I look at that and I look at the reply and then I realise I was actually ranting against the sort of fanfic in which the Doctor taketh part in sex just for the fun of it.

That makes sense, Gallo; but when the Seventh was being operated on, he suddenly woke up and tried to tell them that he wasn't human and that what they were doing was interfering with his physiology or something.

It's from the Marc Platt-created backstory that informed the last two seasons of the English series in a behind-the-scenes document called "Gallifrey: Notes on the Planet's Background."

When the storylines of those seasons carried on into the novels then more of the material started to make it into the texts themselves - the Looms being first mentioned in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and then throughout the run of the New Adventures, culminating in a big exploration of the ideas in Lungbarrow.

Nowadays, sadly, Lungbarrow is mostly read in isolation, and its ideas don't come across quite as well as they did back when they had two seasons of telly and fifty-nine novels leading up to it.

It's worth saying though that the Lungbarrow account isn't an either/or with the half-human account.

The big idea behind the 'Cartmel/Platt Masterplan' is that the Doctor was someone else before he was born of the Looms. That a mysterious figure from Rassilon's time used the Looms to stage his own resurrection - that his looming as the person we think of as 'the First Doctor' was actually a rebirth via techno-trickery. Lungbarrow strongly hints that this 'pre-Doctor Doctor' was born to a human mother and a Gallifreyan father.

I've written a clearer exploration of this sort of thing here - Scroll down to "I have other families".


As with anything else in our wonderfully pick'n'mix mythos, you're perfectly free to do so. biggrin

I have so many. So very many. But in the context I was on about there, it's that he seems to me the epitome of a writer who's taken the screenwriting classes, been taught that there's a finite number of story structures in the world and then gone out there to mechanically reiterate those structures.

When he's creating something original then he'll just slot lifeless archetypes into the appropriate places of the Cambellian mono-myth and set it running, as in Babylon 5. When he's working on pre-existing characters, like Spider-Man, he'll hammer them out of thier individul shape until they fit into those given structures.

Although...people I trust keep raving about how good his current Thor run is, so perhaps I'll give that a go soon and take it all back. smile



I should say that very little of the "Doctor and Susan are survivors of a cosmic war" backstory ever made its way onto screen.

It's like the way nowadays Davies says he knows exactly what happened at the Fall of Arcadia and exactly what the Cruciform was but that neither will ever be told in the show. Or like the way that Aaronovitch knew all the Other/Looms stuff when he was writing hints about the Doctor's part in Rememberance of the Daleks, but none of that stuff actually got said onscreen.

Oddly, your time-loop theory is what some fans have speculated about the whole Loom-scenario. If this mysterious 'Other' threw himself into the Looms to be reborn ten million years later as the First Doctor, then who's to say that this mysterious 'Other' wasn't really the Thirteenth Doctor?



Oh, it's long past repair. smile

But I absolutely agree that a fuzzy cloud is the best place for this. The point where something stops having a single 'true' version is the point where something stops being a mere story and becomes a MYTH.

And that's what Doctor Who is now; One of the great Myths of the British Isles, like King Arthur and Robin Hood. And like those guys there can't be a monolithic and authoritative account of his life; It's too big and too important for that.

The Doctor's half-human and he's 100% Gallifreyan, and he's Loom-born and he's womb-born. He's even fully human according to at least two television stories. Despite the fact that it's impossible for all those things to be true. Because the Doctor's life isn't an objective biography and never will be. It's a Journal of Impossible Things. smile

Doctor Who's many unexplained bits have so many attempts to explain them that it's impossible for only one to be canon. People can believe whatever they like.

But I like ThPriestess's version of things. Something I've never heard before. It sort of reminds me of this book called A Swiftly Tilting Planet in which the protagonist, Charles Wallace, has to travel in time with the help of a time-travelling unicorn called Gaudior in order to avert a nuclear war that could end the human race.
The bit I'm talking about is where they overshoot their destination and end up having to go to Gaudior's world in order to heal, and Charles comes across this pile of eggs. He later asks his friend if all unicorns are born that way, and Gaudior says only the time-travellers hatch from eggs.

Maybe they use some advanced form of IVF, or are capable of halving the amount of DNA that is carried in a single cell from any part of their bodies so that a tissue sample can combine with someone else's and grow from there in a container of some sort.

Lungbarow is a hard book to under stand by it's self ,or at all. I normally recommend to leave it alone until reader has read a good selection of other doctor who novels. PS Swiftly Tilting Planet is part of my favorite book series.