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 Posted: Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:37 pm
Richard_Swift fourtysecondscarf ah...looking back at how ignorant I was in the ways of DW....Quite funny really....I laugh at myself... Don't do that! smile Who fandom shouldn't be "Who knows the most?" competition, but just a great big treasure hunt as we rumage around the fragments of 44 years of storytelling. There's nothing laughable about the eager new fan you were, or about any new fan. The eight-year-old kid who just thinks Cybermen are awesome is as valid a Doctor Who fan as the thirty-year-old who can name the Doctor's first black companion, Gallifrey's moon and all the actors to have played the Master. smile you have a valid point. Everyone is accepted here...I only laugh at myself in the way of "oh how young and unknowing I was" Especially because now, I've seen at least one episode of every doctor, and know all of the companions, along with all the other strange and wonderful information that comes my way. I huggle the eight-year-old kid who just thinks Cybermen are awesome, because they are cute. yays!
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:21 am
Should the information given by Susan in the pilot episode, like she was born in the 49th century be considered canonical? The dialogue was removed in the aired version, so I'm not entirely sure..
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:49 am
PeacePiper Should the information given by Susan in the pilot episode, like she was born in the 49th century be considered canonical? The dialogue was removed in the aired version, so I'm not entirely sure.. Well, I'm not playing the 'canon' game, but very few people would be inclined to count the unaired pilot as part of thier continuities. As far as I can recall then the only reference anywhere else to that date is in the novel Unnatural History, where the Doctor is being confronted with all the different apocryphal and contradictory accounts of his origins.
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 11:46 am
I can't say I've read that novel. Sounds interesting, I'll have to buy it sometime.
If Susan stayed on Earth, would she have lived a human lifespan or a Time Lord lifespan? Somewhere in between, maybe?
I think Susan should return as a companion for a while. Maybe she should have had a child or two, who become companions. surprised
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:07 pm
PeacePiper I can't say I've read that novel. Sounds interesting, I'll have to buy it sometime. It's a good one. Though maybe not the best place to start with the novels though as it's pretty tightly woven into an awful lot of arcs that were running through the books at the time (The Infinity Doctors/Faction Paradox/Dark Sam/Life's Champion/etc) PeacePiper If Susan stayed on Earth, would she have lived a human lifespan or a Time Lord lifespan? Somewhere in between, maybe? It depends entirely which, if any, of the accounts for her you've got in your personal canon. Since I've got the novels in mine then, being among the last of the womb-born Gallifreyans, she'd live forever, barring accidents. smile
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:16 pm
Ah, so the Time Lords born from the Looms have a shorter lifespan than the Womb-born?
But am I mistaken in that Time Lords are born fully grown from the Looms?
If that's so, what does that make of the Tenth Doctor's comment that he played with Rontgen Blocks in the nursery? And the fact that Time Lord children are taken from their families at age 8?
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:45 pm
PeacePiper Ah, so the Time Lords born from the Looms have a shorter lifespan than the Womb-born? I'm a bit unclear on this myself. redface But, yeah, my recollection is that the Oldblood Time Lords are closer to true immortality than the Loom-born. Certainly an Oldblood like Patience is massively long-lived as she managed to be Omega's wife and still around in the Fifth Doctor's time. PeacePiper But am I mistaken in that Time Lords are born fully grown from the Looms? If that's so, what does that make of the Tenth Doctor's comment that he played with Rontgen Blocks in the nursery? And the fact that Time Lord children are taken from their families at age 8? They are loomed fully grown, but are treated as children during the early years of their lives. Even to the extent of the furniture in the Great Houses being grossly oversized to give them a sense of smallness. In the Doctor's particular case then everything's up for grabs, since it's not even certain he was loomed. Lungbarrow seems to depend on the proposition that he was loomed and was thus reconstituted from the biodata of the Other, but that novel itself establishes that his childhood nickname was 'Snail', something confirmed by the Big Finish audios. This is important since we learn the name 'Snail' came from him having a belly-button. Something unheard of among Time Lords of his generation and something that suggests a natural birth.As the House of Lungbarrow rejects him at the end, the Doctor delivers the withering line, "I have other families." At the time we all took that to be a touching reference to his friends and companions, but now it seems that he may have been speaking more literally.
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Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 2:01 pm
Born from the looms fully grown? Still doesn't quite click with me. The 8 year old Master was clearly shown as a child. Nothing large was shown there to make the Master seem small.
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 1:35 am
PeacePiper Born from the looms fully grown? Still doesn't quite click with me. The 8 year old Master was clearly shown as a child. Most importantly, what we saw in that scene wasn't a 'real' flashback... RTD I didn't want to trample over the past by introducing something that would rewrite continuity... I came up with a comparatively light origin — it's more a theory of the Doctor's, rather than a blunt description of the day that Baby Master fell into the Cauldron of Evil. It's more atmospheric than factual. [It's] an image, almost a fairytale, rather than a straight flashback." It's an image of the events, and in a fairytale image it makes more sense to depict the Young Master looking young since that's how images work. But even if you do decide to overule the scene's writer (something I do all the time smile ) and take it literally then there're still ways round it... - I don't think it's ever been established that the Master was Loomborn. The Gallifrey Chronicles hints at Marnal having been his father. How this might be possible is obviously a mystery, but why should the Doctor have all the mystery? smile - Even if the Master was Loomed then The Book of the War talks about how, after ten million years of producing stable bureaucrats and administrators , the Looms start producing a generation like the Doctor's - a bunch of loonies, renegades and megalomanics. It's all downhill from Morbius on. The implication is that this is due to the Other's biodata resurfacing and corrupting the Looms, but all that's said is just that they're getting run down and producing anomalies. So if they're producing anomalies in terms of suitable Time Lord personalities it also makes sense to assume they'd also throw out the occasional somatic anomaly in this generation. Such as a Time Lord loomed as an infant. Russell has managed to do a great job of avoiding "trampling over the past". Even if you do take his atmospheric 'almost fairytale' as a literal event, then it can still fit in quite nicely with other backstories. smile
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 2:09 am
Either that or we could just assume that in each parallel world, like the one Rose got left in, has a parallel Gallifrey. Then all these continuity problems could just disappear in the Time Vortex.
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 3:59 am
Whatever the case, the Looms were probably just devised because people couldn't handle the concept of the Doctor "dancing".
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 5:13 am
PeacePiper Either that or we could just assume that in each parallel world, like the one Rose got left in, has a parallel Gallifrey. Then all these continuity problems could just disappear in the Time Vortex. You certainly can. In 100 then the Sixth Doctor just met the alternate David Warner Third Doctor from Sympathy For The Devil, so we know that other Gallifreys are 'out there' in the multiverse somewhere. The audio Zagreus, for example, implies that the Eighth Doctor's comic, novel and audio adventures all happen in different universes. (Though for various complicated reasons I don't think that really works there)Myself, I prefer to see all the Doctor's adventures as being part of one timeline (unless its something that just can't fit like Death Comes To Time or something with a clear point of divergence like the Faction Paradox books and audios). It feels more fun to me that way. PeacePiper Whatever the case, the Looms were probably just devised because people couldn't handle the concept of the Doctor "dancing". I don't think that's really fair, since Platt's storyline is ultimately one about the lifting of repression rather than a storyline motivated by repression. Lungbarrow ends with the Pythia's curse lifted and sexuality returned to Gallifrey. Just in time for the Doctor to start snogging Grace and "dancing" with Bernice. The cold, sterile and sexless Gallifrey was never presented as being a good thing or as being The Way It Should Be, as it might have been had the writers been motivated by not-being-able-to-deal-with-sexuality. Had that been the case, the story would have ended differently.
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 8:02 am
Richard_Swift PeacePiper Either that or we could just assume that in each parallel world, like the one Rose got left in, has a parallel Gallifrey. Then all these continuity problems could just disappear in the Time Vortex. You certainly can. In 100 then the Sixth Doctor just met the alternate David Warner Third Doctor from Sympathy For The Devil, so we know that other Gallifreys are 'out there' in the multiverse somewhere. The audio Zagreus, for example, implies that the Eighth Doctor's comic, novel and audio adventures all happen in different universes. (Though for various complicated reasons I don't think that really works there)Myself, I prefer to see all the Doctor's adventures as being part of one timeline (unless its something that just can't fit like Death Comes To Time or something with a clear point of divergence like the Faction Paradox books and audios). It feels more fun to me that way. PeacePiper Whatever the case, the Looms were probably just devised because people couldn't handle the concept of the Doctor "dancing". I don't think that's really fair, since Platt's storyline is ultimately one about the lifting of repression rather than a storyline motivated by repression. Lungbarrow ends with the Pythia's curse lifted and sexuality returned to Gallifrey. Just in time for the Doctor to start snogging Grace and "dancing" with Bernice. The cold, sterile and sexless Gallifrey was never presented as being a good thing or as being The Way It Should Be, as it might have been had the writers been motivated by not-being-able-to-deal-with-sexuality. Had that been the case, the story would have ended differently. Truth be told, I haven't read any of the books apart from novelisations of the television stories, hence lack of knowledge. I've certainly been meaning to pick up a copy of Lungbarrow and from what you've told me, I think I'll like it more than I thought I would.
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 8:10 am
I guess, then, we could fit in the pilot episode as a story about the parallel First Doctor. So Susan would be from the 49th century in that world only.
If there are parallel Gallifreys out there, would they have had their own version of the Time War? And yes, I'm aware of Gallifrey's destruction in The Ancestor Cell, but would ALL the various versions of Gallifrey have been destroyed?
I personally believe that when The Doctor reaches his 13th life, he may find some Parallel Time Lords who could give him a new cycle of regenerations. Who knows? Maybe if Susan isn't alive on "our" Earth, she may be alive in another, or even alive on another Gallifrey.
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Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 9:46 am
PeacePiper I guess, then, we could fit in the pilot episode as a story about the parallel First Doctor. So Susan would be from the 49th century in that world only. You could do that. If you wanted the Pilot in your continuty on any level then I think you'd have to make it a parallel universe since it's just a slightly different version of An Unearthly Child. PeacePiper If there are parallel Gallifreys out there, would they have had their own version of the Time War? And yes, I'm aware of Gallifrey's destruction in The Ancestor Cell, but would ALL the various versions of Gallifrey have been destroyed? I've never thought about that. smile My feeling/total guess would be that the Time Lords of other universes would have to have fought something equivalent to the first series of Time Wars in order to become and remain Time Lords. After that everything else could be variable. For example, the universe that the Auld Mortality and Storm of Angels audios are set in saw the Dal/Thal war on Skaro turn out differently, leading to the creation of the Thaleks. So obviously there can't be a perfectly equivalent Time Lord/Dalek war in that continuity. Out of interest, I've updated my own little run-down of the Time Wars and reposted it halfway down this page... http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/entertainment-discussion/doctor-who-bigger-outside-the-box/t.33210825_31/#40 And here's another nice article on the various destructions of Gallifrey that I've found. There's a lot of it I don't agree with personally, but it's thoughtful and thorough. http://www.sci-fi-online.50megs.com/2006_Features/06-02-01_WHO.htm
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