It’s the end of the year and the 50th episode of the podcast!
It’s been a little while and we’re sorry. In this episode we discuss the past couple of months of Doctor Who goings on including the 50th anniversary celebrations in London, “The Day of the Doctor,” and “The Time of the Doctor.” We recorded this a couple of days after Matt Smith regenerated into Peter Capaldi but due to some technical difficulties it couldn’t be edited and posted until now, but at least it is here. Enjoy!
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I’d like to rebuttal your thoughts on Capaldi’s post-regeneration scene with my own. Namely, Capaldi had very little to work with. With the TARDIS crashing, he was barely audible at all, and Moffat didn’t give the Doctor nearly enough lines or the right lines to make his character apparent.
The episode was over after Matt’s speech (which was completely out of character, but that’s beside the point). It wasn’t like the last regeneration, where even in pretty much the same situation we were given about twenty seconds of Eleven looking over his new body before cutting to credits. And I think we can all agree those lines (“Ooh, fingers!”) are what cemented Eleven for us as a fandom and what made us go, “oh yeah, he could be the Doctor”, even before we had seen him in a full episode.
That kind of thing is the writer’s decision, which is why I think it’s pretty harsh of you guys to so immediately criticize Capaldi himself for not immediately embodying the part (especially when he did very well physically, giving us that intense stare at the beginning).
Finally, a question I’d like to ask of you, if you ever get time to respond: Do you have an explanation for why the Doctor couldn’t have just left Trenzalore in the Christmas special? If he never speaks his name (as he seems so adamantly against doing anyway) and just leaves, there’s no danger of Gallifrey getting through. If there’s no danger of Gallifrey getting through, there’s no new Time War; and furthermore, if there’s no Doctor on Trenzalore, there’s no reason for the aliens to try and stop him from speaking his name, so Christmas is never in danger. Am I getting that wrong?
Basically if the Doctor left than his enemies would have destroyed the planet to stop the Time Lords returning. The church didn’t want him to speak his name but what I got from the enemies was that they wanted to destroy him and the planet to get to the Time Lords.
As for Capaldi I don’t think I was being harsh at all. I didn’t comment on his performance or the lines he was given. In fact I thought the kidneys thing was funny. What I was commenting on was how I felt when I saw him which was “hey it’s Peter Capaldi in the eleventh Doctor’s clothes” and not “hey it’s the twelfth Doctor.” I have hope that he’ll turn me around, but I am uneasy about it at the moment.
As usual, I am looking forward to listening this podcast. This is one of my favorites, and does not come out as often as I’d like. What happened to the 49th episode? Perhaps you will go into this during the podcast, but I hope I am not missing one…
Hrm. I guess what happened to the 49th episode is that I can’t count. Sorry. There is actually a missing episode, but I need to find the time to edit it!
Finally caught up with the latest episodes. And I DO think McGann (or Eccelston) could have pushed the button given the right circumstances. John Hurt was Brilliant but my Fan OCD doesn’t like accepting a retconned “9th” Doctor. And I both agree and disagree about the saving of Gallifrey. I’m very torn about it.
Of course I feel compelled to step into the Great Curator debate. On the surface it seems Moffatt did intend for Tom to be a future post 14th Doctor , re-wearing the 4th Doctor’s face as an Old Favorite (and apparently his old personality as well). This explanation though is flimsy, kinda wobbly in the face of current established Doctor Regeneration continuity (unless we’re throwing in some serious Karn elixir in there… maybe) and ultimately unsatisfying. There’s a host of other explanations that are interesting I’ve heard: The 4th Doctor with time differential, Another Manifestation of the Moment appearing Eleven in this guise to push him into a destiny he’s meant to travel, The early beginning of the 11th Doctor’s Dream as he leads into his speech about dreaming and the final shot, A projection of The Watcher from Logopolis in that nether state between 4 and 5 partly explaining Four’s older appearance and the iconic line “The Moment has been prepared for”…. those are all interesting. I prefer a twist on the 4th Doctor theory because I’m biased and Tom is my Doctor and I feel it’s just plain lame for the 50th to include him and NOT make him Four. Honestly the dialogue is so vague I didn’t understand that whole future Doctor thing til the third time I saw it. I thought by old faces he was referring to Smith having his current revisit with himself as Four. But I felt that this is the 4th Doctor and he’d stopped off at the Unit archive (partly explaining the presence of the scarf on Osgood), or was wrapping up another adventure and got wind of his future selves running about. He knows about the laws of time to not interfere but being Four he cannot help himself. He appears to Eleven and deliberately misleads him on his identity, and make sup a story about the Painting and sorta points Smith to finding Galifrey in a non-committal way since it’s Smith who jumps to this conclusion. Baker just fed him a few crumbs. He has his fun… doesn’t really care he’s just sent his future self on a bit of a goose chase… turns the corner has a good laugh, puts his scarf back on and goes back off… likely to meet Leela or Romana 1. Why the non-costume- something else to throw Elven off. Why does he look older? Time Differential… alt. timeline…. an extension of the hologram clothing concept perhaps. Take your pick. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the 4th Doctor and he’s having fun. Because that’s what Tom Would Do.