Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

Brain Of Morbius is a story that showed onscreen faces of the Doctor pre-Hartnell, that have never been referred to before or since

Yeah, this is a pretty contentious claim. Also, some of them are probably Morbius's faces.

It's only contentious because nerds; it's plainly what the production team intended at the time. (As well as in-joking by including themselves.) And yes, some are Morbius and some are the Doctor, and we don't know which are which, but having Robert Holmes as either a core identity of The Doctor or an unbalanced enemy of the show's centre make for rich and delightful readings.


NB: Holmes hadn't made up the 12-regeneration limit yet, so the assumption at this point was effectively of unlimited possible lives; the limit cropped up for an in-story purpose the next season. It's funny how collective fandom decided that one-episode throwaway would become canon forever, but the earlier Doctors one-episode throwaway would be forgotten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y8uNMPJfwQ

Here's the clip btw. One of them looks kinda like Colin Baker. Like the dude with the Victorian tache.

They're all production staff. Barry Letts goes talks about it on the Brian DVD. I can spot Bob Holmes, Douglas Camfield, Phil Hinchcliffe and Barry straight off.

Ok im gonna have to watch "Brain of Morbius" stat! Also i need to catch up on my post-Tom Baker Doctors.

I think I have muddled in my head Barry Letts and Christopher Barry's likenesses. Also I'm pretty sure Graham Harper is the one before Douglas Camfield.

Haha I never knew the Morbius faces were production staff, that's awesome

It's funny how collective fandom decided that one-episode throwaway would become canon forever, but the earlier Doctors one-episode throwaway would be forgotten.

Well, to be fair, fandom didn't decide that. The showrunners did, by making multiple references to the 12-regeneration limit before the reboot started, and the First Doctor being explicitly called such multiple times as well.

that plural is misplaced*, I don't think anyone used it again until JNT, during the Bidmead season, and then still only in the context of The Master -- which context of course showed inherently and textually that the "limit" wasn't actually a limit. It didn't become a tedious embedded part of show canon until L3v1ne got his fingers into the continuity, and the Time Lords started appearing every third story and being exactly the same every time, instead of almost completely different every time as they had been under Dicks' and Holmes' various influences.


(come to think, Terrance might actually be responsible for this - if he used it in more than one Target novel, that's all the reinforcement it would have needed. ISTR the Morbius novel being explicit about the earlier faces not being all Morbs' though?)


*apart from the noun not being a thing that existed at the time but u kno

sic, one day i'm buying you a beer for that big finish summary.

also: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-11-15/doctor-who-50th-anniversary-david-tennant-and-billie-piper-named-best-doctor-and-companion

Best Doctor

Actor %

David Tennant 56.1
Matt Smith 15.93
Tom Baker 10.05
Christopher Eccleston 6.59
Patrick Troughton 2.86
Jon Pertwee 2.38
Peter Davison 1.59
Sylvester McCoy 1.36
Paul McGann 1.35
William Hartnell 0.9
Colin Baker 0.88

Best Comapnion

Character / Actor %

Rose Tyler - Billie Piper 25.09
Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen 15.42
Donna Noble - Catherine Tate 12.32
River Song - Alex Kingston 9.09
Amy Pond - Karen Gillan 4.79
Jamie McCrimmon - Frazer Hines 4.1
Captain Jack Harkness - John Barrowman 3.49
Ace - Sophie Aldred 3.09
Clara Oswald - Jenna-Louise Coleman 2.65
Martha Jones - Freema Agyeman 2.54
(Colonel then) Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart - Nicholas Courtney 2.39
Romana - Mary Tamm, Lalla Ward 1.89
Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill 1.8
Wilfred Mott - Bernard Cribbins 1.26
K-9 - John Leeson, David Brierley 1.14
Jo Grant - Katy Manning 1.01
Leela - Louise Jameson 0.97
Tegan Jovanka - Janet Fielding 0.83
Peri Brown - Nicola Bryant 0.73
Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill 0.67
Ian Chesterton - William Russell 0.51
Nyssa - Sarah Sutton 0.49
Adric - Matthew Waterhouse 0.48
Susan Foreman - Carole Ann Ford 0.44
Harry Sullivan - Ian Marter 0.42
Strax - Dan Starkey 0.34
Turlough - Mark Strickson 0.31
Liz Shaw - Caroline John 0.28
Craig Owens - James Corden 0.25
Madame Vastra - Neve McIntosh 0.15
Dr Grace Holloway - Daphne Ashbrook 0.11
Melanie Bush - Bonnie Langford 0.1
Mickey Smith - Noel Clarke 0.1
Lady Christina de Souza - Michelle Ryan 0.1
Vicki - Maureen O'Brien 0.08
Steven Taylor - Peter Purves 0.08
Polly - Anneke Wills 0.07
Jackson Lake - David Morrissey 0.07
Sergeant Benton - John Levene 0.06
Jenny Flint - Catrin Stewart 0.06
Dodo Chaplet - Jackie Lane 0.04
Adam Mitchell - Bruno Langley 0.04
Captain Adelaide Brooke - Lindsay Duncan 0.04
Ben Jackson - Michael Craze 0.03
Astrid Peth - Kylie Minogue 0.03
Katarina - Adrienne Hill 0.01
Captain Mike Yates - Richard Franklin 0.01
Kamelion - Gerald Flood 0.01
Sara Kingdom - Jean Marsh 0.01
Zoe Heriot - Wendy Padbury 0
Victoria Waterfield - Deborah Watling 0

Zoe Heriot - Wendy Padbury 0

Obviously being crazy was a prerequisite for entering the survey.

Tom Baker over Matt Smith? the hell you sau

say

don't say

Romana - Mary Tamm, Lalla Ward

oh come on, you can't split up Romana I and II? what a weak survey.

adric beat strax

I don't think anyone used it again until JNT, during the Bidmead season, and then still only in the context of The Master -- which context of course showed inherently and textually that the "limit" wasn't actually a limit.

I was thinking of Mawdryn Undead where the fact that the Doctor is the Fifth Doctor and has eight regenerations left is pretty explicit, it is a plot point. I don't know much about the behind-the-scenes stuff, but it clearly wasn't something the fans just took from the Deadly Assassin and nothing else.

ie me otm.

http://youtu.be/rEmm6UP5G88

Fuck, I can never get these bastards to embed.

Just paste in the "long" Youtube link, a la:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEmm6UP5G88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEmm6UP5G88

giant spoiler is out for the 50th but I won't actually mention it here. if you search around you'll find it. no idea if it's true.

went to a Waris Hussein Q&A on Sunday, and later stood beside him while watching a staged recreation of An Unearthly Child.

I realised I didn't actually care about spoilering the episode for myself that much and had a look and it turns out that a) that is a massive spoiler and b) I really, really hope it happens.

other ppl itt might care tho so pls guys

Yeah I'm not going to mention it here.

I'm assuming this is the one that was in Bleeding Cool yesterday, that the individual in came from said the BBC had explicitly asked him not to release it but fuck'em?

Not a spoiler, rather a new minisode:

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2013/11/the-last-day-201113103008.html

The clip is currently listed for £2.49 in the United Kingdom store, or for free in the United States.

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c203/abunay/FunnyStuff/WTF-DoctorWho.gif

Check the update: confirmed mistake, free everywhere now.

Or just go here

http://io9.com/the-time-war-is-hell-in-the-newest-doctor-who-minisode-1468384384

so not worth paying for too feel bad for those who did.

Taylor Parkes in the Quietus on that which is the Doctor. Nice overall reflection, really.

http://thequietus.com/articles/13940-dr-who-anniversary-bbc-taylor-parkes

There is very little about that article that is "nice" IMO.

Very curmudgeon Brit article. Not that it's all unfair, but there's a lot of nostalgia for the pain suffered of being a "real fan" as a kid or whatever.

Has there been any talk of the bio play thing that debuts tomorrow night or the Matt Smith & Carla presented historic overview that Bbc3 repeat tomorrow?

aAiSaT is on tonight, not tomorrow and is followed by aUC (and Tribe of Gum).

Grumpy fan is grumpy = that Quietus thing

aAiSaT is on tonight

Tomorrow in the US.

Poster said BBC3 which made me assume he was a Brit. (Don't have jaymc.xls to hand to know by name)

Right, had it as tomorrow, just got in and found out I've missed first load of it and presumably the Matt Smith history thing. Shit.

Well, that was lovely. Don't miss it.

I hope it is getting reshown before too long. Missed the first half but what I saw was great.

What is it that you are talking about? Out of the UK right now.

The Gatiss docudrama about the Hartnell era.

Oh yeah I really want to watch that.

Meantime:

https://www.google.co.nz/

As I quipped on Bookface: This week is all about sending an "it gets better" message back in time to the adolescent me in the mid-'80s as he shame-facedly struggles to stay awake watching a 6-part Hartnell episode on Iowa Public Television at 10:00 on a Friday night...

<3

my earliest memory of Dr Who is seeing the end credits when I was waiting for one of the other kid's shows on the govt-run channel ABC to star. And that big silver tunnel and the music SCARED the crap out of me.

my next memory was glimpsing part of an episode where Tom Baker encountered a monster that looked like a huge moving pile of black plastic seaweed. I had nightmares about that thing.

eventually I was old enough to watch it and enjoy it, but I didn't watch it regularly enough to always follow the storylines, I don't think I really got that they were serialized until I was much older.