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

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/1/27/1390848781372/Peter-Capaldi-as-the-Doct-001.jpg

The Pertwee callback is incredible

badass

the doctor tailor otm

no sonic

Since they now have older dude in the role, do you think they'll tone down the romantic tease between the Doctor and companions? (This was already reduced during Smith's tenure, compared to all the soap opera Tennant went through.) If they keep casting young women as companions, any romance plot is bound to look a bit creepy. I wouldn't mind seeing an older, more self-assured person in the role for change, though... Donna was by far my favourite nu-Who companion, I loved her take-no-shit attitude, as compared to the worshippy relation some of the others have had with the Doctor.

ditko fingers!

haha, otm

I've never watched old Dr. Who, so I was kinda wondering, has it ever been explained why the Doctor changes like he does between regenerations? Is there some reason he goes from old geezer to young dude and back to old geezer again, or is it totally random?

Did I hear that Capaldi was actually the oldest actor to play the Doctor so far, apart possibly from Tom Baker though not sure if that was what he was playing in that cameo. Though Hurt must presumably be a couple of years older surely? & I'm not sure how old Hartnell was, mid 50s?

I had a couple of reservations with the look, hair would be better longer and Dr Marten shoes are a bit clunky. But going back to the semi Edwardian look that seems to have been present with every doctor apart from Eccleston is good. I think Smith was even heading back in that direction in the last series when he got the longer coat.

As to what determines the age of the regeneration, is that down to the whim of whoever is running the production at the time of the change? Speculation was pretty wide on the last couple. He was even speculated to come back black or female. They have been pretty good choices up to now, though not used to their best in some cases. I'd still like to see Andy Serkis as a doctor think he'd be good

As to what determines the age of the regeneration, is that down to the whim of whoever is running the production at the time of the change?

Hartnell was a couple of centuries old, Troughton was 600-odd, Baker/Davison/Baker all gave their age in the 700s. Smith has given his age as expanding from 900-odd to 1200-odd, plus another few centuries in the last episode, but it's also been fairly openly said that he's both lying and can't remember. The Eighth had several centuries of adventures in the BBC line alone, let alone comics and audio.

As for casting decisions, yes they're all made on whim, and not on the skills of the actor involved.

Well yeah, obviously the real-life explanation are the whims of the producers, but what I meant, has there ever been in an in-universe explanation for why the Doctor's age (not the actual age, obviously, but the age he appears to be) and other attributes change between regenerations?

(xpost)

Not really a fan of the DMs either, or the trousers, but the top half is cool.

Probably time for a new thread I'd say.

Pretty sure it's 100% random more or less, as usually even the Doctor himself is in the dark about his new appearance, hence looking in mirrors/acting loopy/"New nose, this'll take getting used to!"/etc.

But Romana was shown to have complete control over her regeneration, trying on different faces in a shopping montage.

(It's generally taken that the Doctor's are so random because a) they're usually under extreme trauma b) he's really shitty at most Time Lord-y things. [He was offered a range of choices when Troughton changed to Pertwee btw - nb "regeneration" still hadn't been invented yet, just that his face could change - but he chucked a tanty at the options and the Time Lords rolled their eyes and said "stfu we'll pick one then"])

New thread when Capaldi's first episode actually airs imo.

In the 50th anniversary episode it's hinted he will eventually learn to control it, as the Tom Baker Doctor says he sometimes likes to revisit old faces... It's never explained, though, why this second Tom Baker incarnation is much older than the previous one; if he just wanted to have a face he'd had before, why didn't he look like Tom Baker when he was the Doctor, instead of Tom Baker in his 70s?

(xpost)

Though TBH most of the things about the Doctor's age make little sense. In "The Impossible Astronaut", the older version of Smith is said to something like 200 years older than the younger one (apparently he spent those 200 years having offscreen adventures), yet it doesn't look like he's aged a day. But in "The Time of the Doctor" he spends 300 years on Trenzalore, and turns from a young mand into an old geezer.

I wouldn't overthink it, most of this stuff has been made up on the trot by many different writers over the course of 50 years.

Because Tom Baker is not currently 40.

BTW: Hartnell and Capaldi both started as The Doctor at age 55; John Hurt was 73 when he played The War Doctor; Baker was 79 when he played The Curator, and Pertwee was 75 the last time he played The Doctor.

One of the faces offered to Troughton looks a lot like the Wet Vet imo, which possibly ties into the later fan theory* about regeneration through trauma picking something familiar hence why the Colin Doctor has the same face as Commander Maxil. This is actually kind of addressed when Romana regenerates, the Tom Doctor has a go at her for picking the face of someone that's still alive.

Actually I think this is where Moffat is going to go with it, should he (as he has alluded) explain the Roman guy and Peter Capaldi.

*Fan theory is kind of an open sore, barely scabbed over, that keeps getting picked at. See Season 6b for details.

ugh, terrible idea to address Roman Capaldi looking like Doctor Capaldi. UNLESS they also bring in him looking exactly like John Frobisher from Children Of Earth and go for a giant third-year reveal that actually FROBISHER has secretly taken over the role of the Doctor and then we switch to the adventures of Matt Smith and a shape-shifting alien penguin. :D :D :D

I am starting to tire of Moffat's need to explain the minutiae of everything.

^^^

^^^^ would watch xpost

(And yes, apparently it will also address Frobisher - COM one, not the penguin - despite The Doctor not seeing him to our knowledge)

lol aldo is down for some hawt Moffat expos action

Frobisher is the best companion ever and every human should be down for some hawt Whifferdill action

Hahaha

Anyway, I thought I would check I hadn't imagined it and found the following:

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-30/doctor-who-steven-moffat-has-an-explanation-for-peter-capaldis-earlier-appearances

"We are aware that Peter Capaldi’s played a part in Doctor Who before and we’re not going to ignore the fact," Moffat told Nerd3. "I’ll let you in on this. I remember Russell told me he had a big old plan as to why there were two Peter Capaldis in the Who universe, one in Pompeii and one in Torchwood. When I cast Peter, Russell got in touch to say how pleased he was, I said 'Okay, what was your theory and does it still work?' and he said 'Yes it does, here it is'. So I don’t know if we’ll get to it… we’ll play that one out over time. It’s actually quite neat".

If there's anything worse than an unnecessary Moffat explanation, it's an unnecessary Moffat explanation flagged up in advance as being "really very clever and much smarter than anything you dimwitted nerds on the internet have thought of"

really the big red flag for me here is Rusty involvement

yeah, i was gonna say

Is Capaldi wearing a cardigan under that coat? Bold choice imo.

I interpret that quote ("I don't kmow if we'll get to it...") as Moffat's polite way of saying "thanks but lol no"

as to why there were two Peter Capaldis in the Who universe

it's called ACTING you feeb

would love to have heard a parallel dick wolf interview where he explains their clever theory abt why there are two jerry orbachs running around the law and order universe

is there anything in particular about the aesthetics of sci-fi that would give this kind of silliness any pertinence? role replacements are fairly infrequent in realistic tv styles/genres (it's hard not to think of becky from 'roseanne' as the example), but even when the realism is running pretty high no one thinks to bat an eye when an actor recurs in bit parts or even graduates to a major role. even to the extent of complete defiance—thinking of law and order again, some of the later-season major roles were filled by people who had -very recently- appeared in different, minor roles, at the extreme jeremy sisto playing a lawyer at the end of s17 and playing a detective from the beginning of s18 on. and all those sharp detectives never noticed a thing!

on the face of it if any show should be utterly unflappable about this sort of 'problem' it's doctor who. so is there something about it that makes the producers go for the explaining, e.g. making martha jones adola's cousin, this roman business? the doctor is always noticing identities of people who don't look like themselves, people who look right but aren't yet in the right place and time, people who are disguised, transformed, etc., and obv. he himself has some issues wrt himself there. so maybe who he is in the stories licenses some viewer wondering about that, so it makes sense for the producers/writers to make some concessions?

The Clara explanation WAS actually kind of clever and mostly fell flat because the lead-in stories spent more time thinking the mystery made her interesting rather than her being interesting in and of herself (really, the best parts of Clara's characterization have been the moments where she's like "um this situation totally sucks and I don't think I actually want to do this, but I have no choice so I'd better suck it up and do it" and those moments were supposed to point towards her eventual self-sacrifice but they didn't land hard enough in the context of Wacky Smith Is Wacky Plus They Might Kiss)

Oh thank god.

The same actors turn up in different roles in long-running series like Eastenders and Holby City and whatever all the time. It doesn't need explanation because literally no one other than idiot sci-fi nerds actually cares.

uh dude, they didn't do it with Philip Madoc or Jean Marsh or Ian Marter or Colin Baker or Karen Gillan or Nicholas Courtney or any of the dozens and dozens of other actors who played different roles in the history of the show. if there's any reason now, it's because they're afraid nerds won't stfu if they're not given something to suck on.

xpost

well that explanation would suggest that sci-fi nerds are unable to accept certain fundamental differences between reality and fiction, which might be something xp

I find myself increasingly annoyed with the kind of drama writing that is in constant meta-dialogue with its fanbase as it actually happens. Gatiss did this with the comeback episode of Sherlock as well, it's just lame. I blame social media.

Weirdly it's less annoying when Abed does it in Community but possibly because it's less nudge-nudge when it happens, or perhaps it's just better writing.

Well meta-dialogue is kind of half the point of Community.

the only time I remember old-Who doing this was with Romana's regeneration; it strikes me very much as being a nu-Who obsession with dotting every I and making everyone in the vortex of the show's weird related to each other

there's an interesting metastory lurking behind this in the idea that the Doctor pulls entire dynasties of families into his orbit; like say if someone creates a genealogy that shows that Bret Vyon is a descendent of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stuart and the Doctor's adventures with his ancestor put his family line on the path that ended up pulling him into the Dalek Masterplan story, it's a neat-for-supernerds idea that also gives an in-universe for why the two characters look so similar (obv the actual real-life "they were played by the same actor" answer should be fine but world-building rules, you drool etc)

so basically as a dude who owns all of the original Virgin books and 95% of the BBC books before the show's relaunch, I'm not opposed to this in concept but the execution is starting to annoy the fuck out of me

so is there something about it that makes the producers go for the explaining, e.g. making martha jones adola's cousin, this roman business? the doctor is always noticing identities of people who don't look like themselves, people who look right but aren't yet in the right place and time, people who are disguised, transformed, etc., and obv. he himself has some issues wrt himself there. so maybe who he is in the stories licenses some viewer wondering about that, so it makes sense for the producers/writers to make some concessions?

I think it's not just that Dr. Who is sci-fi, but that time travel and regeneration and (like you say) general fascination with transformation/disguises/doubles and other sorts of "out of place" weirdness are big elements in the show... For example, various Star Trek shows had loads of supporting actors appearing in two or more different roles, but they almost never tried to explain these in any way, even though time travel and cloning and other sci-fi things that could provide an explanation do exist in Stra Trek too. I think it's because ST is "harder" and more cerebral sci-fi than Dr. Who, and has less interest in bodies and their mutability. So the "need" to explain these things certainly seems to rise from Who's specific qualities, even if usually there's no real need for explanation.

I mean to be honest, there's no better example of how the ppl running nu-Who view it as a big toybox where everyone is related than Rusty's "look at everyone flying the TARDIS in perfect harmony oh and btw eventually Mickey and Martha get married" shit

For example, various Star Trek shows had loads of supporting actors appearing in two or more different roles, but they almost never tried to explain these in any way, even though time travel and cloning and other sci-fi things that could provide an explanation do exist in Stra Trek too. I think it's because ST is "harder" and more cerebral sci-fi than Dr. Who, and has less interest in bodies and their mutability.

Tuomas, address why Who didn't do it with Marter and Courtney and Marsh and Gillan and Baker and Madoc then

IIRC they didn't do it with Gillan because she had on so much makeup and was such a minor part that no one felt like they had to make the connection; compare/contrast to Eve Myles/Freema Agyman/Jenna Coleman (whose character was created specifically with this type of story in mind). This is totally a nu-Who obsession.

well tuomas i wouldn't explain it that way wrt star trek, there bodily identities/integrities are caught up in a matrix of technological restoration/repair/replacement and phenomenologically unfamiliar-but-explicable alternative modalities (like, they got odo's kinda people, intelligent space clouds, etc.), which probably has the whole roddenberryan space liberal vision in the background somewhere, different peoples and their planets and cultures, joining in to a space federation where they serve common goals hopefully w/o suppressing/losing their identities (their klingon badassness, their control over their vulcan emotions, etc.). so it's less hardness, more the way in which identity is being conceived in relation to those other things which are allowed in the story-world to be relatively reconfigurable, or not.

nu-who seems no less cerebral, it's just that it uses more mythically/fantastically-charged materials.

btw the issue is not nec. why who have not done this when they could/should have, but why they bother on more than one occasion at all when the usual way tv-acting/casting works would give them permission to utterly ignore it with no consequences.

xxxp

I mean, the real answer to this is "fans spent over a decade making their own Who fiction that eventually turned into everyone in the TARDIS being cousins and those are the people who ended up running the relaunch" but that's no fun

As long as the show is fun (and it is, even in the horrible eps) then plotting and consistency is the last thing on my mind.

not every horrible episode is fun, signed a dude who will never of his own free will watch The Idiot's Lantern ever again

That sounds like an invitation to abduct you during the dead of night and strap you down A Clockwork Orange-style for your own personal viewing if I've ever heard one!

Hah i have never seen that one cos of the bad rep.