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Doctor Who | The Power Of The Doctor (Open Spoilers)

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CliffyB's Cock Holster
It's more of the fact of how they blatantly disregarded the past canon to make the storyline.

It makes zero sense.

Its disrespectful more than anything.

The established fiction of Who makes it very flexible; if you want to take the franchise in a certain direction with a new Doctor, the latitude is most definitely there within the established parameters of canon and show format.

What you don't do is turn around and tell the audience that the last 30 plus years of canon regarding the titular character's origins are all a lie!
It's unbelievably arrogant to think that this wouldn't spark a backlash.

Honestly, it shouldn't have been allowed to happen when so much of the value of the property is that its been around so long its an institution at this point. I just don't see any conceivable argument that the dramatic "win" of employing the scenario could ever exceed the "loss" reaction from alienating long-time fans.
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
But that would erase Matt Smith and the whole Ponds storyline was excellent.
Believe me, Matt Smith is my favorite as the doctor, but given that he isn't returning I just want some kind of total reboot

But I'm still torn on Moffat's whole run. It started off so high with Matt Smith's opening episode, then kept that through at least the first season. But while I absolutely love Moffat's writing on isolated episodes (self-contained plots, Christmas episodes, etc) I'm not too fond of the convoluted plot lines which kept getting more and more out of control.

Then again, that's my preference in general for Doctor Who: I want individual stores, one companion at a time, no huge expanded set of recurring faces, and just good, inventive sci-fi writing with a different idea each week. So for instance, Moffat's earlier contributions in the RTD era were his very best, for instance the 2-part episode with the library. But as soon as River Song from that episode became this messy convoluted plotline across the entire franchise, and then kept appearing in more and more absurd forms every season, I tired of her very quickly. Every one of his ideas like her character would have been better to stay within exactly one plot and never return. Likewise, the Weeping Angels were stunning in their first appearance, but I could do without them as a recurring villain.

And the bigger, bigger plots kept getting out of control more and more, so that I actually stopped watching completely during Capaldi's second season because I tired of all of it. Likewise, I found that Moffat's Sherlock series started off brilliantly in seasons 1 & 2 then fell off a cliff in the final seasons, to being a total farce by the end.
 
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ManaByte

Gold Member
Believe me, Matt Smith is my favorite as the doctor, but given that he isn't returning I just want some kind of total reboot

But I'm still torn on Moffat's whole run. It started off so high with Matt Smith's opening episode, then kept that through at least the first season. But while I absolutely love Moffat's writing on isolated episodes (self-contained plots, Christmas episodes, etc) I'm not too fond of the convoluted plot lines which kept getting more and more out of control.

Then again, that's my preference in general for Doctor Who: I want individual stores, one companion at a time, no huge expanded set of recurring faces, and just good, inventive sci-fi writing with a different idea each week. So for instance, Moffat's earlier contributions in the RTD era were his very best, for instance the 2-part episode with the library. But as soon as River Song from that episode became this messy convoluted plotline across the entire franchise, and then kept appearing in more and more absurd forms every season, I tired of her very quickly. Every one of his ideas like her character would have been better to stay within exactly one plot and never return. Likewise, the Weeping Angels were stunning in their first appearance, but I could do without them as a recurring villain.

And the bigger, bigger plots kept getting out of control more and more, so that I actually stopped watching completely during Capaldi's second season because I tired of all of it. Likewise, I found that Moffat's Sherlock series started off brilliantly in seasons 1 & 2 then fell off a cliff in the final seasons, to being a total farce by the end.

That's what was so good about the Ponds story. He put a definitive end on it.
 

FunkMiller

Member
But that would erase Matt Smith and the whole Ponds storyline was excellent.

I can make a compelling argument for why Smith is the best doctor of all time, principally around the fact he embodied the concept of an ancient being in the body of a young man better than anyone.
 

Krathoon

Member
I can make a compelling argument for why Smith is the best doctor of all time, principally around the fact he embodied the concept of an ancient being in the body of a young man better than anyone.
There is a reason why they paired him with Tom Baker in that anniversary episode.
 
Haven't watched since half way through her first season had enough of her lectures.

That trailer though ooo I'm a fish there reeling me in look forward to 2023 we got our Dr Who back.
 

xandaca

Member
Aside from the classic Doctor cameos, which will always hit harder than the usual nostalgia bait, Power Of The Doctor was all Chibnall's worst impulses crammed into one episode and multiplied. Incoherent plotting, pacing that is at once too fast to let anything sink in and yet takes an age to get anywhere meaningful, a total disregard for basic logic (Graham's in a Bolivian volcano because...?), constantly ripping off better episodes, none of the characters given anything meaningful to do or any trace of personality. As a finale, it didn't even touch on the countless questions relating to Flux, Timeless Child etc that need answering, or given justification for existing given their massive changes to canon, and Jodie was written out of a huge chunk of her own farewell episode! Did Dan really just leave after five minutes? Why was that energy source thing disguised as a little girl? Why didn't the Doctor step out of the way of the slow-moving energy beam? Absolutely awful.

Because I'm the sort of idiot who does stuff like this, the episode infuriated me so much I outlined an alternate version using the same narrative building blocks (Master in Imperial Russia, mind transfer, Daleks and Cybermen, classic companions, train heist, etc.) but reconfigured to bring closure to the Timeless Child/Flux/Fugitive Doctor storylines and give everyone a bit more to do. Since it's (long-ish) fanfic, I'll wrap it in a quote so only those interested will be exposed to it: since I wasted a stupid amount of time on it, feel I need to share it somewhere. It's not perfect but I think it's better than the rubbish fire we ended up with.

THE POWER OF THE DOCTOR (fanfic redraft)

After landing in Imperial Russia following Gallifrey's destruction, The Master and his Cybermasters, led by Ishad, survey a field in Imperial Russia full of Time Lord salvage. The Master instructs the Russian guard to kill anyone who comes looking. Ishad's eye is caught by a blinking light. As he bends down, a wire shoots out from the salvaged parts and corrupts his systems. Inside the Russian court, the Master is overseeing the construction of an enormous Time Lord machine. While his back is turned, Ishad reprograms it.

Elsewhere, the Doctor detects Time Lord technology on an intergalactic train guarded by the Cybermasters. She, Yaz and Dan board and find a containment cell holding a little girl, who seems familiar to the Doctor. The Cybermasters beam away with the girl, Yaz and Dan before the Doctor can save them.

The Doctor receives an urgent summons from UNIT HQ and returns to Earth, where Kate Stewart greets her alongside Tegan. Former companions of the Doctor have been going missing and Tegan was saved at the last minute from Cybermaster capture.

In Imperial Russia, Yaz and Dan awaken in a prison cell. Ace is in an adjoining cell and tells them where they are. The Master arrives and leads them away, revealing they are bait in his trap for the Doctor.

The Doctor has a heart-to-heart with Tegan, helping her realise she can track her companions thanks to their telepathic connection to the TARDIS. She and Tegan set off, arriving in Russia where they are captured and put in pods alonside Yaz, Dan, Ace, Graham and the little girl. The Master reveals the girl is one of the Doctor's incarnations as the Timeless Child, who he stole out of time on the train with Ishad's help. The Master plans to force his mind into that of the little girl, taking over her infinite regenerations, and needed the Doctor and people whose lives were affected by her (companions) as data from the girl's future for his machine to circumvent the paradox and total temporal collapse. The Master does his Tiktok dance then steps into a pod. The machine activates, but Ishad takes over the controls and alters the mind transference process.

On a distant planet, Vinder is helping refugees from the Flux. He receives a signal in his ship and immediately sets off.

Once the machine winds down, the Doctor discovers her mind is coexisting with the Master's inside her head. The little girl is observing from outside the pods. She reveals that over millennia, a consciousness formed within the Matrix that developed a hatred for the Time Lords and all physical lifeforms, whom it saw as its captors. Although there really was a Timeless Child, it wasn't the Doctor: that was a lie constructed by the Matrix to provoke the Master into destroying Gallifrey. The consciousness escaped in the technology salvaged by the Master. Through its control of Ishad, it suggested a plan to take over the body of the real Timeless Child, whom the Master mistakenly believed to be the young Doctor. The Master and the Doctor's minds are too great for one body to contain and will die within a matter of hours. The girl, controlled by the Matrix, says she plans to imprint the Matrix consciousness onto the very essence of time, becoming all-powerful and inflicting her revenge on all physical life. She instructs the Russian guards to kill the Doctor and her companions, and leaves with the Cybermasters in the TARDIS.

With the TARDIS stolen, the Doctor no longer speaks or understands Russian but Tegan can (badly) thanks to her years as a stewardess. While she distracts the guards, Ace knocks them out. They almost escape the Imperial Palace but are cornered outside, rescued at the last moment by Vinder, whose ship was summoned through time by the TARDIS when it sensed impending disaster. The Doctor realises that the only place where the Matrix will be able to imprint itself on time is at the Temple of Atropos.

They arrive on Vinder's ship and discover a shield protecting the planet, Time, from attack from the Daleks, who discovered its existence after the Flux destroyed 90% of the universe. The Doctor realises she can beam through the shield by reprogramming a Dalek transporter. Vinder lands the Doctor, Yaz, Dan, Tegan and Ace on one of the Dalek ships, with Graham (too old) staying with Vinder, before launching an attack as a distraction. Vinder's ship takes heavy damage and soon has to retreat. The Doctor reprograms the teleporter and Ace plants Nitro-9 to destroy it after they're all gone. The Doctor beams down but the Daleks discover them and their attack destroys the teleporter before the companions can follow. Ace disables several Daleks with Nitro-9 but more are coming. Using her policewoman training, Yaz instructs them in preparing for an assault, which endears her to Ace.

The Doctor arrives at the Temple of Atropos, her body struggling to keep going with the Master trapped in her mind: because regeneration is a physical process, it wouldn't save them. They reach the inner chamber, where the girl, guarded by Ishad and the Cybermasters, has taken a position at the altar and is planning to release the Matrix, using the girl's infinite regenerations to preserve its control forever. As the Cybermasters advance, the Doctor retreats into the nearby TARDIS, which she uses to take control of the planet's shields and lower them to allow the Daleks to attack. The disabled shields distract the Daleks before they begin a push towards the companions' depleted defences. As the Daleks attack the temple, the girl orders the Cybermasters to defend her.

Unable to pilot the TARDIS due to her telepathic connection to it being disrupted by the Master, whose mind reads as hostile, the Master encourages her to give herself up to the Cybermasters for conversion. With her body already weak, the Doctor decides to trust him. As Ishad attempts conversion, the Cyberiad code still in the Master's mind allows him to leave the Doctor and take over Ishad's body and the Cybermaster army. He fights off the Daleks and tells the Doctor to kill the girl, but the Doctor instead takes a place on the altar and enters the timestream.

As the timestream is corrupted by the Matrix, the Doctor finds the little girl. She tells her that because the Matrix consciousness was formed from Time Lord memories, and the little girl is the Timeless Child and the originator of the Time Lords, she can use the power of the timestream to reshape the Matrix into a benevolent form, then destroy the planet to reverse the effects of the Flux and restore the universe. The girl is successful in vanquishing the Matrix but a weakened Doctor falls unconscious.

She awakens face-to-face with the girl and the Fugitive Doctor. The Fugitive Doctor reveals she is a fragment of the Doctor's own consciousness, projected out of the timestream by the little girl onto a human woman, via the fob watch, to guide the Doctor to ultimately help save the universe from the Matrix. A second TARDIS was also sent, in police box form, to later be discovered by them both. The Fugitive Doctor returned to Gallifrey and joined Division out of a subconscious desire to fulfil her destiny at Atropos, but died naturally many years later due to being physically human and not having any regenerations. The girl says she will destroy the planet but stay inside the timestream to protect it, and the Doctor must leave and regenerate her weakened body. When the Doctor asks how, the girl says that help is coming.

In the real world, the companions fight their way through the Dalek ship and steal a small craft. Tegan, who has taken preliminary flight training, works out how to pilot it and takes it down to the planet to save the Doctor. As the Cybermasters fight off the final Daleks, Ishad moves towards the girl to transfer the Master's consciousness into her to steal control of time. As the companions take the ailing Doctor back to the TARDIS, Dan chooses to sacrifice himself to stop Ishad, buying enough time for the TARDIS to leave and the girl to destroy the temple, the planet Time, and reverse the effects of the Flux.

The Doctor awakens, weakened to the verge of death, with the TARDIS having taken her and the companions back to Sheffield, where Graham greets them (Ryan isn't there because he rode his bicycle off a cliff, or something). The companions want to stay with the Doctor as she regenerates, but she says she feels something unusual about it and doesn't want to put them at risk. She says goodbye to them all, thanking them for their time together and for being her family, the ones who really make her who she is, not just her memories. She bids farewell to Yaz, with whom she mourns Dan. Yaz leaves with Ace, suggesting the two are going to go on a date. The Doctor watches them go, then leaves to regenerate on a cliffside, where she turns into... what? What? WHAT?!
 
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Krathoon

Member
We would have had Sarah Jane pop up if she didn't die. How did they wrap up Sarah Jane Adventures? I was catching up on that.
 

YCoCg

Member
Believe me, Matt Smith is my favorite as the doctor, but given that he isn't returning I just want some kind of total reboot

But I'm still torn on Moffat's whole run. It started off so high with Matt Smith's opening episode, then kept that through at least the first season. But while I absolutely love Moffat's writing on isolated episodes (self-contained plots, Christmas episodes, etc) I'm not too fond of the convoluted plot lines which kept getting more and more out of control.

Then again, that's my preference in general for Doctor Who: I want individual stores, one companion at a time, no huge expanded set of recurring faces, and just good, inventive sci-fi writing with a different idea each week. So for instance, Moffat's earlier contributions in the RTD era were his very best, for instance the 2-part episode with the library. But as soon as River Song from that episode became this messy convoluted plotline across the entire franchise, and then kept appearing in more and more absurd forms every season, I tired of her very quickly. Every one of his ideas like her character would have been better to stay within exactly one plot and never return. Likewise, the Weeping Angels were stunning in their first appearance, but I could do without them as a recurring villain.

And the bigger, bigger plots kept getting out of control more and more, so that I actually stopped watching completely during Capaldi's second season because I tired of all of it. Likewise, I found that Moffat's Sherlock series started off brilliantly in seasons 1 & 2 then fell off a cliff in the final seasons, to being a total farce by the end.
Counterpoint, Moffat gave us a multi-Master story and those were brilliant episodes and completely redeemed John Simm's incarnation.
 

BouncyFrag

Member
I love how the Doctor’s and Yas’s final conversation is reminiscent of the 2nd Doctor consoling Victoria after the death of her father by sharing how he remembers own his family. Bittersweet.
 
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Either of 2 things will happen - either the move to display will revitalise the franchise. Or the series will continue to die a slow, painful death.
 
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En Sama

Member
I think it will be good to have the Doctor be gay because it will be really representative of England in the modern day. I think that most English people will agree with me that England is a pretty gay country full of flights of fancy and gay people being represented everywhere.
I think if you ask most English people they love being gay and really soaking in the pride culture at the parades and such.
I just hope they don't do the old "oh the Doctor is gay" but they don't show you his boyfriend stuff that they do in Hollywood movies. Hopefully and I think it should be after the watershed but hopefully we will have the first gay sex scene on BBC on this historic ground breaking program and this pioneering channel promoting how it is all right that everyone in England is gay.
 

nush

Member
I think it will be good to have the Doctor be gay because it will be really representative of England in the modern day. I think that most English people will agree with me that England is a pretty gay country full of flights of fancy and gay people being represented everywhere.
I think if you ask most English people they love being gay and really soaking in the pride culture at the parades and such.
I just hope they don't do the old "oh the Doctor is gay" but they don't show you his boyfriend stuff that they do in Hollywood movies. Hopefully and I think it should be after the watershed but hopefully we will have the first gay sex scene on BBC on this historic ground breaking program and this pioneering channel promoting how it is all right that everyone in England is gay.

Shut the fuck up you ignorant twat.

Pre Eccsltone Doctor was already a gay icon. Torchwood had a full on gay sex scene and it wasn't the first on the BBC. Suck my red white and blue English dick...
 

FunkMiller

Member
I think it will be good to have the Doctor be gay because it will be really representative of England in the modern day. I think that most English people will agree with me that England is a pretty gay country full of flights of fancy and gay people being represented everywhere.
I think if you ask most English people they love being gay and really soaking in the pride culture at the parades and such.
I just hope they don't do the old "oh the Doctor is gay" but they don't show you his boyfriend stuff that they do in Hollywood movies. Hopefully and I think it should be after the watershed but hopefully we will have the first gay sex scene on BBC on this historic ground breaking program and this pioneering channel promoting how it is all right that everyone in England is gay.

trollolololololol.
 
i don't like the new logo. i know it's based on an old one but i still don't like it.

i love that david tennant is back but have a bad feeling they might do a soft reboot and retcon the doctors that came after 10 so that Ncuti is essentially the 11th doctor. i swear if they scrub matt smith and peter capaldi's run then i am done with the show. as much i like jodie as an actress i think i'd be happy with the entire chibnall run being scrapped.

and this is not related to anything but i just saw this picture

ae662ba13956a201b9dc66a87a6eb654.jpg

A special with McGann, Tennant, Eccleston, Capaldi and Smith would be molten benny.
there were rumors that matt smith filmed some scenes for the 60th and even karen gillan/arthur darvill were said to be there. i don't think there were any photos of them leaked so we'll need to wait and see.

i think peter capaldi would definitely be up for appearing. with mcgann appearing in the last episode i'd be surprised if he didn't turn up next year again. same for mccoy/colin baker/davison and david bradley (as 1st doctor)

that leaves tom baker and eccleston. sadly, i dont think tom baker is fit enough to do any filming and i think eccleston is still pissed at the BBC/russell t davies. with RTD back now i don't think there is any chance of him coming back.
 
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Krathoon

Member
We all have to wait until next November. So, eat your Wheaties.
That is too long of a wait.
 
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ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
Whelp, Doctor Who is looking increasingly dead.

Forget the change back to an older showrunner and the appearance of Tennant... it's about to be an even bigger woke groomer fest than it already was.


That's just roughly one month of news items, buckle up.
 

BadBurger

Many “Whelps”! Handle It!
Resurrecting an old thread as I am catching up

These time traveling episodes into the future or past are wild. Some of the most creative Doctor Who episodes I have seen.
 
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