Doctor Who - Everything 50

[Cyndaquil]

So, this is a place to talk about the 50th Anniversary of Doctor who,


The Day of the doctor

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Information:

Spoiler

DURATION: 1 HOUR, 17 MINUTES
The Doctors embark on their greatest adventure in this 50th anniversary special. In 2013, something terrible is awakening in London's National Gallery; in 1562, a murderous plot is afoot in Elizabethan England; and somewhere in space an ancient battle reaches its devastating conclusion. All of reality is at stake as the Doctor's own dangerous past comes back to haunt him

Adventure in Space and Time - Biopic

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Spoiler

DURATION: 1 HOUR, 30 MINUTES
A special one-off drama that travels back to 1963 to see how Doctor Who was first brought to the screen. Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles. Wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry's glass ceiling. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama. Allied with a team of unusual but brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever made.

Followed by William Hartnell: The Original, a five-minute documentary looking at how William Hartnell shaped the Doctor and his legacy. Featuring rare archive footage and new interviews with many who worked with him, including Carole Ann Ford, Peter Purves and Waris Hussein as well as Matt Smith, Peter Davison and Hartnell's granddaughter, Jessica Carney.

There has been loads of 50th Anniversary celebrations for Doctor who both on TV and the Radio. What are your thoughts about it all together?


The Doctor Who Schedule:
Thursday 14th November 2013

• The Night of the Doctor - iPlayer/Red Button, 12:00
• The Science of Doctor Who - BBC Two, 21:00

Friday 15th November 2013

• Doctor Who: Greatest Monsters & Villains Weekend - BBC Three, 19:05

Saturday 16th November 2013

• Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary on BBC Radio 4 - BBC Radio 4 Extra, 18:00

Monday 18th November 2013

• Doctor Who: The Ultimate Guide - BBC Three, 20:00

Thursday 21st November 2013

• Doctor Who: Blue Peter Special - CBBC, 17:30
• Doctor Who at the Proms - BBC Three, 19:00
• Doctor Who at the Proms: Encore - BBC Red Button, 20:10
• An Adventure in Space and Time - BBC Two, 21:00
• The Blagger's Guide to Doctor Who - BBC Radio 2, 22:00
• Who is The Doctor? - BBC Radio 2, 22:30
• An Unearthly Child - BBC Four, 22:30

Friday 22nd November 2013

• The Culture Show: Me, You and Doctor Who - BBC Two, 21:30

Saturday 23rd November 2013

• Who Made Who - BBC Radio 4 Extra, 09:00
• Doctor Who: Blue Peter Party - CBBC, 09:30
• Graham Norton: Live from The Doctor Who Celebration in London - BBC Radio 2, 10:00
• 12 Again Dr Who Special - CBBC, 14:30
• Doctor Who: The Infinite Quest - CBBC, 15:00
• Doctor Who: Dreamland - CBBC, 16:50
• The Day of the Doctor - BBC One, 19:50
• Doctor Who Live: The Afterparty - BBC Three, 21:05
• The Day of the Doctor: Behind the Lens – BBC Red Button, 21:05
• The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot – BBC Red Button, 22:10

Monday 25th November 2013

• The Story of Trock: Time Lord Rock - BBC Radio 1, 21:00

 

[LordDemonMan]

Oh I am excited, so very excited. Too bad there's no way for me to see a stream, I guess I will celebrate on Sunday.

 

[Cyndaquil]

Oh I am excited, so very excited. Too bad there's no way for me to see a stream, I guess I will celebrate on Sunday.

apparently its worldwide and simultaneous broadcast.

 

[LordDemonMan]

Well, yes. But in Russia it will be vandalised by the horrible voice actors they've got here, I want the pure stuff.

 

[Cyndaquil]

Well, yes. But in Russia it will be vandalised by the horrible voice actors they've got here, I want the pure stuff.

ehh get a web browser location spoofer plugin, then watch it on BBC Iplayer.

 

[Robert]

Going to cinema with one of my best mates to see it in 3D.

Can't wait!

 

[Wolfy5079]

Would love to watch it in the cinema but I'd rather sit at home on a nice comfy sofa where i can hear everything said and give it the attention it deserves. Going to the cinema means putting up with people talking behind and around you and being kicked in the back.

 

[Cyndaquil]

Well wasn't that just fantastic.

 

[LordDemonMan]

By the great saggy trousers of Rassilon, that was splendid.

 

[Cyndaquil]

By the great saggy trousers of Rassilon, that was splendid.

wonder what happens next

 

[LordDemonMan]

Imagine the possibilities! No, it's difficult, well, screw that. The final moments though, they managed to pull if off, it's really a worthy anniversary episode, methinks. I still imagine a lot of fans will have a fanwank over "wah no roes-ten/eleven", they just ignore the bigger picture. Damn, I need to rest and process all the info first.

 

[Robert]

Was awesome, really glad I went to see it at the cinema. It was probably the best thing I've seen at the cinema, since The Hobbit (which was amazing mainly due to HFR, normal 3D irritates me). The atmosphere was great, it was absolutely packed. Few too many kids admittedly, but overall awesome. The bit at the start, before the actual ep started, was awesome. Instead of going 3D before the film they made it into its own little bit.

So, Time War still on now? If the doctor didn't end it, surely it's still waging? And without Gallifrey, the remaining Time Lords likely lost pretty badly, even if the Darleks destroyed one of its fleets by mistake. Plus I'm sure there were more species in the war, which wouldn't have been wiped out.

Would have made more sense if he saved Gallifrey, then destroyed that galaxy's timeline. Also Gallifrey seemed a bit crappy really. Would have prefered it to look more like Atlantis from the Stargate universe, the outside already reminded me of it, but the inside kinda crap for a high tech species. Either metal everywhere, or more organic like the inside of the Tardis?

Also, Billie Pipper gets my vote for most pointless cameo of all time. So many other people it could have been. I'd have tried to bring back John Simm as The Master, would have been a more interesting choice. Plus didn't he get sent back to the fall of Gallifrey? He should have made a cameo!

Also there were quite a few plots left unresolved. The duck happened with the red aliens?!? Scarf girl working out which one was the shape shifter seemed important, and yet completely unresolved! The vortex manipulator, completely ignored the second it was used! They could have easily gotten into the black vault with that, just go in before it happened and jump in. Far safer than potentially getting stuck in a painting.

 

[LordDemonMan]

Was awesome, really glad I went to see it at the cinema. It was probably the best thing I've seen at the cinema, since The Hobbit (which was amazing mainly due to HFR, normal 3D irritates me). The atmosphere was great, it was absolutely packed. Few too many kids admittedly, but overall awesome. The bit at the start, before the actual ep started, was awesome. Instead of going 3D before the film they made it into its own little bit.

So, Time War still on now? If the doctor didn't end it, surely it's still waging? And without Gallifrey, the remaining Time Lords likely lost pretty badly, even if the Darleks destroyed one of its fleets by mistake. Plus I'm sure there were more species in the war, which wouldn't have been wiped out.

Would have made more sense if he saved Gallifrey, then destroyed that galaxy's timeline. Also Gallifrey seemed a bit crappy really. Would have prefered it to look more like Atlantis from the Stargate universe, the outside already reminded me of it, but the inside kinda crap for a high tech species. Either metal everywhere, or more organic like the inside of the Tardis?

Also, Billie Pipper gets my vote for most pointless cameo of all time. So many other people it could have been. I'd have tried to bring back John Simm as The Master, would have been a more interesting choice. Plus didn't he get sent back to the fall of Gallifrey? He should have made a cameo!

Also there were quite a few plots left unresolved. The duck happened with the red aliens?!? Scarf girl working out which one was the shape shifter seemed important, and yet completely unresolved! The vortex manipulator, completely ignored the second it was used! They could have easily gotten into the black vault with that, just go in before it happened and jump in. Far safer than potentially getting stuck in a painting.

Well, from what I think I saw:
The Last Great Time War is over, the huge collateral damage (the destruction of many species' home planets, eg the Zygons', the Nestene consciousness', the destruction of the Gelth's physical form etc) and the loathing the Time Lords received from what we saw in the prequel is caused by the Time Lords' desperate use of forbidden weaponry, although I suppose the Daleks also contributed to wiping out a few races from the universe.

The Dalek fleet increased the power of their bombardment so it still sounds silly that they might have destroyed each other in cross-fire, bu-u-u-u-u-t it's possible. They weren't particularly aiming at just one spot and their numbers were great, great like nigh-innumerable, and Gallifrey sort of vanished instantly, so no real time to change their tactics and cooperate on such a high scale.
We do remember that it was an all out war, I think, so it's entirely possible that all other extra-gallifreyan Time Lord settlements were already annihilated by the time of the Last Day.
And Gallifrey has been at war for a prolonged period now, so we don't really know what it's supposed to look during, erm, calmer times, hence the look of ruin and metal all around.

The things is, however, it looked like Gallifrey really "exploded" taking the Daleks with it, just as the Doctors said it would. But the Time Lords really survived and the Doctor was thinking all these years that he murdered all of them (timelines being out of sync, or something), until that last moment with The Curator (a lot of people seem to think that he was the one to give the scarf to Osgood, the lady to figure out why there was a lot of marble dust in the Undergallery). Oh also, the Queen did name the Doctor the curator of the National Gallery after all, so, well, who knows? And the whole Zygon-Human peace thing, well, I guess it got not as important, the episode was about the War Doctor after all.

The events caused by Rassilon's hissy fit are in no way retconned, they happened simultaneously, I think, tracking the timeline in Doctor Who causes headaches. The High Council did know about the Doctor possessing the Moment after all, but the Doctors only informed the High Command about their plan to put Gallifrey in stasis and pull it out of the Time War, also, High Command mentioned the High Council failing with their, um, solutions. This may very well mean that we might get to see the Master and a very pissed off Rassilon in the future. It's all so complicated and exciting and I can't wait for future episodes!!!
And, well, the thing with Billie Piper, it's a clever trick, methinks. A lot of people were expecting the plot to revolve about Tentoo (or whatever that metacrisis Human-Time Lord hybrid is being called by the fandom) and Rose somehow breaching the dimensional boundaries, even the trailers were teasing about the whole bad wolf thing. But it turns out to be Time Lord tech, TARDIS-level Time Lord tech, I mean the Moment was tucked away so it wouldn't be used, it's called the Galaxy Eater for a reason after all, and it was so sophisticated it developed sentience. Ah if only WMDs had similar sentience and would actively judge the person to use them. So casting any of the other Time Lords might have spoiled the, um, surprise. The vortex manipulator was sort of low on juice, wasn't it? Using the screwdriver on it might have done something, but, um, they'd need coordinates of the black archive? Forcing all three Doctors to time travel with one vortex manipulators would cause some timey-wimey stuff? A plot hole, one of many, yes, but, mate, Gallifrey stands! I mean, it's out there somewhere, suspended and saved from the Time War, not destroyed, not annihilated, the Doctor can finally start searching for his home.

Anyway, the greater moment, the whole episode was great mind you, was the inclusion of all the 13 Doctors, the early cameo of the 13th Doctor was nice (it was told that Capaldi wasn't set to appear until Christmas). EDIT: Bah, it's the same old trick, one of the Zygons mentions it being Christmas. Just like in the Asylum of the Daleks. Oh dear me.

I will watch the whole episode again, calm down, and try to write a more coherent essay, or not.

 

[Hazem Hoster]

And i always wonderd Why the hell have the facebook discovery talks that much nowadays about Doctor who lolz

 

[bobsobol]

History and Lore:-

Spoiler

Galifrey, before the fall, looked like a giant Gothic cathedral inside, with Greek columns in the gardens. We've seen it several times, and the sets are usually pretty dark and sparse, but the descriptions in the books are much more elaborate. The halls of the great hoses where manorial, but largely deserted. There is little political power to be gained by staying in family homes tended to by pointless serfs who refuse to accept the gifts of regeneration and the long life of a Time-Lord. All the important things happened in the Academy and the Council chambers. Individual cloisters and annexes within those structures where usually pretty sparsely decorated and dusty. (Time-Lords are above cleaning, and have no desire to be around lower peoples) Only the brightly coloured regalia of their alumni and great houses gave any life to the place.

It was a stagnant place of decay when the young renegades departed from it in exile. (The Monk, The Master, The Rahni and The Doctor, most notably)

There never where any "Time-Lord settlements" outside of the planet of Galifrey. The whole of that planet wasn't even populated by "Time-Lords and Ladies", it was populated with Galifreyans and wild creatures, not all of whom where, or chose to be Time-Lords. Many outlanders in what the Time-Lords called "the wastes" would be very offended if you called them a Time-Lord, even though they are biologically, and genetically identical. They rejected time travel, and regeneration, and all of the gifts bestowed upon their kind by Lord Rassilon. (and, more correctly, by the great Galifreyan Engineer Lord Obiron, whom it is believed Rassilon murdered to prevent that technology falling into the hands of common Galifreyans)

There where other races among the Time-Lords in the capitol of Galifrey during the fall too, as President Romana had opened the Academy to all races in an attempt to promote understanding and peace between the temporal super-powers. Most of those, however, evacuated during the civil war directly preceding the last time-war.

Races like the Nekistani and the Moanan Hoste would not have survived long between the Time-Lords and the Daleks. The thing about Temporal WMDs is that they typically destroy an entire time-line, so it's not long before everyone who knew these races existed, forgets. The web of time must be kept in balance, and the use of such weapons causes massive disruption to the space-time continuum, however, making so drastic a change as to wipe a person from time, let alone an entire race, requires that the WMD be able to "self-heal" the time-line, in order to fix the alternate reality in place, and prevent the web from creating an alternate too similar to the one you are trying to destroy. (that's what the web automatically does)

Killing Time-Lords is intrinsically difficult, of course. They can survive any amount of physical abuse, right down to complete vaporisation... though regenerating from that is usually incredibly messy. The preferred energy weapons of the Daleks are not effective at all unless you hold a Time-Lord in place and kill him again and again until he runs out of regenerations. (which the Doctor and the Master have already exceeded) The weapons of the Castallian guard on Galifrey where designed to delay regeneration, so you could kill a villain, and imprison his corps while he regenerated.

Even during the Civil War on Galifrey, the Time-Lords where building large fleets of time capsules. (TARDIS', in the terms of Susan and The Doctor... and a habit Romana picked up) The construction of a "TARDIS" requires the creation of an Eye of Harmony at the very centre. This is done by co lapsing a star from the time of it's birth until it's death and compressing that into a temporal and spacial singularity. This forces all the potential for an entire solar system to be contained within a dimensionally-transcendental shell. All it's potential, everything it was, would be, could have been and never was inside a tiny capsule designed to be piloted by 13 beings. (a minimum operating crew of no less than 6 Time-Lords is recommended in the operators manual, and any less than 3 requires the sabotage of several key safety features within the central console room ^_^)

Lord Rassilon is fabled to have travelled the entire length of time, from the start of the universe until it's demise, stopping on and altering the course of history dramatically for every world within it. He deliberately changed the course of evolution to each one which could produce sentience life, some times attempting thousands of times before settling on an outcome he liked. His aim, was to make all intelligent species as close to Galifeyans as he could. (which is why most alien races look basically like Time-Lords) The reason he considered this desirable was two-fold. Firstly, he wanted to see if any other race had even the potential to reach so great a pinnacle of technology as he had (arrogant, like all Time-Lords) and also to ensure that the chances of Galifreyans surviving by reproducing with other species was maximised.

In this aim, his greatest successes where the Knights of Velisha, The Daleks, and Humans. Only the Daleks achieved both his powers of genetic and temporal manipulation, and his desire to see all life unlike himself annihilated. Sadly, the nuclear war of attrition between the Kaled and the Thal on Skaro left the previously humanoid Kaled nothing more than tentacled blobs in a tin shell. The Knights of Velisha only discovered immortality, and time travel after their extinction, essentially. Though the same argument could be levelled at the Time-Lords.

How many children where there on Galifrey on the last day? That's a funny question, because having chosen to live in the cloistered halls and not interfere with anything, most Time-Lords of Galifrey where several thousand years old. It was not uncommon for there to be no child Time-Lords on Galifrey for hundreds of years. They aren't interested in emotion or sentimentality, don't trust one another and don't like socialising, unless it is for the purpose of showing off and belittling one another. The only cause for marriage between them was for political gain, and such allegiances could usually be procured through blackmail or perceived mutual self-interest. (most Time-Lords are extremely unpleasant people) I presume most of those children where of wild Galifreyan parentage in the wastelands.

There would have been pockets of Time-Lords and their allies in the vortex, in all probability, and in pocket dimensions as well. Lord Braxiatelle was, when we last heard of him, in a self-imposed exile in such a pocket dimension with the art collection he gathered up throughout time and space... exiled when these actions became apparent and he was revealed to be as renegade as any of the officials "renegade Time-Lords". The CIA (the Celestial Intervention Agency) would also have had operatives throughout time and space infiltrating key times on key worlds and reporting to the Grand Inquisitor too. However, the way the web of time works, if Galifrey was gone, they would probably have reverted, mentally and physically, into whom ever or what-ever they where impersonating.

If Rassilon where removed from the universe, and for all time, the repercussions would be immense. However, through his manipulation of time, it would be incredibly difficult for the Daleks to do that, without preventing the evolution of both Kaled and Thal on Skaro which lead to their time. However, the good Daleks from the parallel universe which ended the third Dalek Empire may still exist. The technology to bring Daleks from a reality which had Rassilon into ours is certainly not beyond them... but one would wonder what motivation our Daleks would have to do that. Ultimately, the "good Daleks" where no better than the bad, of course. The fact that they had become the superior beings in their reality should have been proof enough of that.

All this Lore is known to us. It's from memory, and I didn't check all the specifics, so details may be sketchy, but you can look it all up.

I *really* loved An Adventure in Space and Time. It made me cry at several points. Bless Bill and his Billy Fluffs. Bless his attention to detail, and "playing" at being the Doctor like a child would. "I need to know what all the controls do. The children will notice if I use the wrong one." Yes Bill, we would. ^_^

The prequel to The Day of the Doctor was also great, but I wish it hadn't been cut so short. It really felt like it had been butchered in post production to cram it into so little time. Should have been a whole episode, for sure. I do hope there's an "extended" / "directors cut" version we may get our hands on at some point. <3 Paul McGann.

Wish we had fresh acting from Eccleston in the Day of the Doctor, but it was very pleasant to see the guest appearance of "the curator".

The worst thing about it all is... I've opened all my presents early, and now Christmas is over. :'( lol

 

[Bloodraven]

It certainly had its flaws but I decided to watch it because everyone else did - having not seen Doctor Who in like 3 - 4 years I had no idea what was going on most of the time but ehhhhh it was okay for someone who has missed the past seasons