SPOILERS for Fugitive of the Judoon:
Are you people gonna make me set up a section for Ruth the way you did for John bloody Hurt?
Yup!!!! (Well at least wait until the end of the season when the truth is probably revealed)
Also, doesn't there need to be a section for the meta-crisis Doctor seeing as Doc11 calls him a regeneration too?
It wasn't the meta-crisis Doc who was the 'regeneration' (that was Rose's alt-uni lover, last seen as an English village GP called Corin, if you believe the Target Storybook and frankly I don't), it was OUR Doc, between Journey's End and End of Time Part Two.
But screw that.
All the identical-but-different-Marked K9s get one section, if it's good enough for K9 it's good enough for all the identical-but-belatedly-allegedly-different-numbered Tennant-Docs too.
Bear in mind Matt was ancient, senile and legless when he miscounted his regenerations by counting Tennant twice - before Time of the Doctor he ACTUALLY BLOODY STARTED REGENERATING a couple of times (Impossible Astronaut, Angels Take Manhattan). Thirteenth and final incarnation my arse.
Plus, we have no idea WHICH Tennant-Doc was in Day of the Doctor so how would we know which section we should be moaning about his rubbish ungelled fringe in?
To get back to OUR BRAND-NEW BLACK FEMALE DOCTOR for a minute...my Not We mother says she's not the Doctor. And she has some pretty good instincts. And, roundels or no roundels, she's a gun-totin', Judoon-horn-ripping-off maniac so...not THAT Doctorish. (Colin Baker pushed the boundaries more, of course, but...HE'S NOT THE DOCTOR EITHER, dammit.)
RODNEY in New Series: Season Twelve: Fugitive of the Judoon:
My hot tip-
She's between Troughton/Pertwee Doc and she has a memory wipe done before being dumped on Earth.
Fair enough, she didn't recognise JODIE!'s sonic screwdriver but then Troughton had only recently invented something-that-looked-completely-different-and-only-did-screws. She could steer the TARDIS suspiciously well for an early Doctor but maybe she just had more of a knack or found the instruction manual or something. The look of her TARDIS *much blissful roundel-related sighing* was pretty old-school.
Does this mean Matt was somehow aware that he was the last Doctor but, being blissfully ignorant of Ruth, made up that two-Tennant nonsense to take her place?
TIM in New Series: Season Twelve: Fugitive of the Judoon:
Note to Ruth, whoever you are: I know of all the past Doctors, and you, ma'am, are not one of then.
Fair enough.
Well, assuming you said the same to John Hurt.
(Possibly excluding the 'ma'am' bit.)
There were NO female Doctors prior to JODIE.
Again, I agree, it would certainly take away from her achievement if Ruth IS The Real Thing, though of course nothing can take away from that glorious moment JODIE! strode through that forest and put down her hood...*rapturous sigh*
The PROPER first black Doctor is gonna have some of her/his thunder stolen though, Whoever or whatever Ruth turns out to be.
FRANCOIS in Fugitive of the Judoon:
The whole situation with the Doctor, Ruth, Gat and the destroyed-not-destroyed Gallifrey brought to mind the Master's statement, They lied to us... ..the founding fathers of Gallifrey. Everything we were told was a lie. We are not who we think, you or I. The whole existence of our species... ..built on the lie of the timeless child. I think it's going to be more complicated than Ruth being or not being the Doctor.
But I NEED TO KNOW if Ruth gets her own section in 'Doctors'! NOW!
But I NEED TO KNOW if Ruth gets her own section in 'Doctors'! NOW!
A valid answer to that question cannot be given until the conclusion of this season.
Well, assuming you said the same to John Hurt.
No, because the War Doctor happened in a period of the Doctor's life that we'd skipped over. Novels and Audios aside, we had no Doctor Who between 1996 and 2005, remember.
On the other hand, there was no such skip over in Classic Who. We went straight from William Hartnell to Sylvester McCoy.
There is simply no way that Ruth fits in here (unless she comes from an alternate reality, of course).
Emily, your name shall be added to the National Integrated Database, but don't worry about anyone checking up on you because that's not the way we do things in this country.
"National Integrated Database"
To quote Emily..."Huh?"
What's that?
Riffing off Yes, Minister. Sorry.
Not sure where the best place to post this is. I suppose Martin will get her own board here, but we should wait until we know what to call it. Anyway the article is more about the era so far.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/chris-chibnall-cast-a-black-woman-as-the-doctor-but-it-1841309265
(Danny Pink, played by Samuel Anderson, and Bill Potts, played by Pearl Mackie, both ironically die the same way: They’re turned into Cybermen.) To many fans of color, these exits left an awful taste in our mouths compared to the treatment of white characters on the show, whose exits often felt far less traumatic.
Sorry, did you SOMEHOW FAIL TO NOTICE the bit where Bill's immortal puddle-girlfriend returned and restored her humanity and immortally whizzed round time and space with her? Hell, in the Twice Upon a Time novelisation they even got CATS as well as tons of lesbian sex and have I mentioned THE WHOLE OF SPACE AND TIME? Bill is the luckiest Companion EVER. Hell, she's the luckiest sentient being ever. Go find some REAL racism to complain about, how hard can it BE?
she’s here, she’s ours, and nerdy clothing stores better prepare to sell her outfit.
Yeah, I was already thinking that you can't possibly give black people their own Doctor AT BLOODY LAST and then say 'Ha ha, fooled you!' She's gotta BE a True Doctor, one way or another.
It even said so in the credits, in case there were any doubts.
Yeah, but credits can lie, just look at Clara's eyeballs in Death in Heaven...
(Give us Thasmin, you cowards!)
Uh?
Thasmin - romantically pairing Thirteen and Yasmin. Like Colepaldi and Whouffle.
OK, I've deduced what Colepaldi is but Whouffle...??
Whouffle is Eleventh Doctor paired up romantically with Clara.
Um, Colepaldi = Jenna COLEman and Peter CaPALDI, how does Whouffle work, exactly...?
Oswin was Souffle Girl
Danny wrote:
It’s not like inserting a new past Doctor into the numbering is a small technicality that’s quite a big deal. This potentially changes everything from the 13 regenerations to the Doctor’s numbering.
It’s not fundamentalist to complain about this by any stretch, that’s like calling my sister a die hard fan when she’s barely seen an episode since Tennant left. Or calling Jodie a UFO nut when she’s simply expressed her belief in the possibility that aliens exist.
I gotta agree with Danny on this one. We don't need, or want, another Mikey Spock situation here.
Mikey Spock refers to the character of Michael Burnham, the human step sister of Spock, that STD foisted on us (why they gave her a man's name, I don't know, nor do I really care).
Nothing in more than fifty years of Trek canon suggested such a creature existed (not even the Kelvin time line movies), And yet the CBS Swindlers expected us to just accept it. Well, I didn't, and I know many others didn't either. The fact that they had to cover their butts with some Orwellian un-personing of the characters showed what a mistake this idea was.
Well, I feel the same way about this Doctor. As I said, you want to have a black and female Doctor, fine by me. However, do NOT attempt to insert her into the Classic Doctor's line up. We saw that whole line up, right from William Hartnell, straight through to Sylvester McCoy. There was no missing time to insert an unknown Doctor (like there was with the War Doctor).
The only logical answer is that this Doctor is from an alternate reality. That I can buy.
Part of me hopes you guys never realise how much entertainment you're providing.
I think we just did.
No tricks, no parallel universe!!
Of course, if it was Moffat saying this (a la one of the TARDIS crew is absolutely gonna die in Impossible Astronaut, no coming back, no robot bodies, no tricks - yeah, RIGHT) we'd know he was lying through his teeth, but I don't think we've caught Chibbers telling us whoppers?
Bloody hell, you realise this means we've now got as many Real Genuine Female Doctors called Jo(die) as we have Real Genuine Male Doctors called Jo(h)n?
If you'd told me THAT would happen a few years ago I wouldn't have believed you.
(Well, OK, maybe I would cos '2020' sounds so futuristic ANYTHING could happen by then, er, now.)
I really think you're jumping the gu nn this, Emily, by giving her her own spot. We don't know the full story yet.
And you haven't put forth your own theory of where Ruth fits in, when there's 57 years of past history that says NOPE!
You're being blinded by your preference of another female Doctor added to the show, and throwing out proof and logic along the way.
However, here's another way for Ruth to be real: HER mind has been wiped and SHE is a future Doctor, not JODIE! The mind-wipe would also have deleted her memory of the sonic screwdriver, let alone her entire past lives.
All I can say is they better have a conversation where they compare previous lives.
"Teeth and curls?"
"Yes."
"Paranoid little guy with a hat?"
"Yes."
"Skinny guy with specs?"
"Yes."
"Overweight bald guy?"
"Uh...no."
I really think you're jumping the gu nn this, Emily, by giving her her own spot.
I'm just going with what our Living God tells us.
(Yes, unbelievable as it may seem, Chris '42' Chibnall is our Living God now.)
If he turns out to be a liar, these messages can be decanted into the 'Other "Doctors"' section easily enough.
We don't know the full story yet.
We don't know the full story for ANY of the Doctors yet.
And you haven't put forth your own theory of where Ruth fits in, when there's 57 years of past history that says NOPE!
Her TARDIS says black-and-white era.
(Sure, the Day of the Doctor novelisation says the Doc was colour-blind in the black-and-white era and Ruth!Doctor definitely isn't, but then Moffat foolishly didn't know ANYTHING about Ruth.)
You're being blinded by your preference of another female Doctor added to the show, and throwing out proof and logic along the way.
I'm just going by what I see on-screen.
Actually my love and loyalty is with my JODIE! and I'm not sure if this gun-totin' maniac is undermining Her position as our First Female Doctor so I'm not sure HOW I feel about the whole thing, other than BLOODY EXCITED.
However, here's another way for Ruth to be real: HER mind has been wiped and SHE is a future Doctor, not JODIE! The mind-wipe would also have deleted her memory of the sonic screwdriver, let alone her entire past lives.
True enough, and given how wistfully the Docs gazed at War's roundels, there's no reason a future Doc wouldn't set Sexy's desktop theme to 'old-school'.
And of course Gallifrey still being around doesn't mean a thing, I'm sure it'll come back...again...
So where was Ruth in the images of past Doctors in Brain Of Morbius?
I've always said those Morbius faces WERE MORBIUS and I'm sticking to that...for the moment...
If Chibbers is pulling a Mikey Spock, shoving a character in that goes against decades of canon, then I'm out.
Emily...EmilyEmilyEmily...Emily...EEEMMIILLYYYYY!!!!!
You DID NOT just call Chib-head your LIVING GOD????!!!!
He gave us that wretched climate change lecture/rant, Orphan Five and lectured on the unknown concept that racism is BADBADBAD, has given us boring episodes, lame companions, no really good, exciting new villains, and regurgitated elements of the Tennant years instead of coming up with new ideas (sad Doctor, dead Gallifrey, Judoon, new Master, Captain Jack, meeting another 'Doctor').
I don't know who you are, Emily. 
But, here's my latest prediction; there will be NO explanation about Ruth for this season. Chib will let us all stew in it and not come up with an explanation (BECAUSE THERE IS NO EXPLANATION!!!), and just let the fanbase divide some more. That way the fans that want to keep Ruth for now get to keep her, and the ones that are against her (because CANON says she CAN'T exist in the past) will just have to put up with Chibface sticking it to us and giving a middle finger to the past history.
And this is FREE!
Emily...EmilyEmilyEmily...Emily...EEEMMIILLYYYYY!!!!!
You DID NOT just call Chib-head your LIVING GOD????!!!!
It...does sound a bit much when you put it like that.
But he's the Who Showrunner and ALL (i.e. both) of the previous Who Showrunners were Living Gods.
And the Lonely God Herself does dance like a puppet on his strings.
And, hell, he's given us TWO FEMALE DOCTORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To give us one female Doctor may be accounted a fortune but to be blessed with TWO looks like, well, *puts on Soldeed voice* TWO! I HAVE SEEN TWO!!
He gave us that wretched climate change lecture/rant
Actually that was my hitherto-adored Frog-Universe Guy.
and lectured on the unknown concept that racism is BADBADBAD
Rosa was a really good episode and it's hardly Chibnall's fault that the American South was really screwed-up.
has given us boring episodes
What, like every OTHER era of Who you mean (give or take Seasons 26 and 27 of Blessed Memory)?
lame companions
Lame Companions is also a Who tradition, though admittedly we don't usually have so bloody many of 'em at once.
no really good, exciting new villains
His Master is a REALLY good, exciting new (old) villain.
and regurgitated elements of the Tennant years
Yeah, wasn't that BRILLIANT! What took him so long to realise that regurgitating the Tenannt Era is EXACTLY what we need!
But, here's my latest prediction; there will be NO explanation about Ruth for this season.
Oh.
You know, that's the first Ruth-prediction (my own included) where I've thought YEAH.
It'll be The Timeless Child all over again but rather more...prominent.
And this is FREE!
Not for much longer.
That pal of Phil's is obviously not gonna come up with the goods so we really ought to start trying to a) find and b) pay someone to Save Our Site...
Perhaps Ruth comes from a future where Gallifrey has been restored... again.
"What took him so long to realise that regurgitating the Tenannt Era is EXACTLY what we need!"
Mmm, I'm not sold. Each Doctor should have their own feel and personality. Rehashing elements of Tennant is lazy writing. "Oh, I like that bit from 'Rose'! Do that "What? What? What? What?" part again! And let's bring back that part from 'Midnight', and I've gotta steal that part from 'Turn Left'! Brilliant! And maybe a dash of 'Love And Monsters!" Okay! That's all in Episode 7, now what can I rip off for Episode 8?"
"Rosa was a really good episode and it's hardly Chibnall's fault that the American South was really screwed-up."
It clearly was, but his episode made it look like it was 100 % racist and super violent, which it wasn't. There were people down there that weren't racist psychotics, but his episode didn't show that, so he could make his point. At least one person on the bus could have stood up and then been shushed down to counter-point the scene.
"And this is FREE!...Not for much longer."
The Chief's last message was April 2018. What's happening with the site?
Kevin - Part of me hopes you guys never realise how much entertainment you're providing.
You'd probably like these channels on YouTube: OverlordDVD; Nerdrotic; Bowlesteak; and Mecharandom42.
I could still buy Doctor Ruth being pre-Hartnell.
Clara's "trip" only went back that far to ensure the Doctor got kidnapped by the right TARDIS. The Doctor may have used many other TARDIS' before then, in official Gallifrey Business.
As for why a different TARDIS keeps appearance as a Police Box: That is MATRIX default for C20 UK Earth and something there/then always fucks up chameleon circuits and keeps the outer shape locked....maybe lead in petrol fumes back then, idk.
It has been firmly established that Hartnell was the First Doctor.
Next theory, please.
Oh here’s an idea of what this new Doc is. She’s a clone of a past regeneration and her own different regeneration cycle made her look different.
Or could she be the Hand Tennant. It turns out Doc was wrong hand Tennant could regenerate and after Rose died she built a Tardis and traveled the universes.
Speaking of clones, she could be Jenny.
Perhaps Ruth comes from a future where Gallifrey has been restored... again.
If that was the case, the memory of Gallifrey being destroyed a couple of times must have been wiped from its history, but then the Time Gits WERE always rewriting their history - via lies AND time-travel.
Each Doctor should have their own feel and personality.
Oh, absolutely, but JODIE! has her own fresh take on being the Doc merely by virtue of her gender. And by the Thirteenth...I mean Fourteenth (War)...Fifteenth (TenTwo)...Sixteenth (Ruth)...um, anyway, by the time you've had LOADS AND LOADS of Doctors - all of which are SUPPOSED to be the same person - then the current one is always gonna remind you of at least ONE of her previous selves and with JODIE! it was always a toss-up between Davison (nice and bland and blond(e)) and Tennant (adorable, talks-really-fast-gibberish, DID I MENTION TOTALLY ADORABLE) so I'm just thanking the gods that Season Twelve is making it blissfully clear she's a Ten- not Five-type.
Rehashing elements of Tennant is lazy writing. "Oh, I like that bit from 'Rose'! Do that "What? What? What? What?" part again! And let's bring back that part from 'Midnight', and I've gotta steal that part from 'Turn Left'! Brilliant! And maybe a dash of 'Love And Monsters!" Okay! That's all in Episode 7, now what can I rip off for Episode 8?"
Wasn't Russell T God ripping off Spearhead and Terror of the Autons when He brought Who back in triumph? We've fifty-six years of Who-y goodness to plunder and dammit, Fugitive of the Judoon proves you can combine warm and wonderful RTG-domesticity with mind-blowingly-insane gamechangers.
At least one person on the bus could have stood up and then been shushed down to counter-point the scene.
WAS there a single white person on that bus who lifted a finger, though? Historically speaking?
The Chief's last message was April 2018. What's happening with the site?
Surviving longer than he expected, obviously, rather like the Doctor Who itself. Still, anyone got any technically-minded friends who could move all this stuff to a new site for not-too-many-thousands-of-pounds?
Clara's "trip" only went back that far to ensure the Doctor got kidnapped by the right TARDIS. The Doctor may have used many other TARDIS' before then, in official Gallifrey Business.
*Sigh* see Fifth Doctor audio Prisoners of Fate for the Doc's history with a rather embittered Type Fifty...
It has been firmly established that Hartnell was the First Doctor.
Yeah, tell that to the Morbius Faces.
(Hypocrite? MOI?)
Speaking of clones, she could be Jenny.
Jenny's brain wasn't THAT much like the Doctor's.
Plus, by the time TennantDaddy had finished indoctrinating her, Jenny just wasn't the type to rip a Judoon's horn off.
On the other hand, Jenny was a genetically trained soldier, so dealing with a problem by shooting at it or beating the •••• out of it would be right up her alley. Plus, you never know what lovely new personality traits regeneration will bring to the surface.
Jenny was a genetically trained soldier, so dealing with a problem by shooting at it or beating the •••• out of it would be right up her alley.
Well I didn't see any sign of it in Jenny: The Doctor's Daughter. She didn't casually slaughter ANYONE, meaning she's learnt NOTHING from the fact that listening to the Doctor's pacifist degenerate nonsense got her KILLED an hour after she was born.
Anyway, my own Crazy Ruth Theory:
She's the Eighth Doctor.
That watch she was bizarrely staring at at the beginning of Fugitive of the Juddon was heading for 8 o'clock, ergo, she is the Eighth Doctor.
(She didn't even start her first tour till midday so even with leaflets to hand out no sane fake-human would unnecessarily get up at that hideously ungodly hour unless she was dropping us a REALLY BIG CLUE.)
I know what you're gonna say - Paul McGann is the Eighth Doctor! - but come ON! Think about it for, like, TWO SECONDS!
He had precisely two TV stories. One of which had him as an amnesiac in a wig claiming to be half-human on his mother's side and the other of which was five minutes long and attempting to canonise his Big Finish Companions of all bizarrely insane things to do.
Plus he had a few dozen audios which claimed he happily spent 600 years on Orbis with some jellyfish and a few dozen novels which claimed he survived getting crushed to death cos his second heart had been transplanted into Sabbath's body.
I mean, come ON, we weren't born yesterday, Ruth makes a WAY more convincing Eighth Doctor than Paul McGann...
Not entirely convinced, but I'll grant you the watch does seem important.
Hardly proof, but McGann's face is very prominent in The Journal of Impossible Things.
----
We've really only had two alternate universes, but both seemed to be universes without its own Doctor. Still, there's nothing to stop there being another universe with its own Doctor.
Other theories involve a splitting-off point. At one point a new Doctor emerged from the Doctor without xem realising it. That Doctor went about, having adventures and regenerating. It's not impossible, but again, why does she have what appears to be the same TARDIS?
The only thing I'm worried about is a statement from Chibnall suggesting that by season's end, some questions will still be unanswered.
Emily - "WAS there a single white person on that bus who lifted a finger, though? Historically speaking?"
This is Doctor Who, Not masterpiece Theatre, so a little adjustment to the real life time line is to be expected.
Emily - "I know what you're gonna say - Paul McGann is the Eighth Doctor! - but come ON! Think about it for, like, TWO SECONDS!"
I don't need 2 MILI-SECONDS to remind you that we saw McCoy change into McGann.
End of story, end of theiry.
we saw McCoy change into McGann
Pah! A mere bagatelle!
I had to look up that word, and this what I got:
"A bagatelle is a short piece of music, typically for the piano, and usually of a light, mellow character. The name bagatelle literally means "a short unpretentious instrumental composition" as a reference to the light style of a piece."
Whatever you're trying to say, Emily, I don't understand.
But, it remains that we SAW McCoy change into McGann. It's established Who history for 26 years!
Ruth WAS NOT there!
well, when I looked it up I got:
'1. a game in which small balls are hit and then allowed to roll down a sloping board on which there are holes, each numbered with the score achieved if a ball goes into it, with pins acting as obstructions.
2. a thing regarded as too unimportant or easy to be worth much consideration.'
Obviously I was going for the second definition.
But, it remains that we SAW McCoy change into McGann.
Well, we saw McCoy die. And stay dead, by the Doctor's own account as well as the evidence of our own eyes, for SEVERAL HOURS.
After which his face twitched in a ridiculous manner and we saw Paul McGann wandering around in a sheet wailing 'Who am I?' and claiming to be half-human and snogging people and basically there was something DEEPLY DEEPLY SUSPICIOUS about the whole thing.
The Matrix evidence has probably been tampered with. Again.
The Matrix evidence has probably been tampered with. Again.
Perhaps they could take the same approach they did with the Bobby Ewing character in Dallas where it turned out the entire previous series - where he was dead - was simply a dream by another character.
The Master's warning earlier leads Mel and 6Doc discovering that he hasn't actually regenerated and that all subsequent incarnations were merely Matrix projections.
This whole season being a bad dream?
I could get on board with that.
You could go all the way back to The Mind Robber and say that the Doctor never escaped the Realm of Fiction and has been living in a dream ever since. 
Emily, we saw MCCOY'S FACE change into MCGANN"S FACE! There was nothing suspicious about anything, other than a writer's delusion that he could be half-human! And if you can accept Tennant's snogging habits, this is where it started!
There was no time for McCoy die, turn into Ruth, then go back to the SAME MORGUE and have McCoy's face and turn into McGann!
It's like you're saying it was really suspicious of the Brigidier to say, "Well, here we go again!" as he sees Pertwee turn into Ruth, and years later Ruth is Pertwee again and then turns into Baker!
Ruth CANNOT be the Eighth Doctor! You're trying to squeeze a fully grown elephant into a desk drawer! It doesn't work!
Or, if you don't want to go back that far, you could say that the Doctor has not escaped the influence of the Dreamlord we met in Amy's Choice.
Season 6b.
The Timelords regenerated Troughton into Ruth. She had a bunch of adventures. Then the Timelords erased her memories and regenerated her into Pertwee.
It's a clunky fit, but it can work.
This smegger is smegging smegged!
It can't fit. Pertwee flopped out of the TARDIS wearing Troughton's outfit.
And Ruth was HIDING in human form. The Timelords didn't remove his Timelord DNA, they exiled him to help Earth in the 1970's/80's, not the 2010's.
And the Timelords never mentioned her existence before.
And in his thousands and thousands of years of existence, he never remembered an alternate form?
Not buying it. The Original Series timeline is too rigid to jam in any alternative Doctor at all.
Facebook:
quote:
Chibnall has brought us the Gandhi Master and the Benazir Bhutto Doctor. He must have had a really good curry when planning the current series.
And it all started with Yaz, after he'd eaten a bland, boring, uninspiring plate of butter chicken.
Ok. I, for one, am starting to get a little tired of seeing these snide and, quite frankly, racial-stereotype comments about our latest Master and Doctor. 'Gandhi'? Really? And the (repeated) curry jokes are just insulting. I've been gritting my teeth over on Gallifrey Base (in the thread about what to call this Doctor) at every person who thinks they're so funny by saying 'Woke Doctor' or 'SJW Doctor'. It's worse than when Jodie was announced, and all the troglodytes rushed to be the first to make the 'Nurse Who' 'joke'!
Honestly, I'm half surprised no-one's used the 'W' word yet.
The Master's warning earlier leads Mel and 6Doc discovering that he hasn't actually regenerated and that all subsequent incarnations were merely Matrix projections
Let me get this straight - you're trying to wipe out Eccy n'Tennant and JODIE! in favour of...keeping Colin Baker forever?
You could go all the way back to The Mind Robber and say that the Doctor never escaped the Realm of Fiction and has been living in a dream ever since.
You could go all the way back to The Celestial Toymaker and claim that. And the Trick or Treat short story DOES, and terrifyingly convincingly.
('The reality filters cut out every now and then, but you never seemed to notice the plastic Daleks or the bendy dinosaurs or that quite ridiculous giant plush rat. Did it never cross your mind to wonder why that time tunnel you fell into recently was actually, literally, decorated with Christmas tinsel?')
Emily, we saw MCCOY'S FACE change into MCGANN"S FACE! There was nothing suspicious about anything, other than a writer's delusion that he could be half-human!
You HONESTLY don't find it suspicious that the so-called 'regeneration' involved BEING DEAD FOR SEVERAL HOURS? You can get a LOT of variation between regenerations but at the end of the day the one constant thing, and indeed entire raison d'etre of the process, is NOT BEING DEAD.
There was no time for McCoy die, turn into Ruth, then go back to the SAME MORGUE and have McCoy's face and turn into McGann!
Are you seriously suggesting that nipping back in time and wearing a rubber mask are beyond the Doctor's capabilities?
Ruth CANNOT be the Eighth Doctor! You're trying to squeeze a fully grown elephant into a desk drawer! It doesn't work!
You're almost certainly correct but I don't see why we shouldn't squeeze the maximum number of craaaazy theories into...whatever-time-we-have before All Is Revealed.
Or, if you don't want to go back that far, you could say that the Doctor has not escaped the influence of the Dreamlord we met in Amy's Choice.
There's no way we wouldn't have seen the Dreamlord pop up for a gloat every now and then.
The Timelords regenerated Troughton into Ruth. She had a bunch of adventures. Then the Timelords erased her memories and regenerated her into Pertwee.
It's a clunky fit, but it can work.
It can't fit. Pertwee flopped out of the TARDIS wearing Troughton's outfit.
So at some point the Time Lords decided to write Ruth out of history so they obviously dressed Pertwee up in Troughton's clothes to sell the lie better.
Talking of clothes, maybe Ruth is the SECOND Doctor? The Time Lords attempting to pull this trick with Troughton's clothes and screwing up because they're JUST SO STUPID would explain the hitherto-inexplicable fact the clothing changed during the Hartnell-to-Troughton regeneration.
Also, that was a STUNNINGLY fake-looking Ben and Polly we saw in Twice Upon a Time, maybe the Time Lords replaced the real things with rubbish robot duplicates to aid and abet their 'Hartnell regenerates into Troughton, honest!' LIES?
And the Timelords never mentioned her existence before.
So? The most bleedin' obvious facts of life are ALWAYS coming as a surprise to Time Lords. The Matrix that runs their society and provides their afterlife. The black hole underneath the floorboards that powers their civilisation. The existence of the Daleks. You know...THE BASICS. Forgetting ONE Doctor out of Thirteen, er, Sixteen, oh, whatever, would be childs-play, in fact, I wouldn't trust 'em to be able to COUNT up to thirteen (sixteen. Whatever.) without taking their socks off...
And in his thousands and thousands of years of existence, he never remembered an alternate form?
S/he might have done, and then forgotten it, you know, the way Capaldi got an illicit flash of Clara-memory at the end of The Doctor Falls.
Ok. I, for one, am starting to get a little tired of seeing these snide and, quite frankly, racial-stereotype comments about our latest Master and Doctor. 'Gandhi'? Really?
Yeah, I was just wondering why Judi keeps calling him the Gandhi Master unless she thinks all Asian-subcontinent people are interchangeable? Nazi-Master is not exactly noted for his pacifism.
And, um, Benazir Bhutto? Have we somehow acquired a female Pakistani Doctor WITHOUT NOTICING?
You're almost certainly correct but I don't see why we shouldn't squeeze the maximum number of craaaazy theories into...whatever-time-we-have before All Is Revealed.
Ok then, here's another one. Ruth is DoctorDonna regenerated. And her TARDIS is a police box because that's what she's always known a TARDIS to be. 
Now, a bit more serious. Ruth cannot be a pre Hartnell incarnation, or her TARDIS would not be shaped like a police box. She cannot be an unknown incarnation of the Doctor we have been following for the past almost 60 years, there is no room for her in that lineage. And she cannot be a future Doctor because she would remember Jodie. At some point in the Doctor's past some divergence happened, probably during the Time War, a time of great instability where ten different timelines could be created and destroyed between breakfast and lunch. In Ruth's timeline, Gallifrey was victorious, the Timelords still exist and Ruth is who the War Doctor eventually regenerated into. Now why she became a fugitive after that remains to be seen, but her presence in Jodie's timeline could be the result of her efforts to evade capture. Anyway, that makes as much sense as anything else at this point.
Btw, why not just ask Ruth to list her past incarnations and see where her timeline diverged from Jodie's?
Yeah, I was just wondering why Judi keeps calling him the Gandhi Master unless she thinks all Asian-subcontinent people are interchangeable?
Because this is just another one of her cries for attention (which are, to be honest, starting to get on my nerves).
Perhaps, Emily, you need to have a word with her.
Emily - "You HONESTLY don't find it suspicious that the so-called 'regeneration' involved BEING DEAD FOR SEVERAL HOURS?"
They explained that it was the anaethestic drugs that hindered his regeneration, and slowed it down so that it wasn't a minute or two later. Maybe the Doctor does die sometimes (ie. Pertwee, Colin, McCoy), and sometimes he's nearly dead (Tom, Davison), and it gets triggered. Hey, if he can regenerate in different ways (Pertwee, Tom, Tennant), then the process can occur in different ways and lengths of time.
One of the cardinal rules of Nitcentral is that if it happened on the screen, it's canon. For example, we might like to think that Ian and Barbara married, but we never saw it. We DID see Davison and Nyssa travel without Tegan, before reuniting with her. Seeing Hartnell change into Troughton, and McCoy into McGann makes them canon. But, I give credit to you, Emily, for all of your attempts.
I actually like Francois idea, though. Whatever the truth turns out to be, I just hope that Chibby has enough creativity (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!), oh, um....hopefully he can come up with a good, unique, MAKES-SENSE-TO-EVERYONE explanation, and we can get back to normal around here!
heehee.
I sent you proof that I have diabetes, Tim. Do I have to set myself on fire to get you to back off?
she cannot be a future Doctor because she would remember Jodie
Not if she had amnesia she wouldn't, and, just for the record, the Eighth Doctor is ALWAYS bloody getting amnesia.
Maybe the Doctor does die sometimes (ie. Pertwee, Colin, McCoy), and sometimes he's nearly dead (Tom, Davison), and it gets triggered
I very much doubt it. Sure, Moffat has rendered the concept of 'death' pretty much meaningless, but I get the impression from all those Time Lords who got killed in a very permanent kinda way that the process has gotta kick in when you're ALIVE.
One of the cardinal rules of Nitcentral is that if it happened on the screen, it's canon. For example, we might like to think that Ian and Barbara married, but we never saw it.
SJA: Death of the Doctor referred to the ageless Professors Chesterton, ON-SCREEN.
But, I give credit to you, Emily, for all of your attempts.
Aww, thanks. Don't take 'em too seriously - I certainly don't.
Not if she had amnesia she wouldn't, and, just for the record, the Eighth Doctor is ALWAYS bloody getting amnesia.
Possible. However, Ruth behaves as if breaking the glass fully restored her Doctor memories and personality as expected, and Chibnall appears to be going for something less pedestrian than mere (yawn) amnesia as an explanation for her existence. I therefore stand by my statement that Ruth would remember Jodie if she was a future regeneration. Time will tell.
Tim - Because this is just another one of her cries for attention
Judi - Do I have to set myself on fire to get you to back off?
Talk about the ultimate cry for attention.
Who's got the marshmellows?
If I've lost Keith, I've lost Nitcentral.
However, Ruth behaves as if breaking the glass fully restored her Doctor memories and personality as expected, and Chibnall appears to be going for something less pedestrian than mere (yawn) amnesia as an explanation for her existence.
True, and Ruth as a future Doctor doesn't particularly fit in with anything else - the look of her TARDIS, the existence of Gallifrey, the not-recognising-the-sonic-screwdriver-which-would-take-a-HELL-of-a-lot-of-amnesia, but...I don't share your faith that Chibnall will have something beyond-our-imagination to explain Ruth...after all, if MOFFAT usually screwed up his story-arcs...
If I've lost Keith, I've lost Nitcentral.
Don't worry, it'll all blow over, providing you actually provide a non-racist explanation for 'Gandhi Master' or drop it. Preferably both.
I was joking around. I mean Nazi-Master is as far away from what we think of Mahatma Gandhi as could be. I'm not racist, I'm just careless with my humour.
I don't share your faith that Chibnall will have something beyond-our-imagination to explain Ruth...
I have faith that he is trying, maybe not quite as much that he will succeed.
My faith in Chib-Face's leadership is dropping by the episode.
Whereas I started off with zero faith and was pleasantly surprised by Season Eleven (THREE really good stories! Plus - JODIE! JODIE!) and have been utterly thrilled by Season Twelve other than the obvious but was it Chibnall's fault Frog-Universe-guy turns out to have been a one-hit-wonder?
How has this thread grown so quickly??? Literally one episode of this Doctor and she's probably surpassed the Hartnell thread in number of posts...
What worries me is that the more whacky the theory that comes out (both here and on other sites) the more disappointed fans will be when it is ACTUALLY revealed (if it actually IS revealed).
See: Game Of Thrones finale for reference to "Crybaby fan letdown"
How has this thread grown so quickly??? Literally one episode of this Doctor and she's probably surpassed the Hartnell thread in number of posts...
Hartnell's got 221, but with 72 (well, 73 now) posts Ruth's soon gonna be overtaking poor McGann, who's taken over twenty-one years to accumulate 90 posts...
It's not even literally one episode, she was some stupid HUMAN for half of it...
See: Game Of Thrones finale for reference to "Crybaby fan letdown"
I also noticed some fanboys on tumblr thought Maisie Williams should have been wearing nothing at all - and not all of them were near her age....
I'm happy to help push Dr Ruth past McGann's meagre count. So long as it's not Dr Ruth Westheimer.
So long as it's not Dr Ruth Westheimer.
Oh, so that's where the "whose the Weisenheimer?!" exclamation came from...
Once again, Natalie has lowered the tone of discussion to that of schoolboys.
You'd know, Roddie, you'd know...
Well admittedly, I had brought sex therapy into it. And in trying to push this thread past Doc8's post count, don't really want to see posts deleted.
OK, I"ll leave 'em (having similar ambitions) but just lay off anything to do with sex OR Rodney for a while please Judi.
OK, so she can teleport into her TARDIS. Not the sort of useful habit you'd give up on for later regenerations.
Does the fact Ruth says 'Dimension' not 'Dimensions' count for anything? The older and newer Docs use the HIGHLY ANNOYING singular but the middle ones go plural.
Also, does the fact her brain is identical to JODIE!'s mean anything? Cos I'm assuming from their behaviour that the Doctors' brains can vary quite wildly from one incarnation to another.
'Two of the same Time Lord can't occupy the same space at the same time. It's an abomination. It'll destroy the time streams' - jeez, don't show these people that Master/Missy dance. 'Homing in near your TARDIS signal. Can't get too close. Imagine the temporal feedback loop' - WHAT temporal feedback loop? Another sign Ruth's an early Doc before the Time Lords have got USED to multi-Doctor/Sexy reunions.
DOCTOR: The Doctor never uses weapons.
RUTH: I know. Shut up. - Interesting. Has she had previous, more pacifist-inclined incarnations or is she faking all this Ms Tough Guy stuff or WHAT?
Remind me NEVER to say 'All right, Monday, Do your worst.'
OK, so she can teleport into her TARDIS. Not the sort of useful habit you'd give up on for later regenerations.
Could it be a Stattenheim remote control? And she loses it later? (Not that I'm espousing an earlier-incarnation theory. I believe she's from a completely different timeline.)
And why does that remote control have such a Germanic name?
On the other hand, opening-TARDIS-doors-with-a-finger-snap, while not quite as useful, is something later incarnations have pretty much given up.
And why does that remote control have such a Germanic name?
Stattenheim = (at least in the novels) punning on Statler (and Waldorf) of The Muppet Show.
Emily - "...but I get the impression from all those Time Lords who got killed in a very permanent kinda way that the process has gotta kick in when you're ALIVE."
Fair enough. Pertwee and Colin were unconscious (or dead) when it happened, but what about...
DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN!...
Jenny, the Doctor's daughter? She was dead and came back to life.
Ah, excellent point but then there are a few possible get-out-of-jail-free cards, like her machine-created-warrior DNA or her absorbing-of-the-magic-terraforming-energy or it not-being-a-proper-regeneration-cos-she-didn't-change-appearance or, of course, maybe the Doctor just not giving a •••• about his daughter enough to bother to check her pulse properly.
....or, of course, maybe the Doctor just not giving a •••• about his daughter enough to bother to check her pulse properly.
Martha was there, and she is a proper medical student, I'm sure SHE would have checked for a pulse. Or any sign of life she could think of.
Maybe Martha is a rubbish doctor because UNIT rushed her through her medical training cos they were, unbelievable as it may seem, so desperate to employ her...? OK, probably not rubbish enough to miss a pulse. But still, it's not like the Doctor told her ANYTHING about Time Lord biology if he could avoid it, he almost certainly wouldn't have mentioned that Time Lord hearts-suspension trick that Romana pulled in Destiny and that Jenny might have gone into through sheer shock.
Moffat and Gatiss' reactions to the Ruth Doctor:
https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-02-19/doctor-who-jo-martin-canon-steven-moffat-mark-gatiss/
Hmm. I'd rather take my cue from people who DO give a flying monkey’s about canon. And who don't insist that there's nothing contradicting that 'half-human' abomination.
Have just cut the poitless waffle about Lesser Programmes.
Which is annoying as it ensured that Ruth!Doc wiped the floor with McGann, Nitcentral-post-wise, but never mind, I'm sure our Grand Finale will give us plenty more Ruth!y goodness...
(At least, it had damned well BETTER.)
The Doctor Who Club of Victoria's Sonic Screwdriver comments on Ruth: Oh for God's sake! Ruth is NOT "Troughtwee"!
quote:
The Season 6B theory is a fan-contrived myth - devised by fanboys Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping for their book The Discontinuity Guide in the 1990s - presumably after they'd had an alcoholic bender! The fact Terrance Dicks ran with the idea in his books doesn't mean it has any credibility - nor that it ties down the Ruth Doctor into the mythical "gap" between the Second and Third Doctors!
And they're right.
The Ruth Doctor cannot exist in the Classic line-up, no matter what Chib-Face and his "writers" want us to think.
We shall see.
Hopefully in TWO DAYS TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, we will.
You know what REALLY hurts? I'm a continuity-freak but I still welcomed Ruth into my life with open arms. A mysterious new utterly-unexpected kick-arse Doctor! A BLACK FEMALE mysterious new utterly-unexpected kick-arse Doctor! Without any stupid he-doesn't-CALL-himself-the-Doctor-so-he-doesn't-count John Hurt kinda NONSENSE.
And now I feel my generosity has been abused and I'm expected to welcome - dozens? MILLIONS?? - of new Doctors (who may or may not call themselves 'Doctor') into my life. It was confusing enough being in love with one person who's also thirteen - um, fourteen, no fifteen, oh sod this for a game of soldiers - people, at least one of whom I heartily loathe. Not being polyamorous/a schizophrenic/a paedophile I'm really struggling to love all those stupid sit-around-and-get-tortured-to-death kiddies.
I'm also feeling cheated that JODIE! isn't our first female Doctor and Ruth isn't our first black Doctor after all.
I mean, I'll cope, I may even grow to love the idea, or at least relish the millions of new continuity arguments it spawns, but at the moment...dammit is JODIE! even entitled to her capitalisation any more?
Wait until the story is actually concluded before making any decisions.
JODIE! the 47th female Doctor.
JODIE! the 128th blonde Doctor.
JODIE! the 1,099th blue-eyed Doctor.
JODIE! the 2,304th white Doctor.
JODIE! the..........
Sydney Wade for Doctor!
Sydney who??
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3041653/
She was "the little (blonde) girl" in The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon and seems to be quite a hottie now.
Wait until the story is actually concluded before making any decisions.
Yeah, like THAT'S gonna happen.
What's really annoying me TODAY is - I could accept all those white male Doctors. He was born a white male, fair enough that he and presumably most Time Lords stick to a template, alright so it's rather surprising, in view of all those last-minute-emergency-regenerations, that something doesn't go hideously wrong (and by 'wrong' I of course mean RIGHT, as in a gender-upgrade) a lot sooner DAMMIT, but now we discover the earliest Doctor this universe has known is a BLACK FEMALE CHILD. How the hell did she get in that hideous rut of white maleness? And I'm not just talking Hartnell-to-Capaldi but all those bloody Morbius faces who presumably immediately preceded Hartnell...(Speaking of which, someone on Gallifrey Base thought Chibbers should have stuck in RTG, JNT etc faces into that particular flashback, would've been SO brilliantly blasphemous...)
Sydney Wade for Doctor!
She was "the little (blonde) girl" in The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon
You...want one of the Doctors to look identical to one of the Doctor's future WIVES?
Isn't the Whoniverse screwed-up enough ALREADY?
The 'rut' could purely be a result of what happened after being reset to baby Hartnell: the Doctor grows up in a society that is, at that time, largely white-male dominated. Whether this is because of prejudices, or because fashions change and being white and male was in vogue this millennium, who knows. After that, you hang around 20th century Earth (and mainly England) long enough... well it becomes a habit.
That's my tongue-in-cheek theory, anyway
Isn't the Whoniverse screwed-up enough ALREADY?
Understatement of the Millennium.
Isn't the Whoniverse screwed-up enough ALREADY?
Lord bless you Emily.
Isn't the Whoniverse screwed-up enough ALREADY?
Understatement of the Millennium.
We love it this way! Nitcentral would never have lasted over-twenty-one-years if everything had been as logical as a Cyberman...
(Well, as logical as a Cyberman is SUPPOSED to be when they're not sneering at our stupid Earth brains or wreaking an emotional vengeance on the universe or dressing up in fashionable Time Lord collars...)
It's only just occurred to me.
It's not just thirteen (fourteen. Oh, whatever) Doctors who've singularly failed to whisk me off round time and space in favour of the likes of Adric and Mel.
It's MILLIONS of the gits.
Another reason for a future Producer to dispense with this rubbish.
OK, you know I love Ruth, right? Automatically considerably more than Colin, Hurt and Davison, almost certainly edges out Hartnell and very probably Pertwee as well...maybe even Capaldi who I can only adore if he's being tortured for four-and-a-half billion years, dammit what's WRONG with me...anyway, she was utterly Doctorish despite her homicidal ways and definitely wins the Best Costume (Joint With Tom Obviously) Prize hands-down and GODS the revelation of her will stay with me forever and be worth anything, even the hideous news that I've suddenly gotta be in love with a bunch of KIDS (I could possibly have taken it if said kids were behaving exactly like Doctors, only in miniature - come to think of it, wouldn't that be FANTASTIC - but all kiddie-Doctors do is cry in a barn or sit on a chair waiting to be murdered over and over again, what's the MATTER with them!)...Anyway, this is a really long-winded way of saying she's terrific in person (unless you're a Judoon) but a bit of a let-down when, y'know, she appears in JODIE!'s head to give her a bit of a pep-talk. Ruth struck me as an action rather than a pep-talk kinda person.
Though obviously The Timeless Children still makes a better Two Doctors story than the actual Two Doctors.
DOCTOR: Where do you fit into all this? Were you me all that time ago? Were all my memories of you erased? Did they force me back into becoming a child? How many more of me are out there?
RUTH: I don't have those answers. But say I did, would they even help? - Surely she can at least remember how many lives SHE'D lived? Surely it was just the LAST pre-Hartnell Doc who got wiped and forcibly-regenerated into a baby?
OK, you know I love JODIE!, right? This year has totally cemented her position as my Fourth-Favourite Doctor. But...did anyone else feel a sneaking, momentary desire for RUTH to be the one to stride out of that Matrix? (To collapse on the floor after getting out of the Matrix. Whatever.)
Well, that never occured to me, but it would have been a very interesting plot twist. Would also have loved to have seen the Master's reaction to that one. 
I don't think he'd've dared to call Ruth 'dear' the way he did JODIE!...
I'd pay good money to watch what would happen if he did.
Probably would have taken a leaf out of the Rani's book, and dealt with him Mark of the Rani style!
dealt with him Mark of the Rani style!
And for male pride reasons, the men writing the original DW novels desperately claimed that the vulnerable spot for a Time Lord was the shoulder not the testicles!
Elsewhere I wrote:
Believe me, I would love to discount Ruth and those thousand/million others.
To which Emily replied:
Darling Ruth! Of course you don't MEAN it!
I have no issue with the character in of herself, it's what came with her.
There were NO Doctors before Hartnell!
Well there are now.
The BBC have seen fit to decree that we are to refer to Ruth as the Fugitive Doctor. Which is fine only Hartnell and Troughton were kinda the Fugitive Doctors too. (Mind you, thanks to the audios the Eighth Doctor who literally killed himself rather than fight in the War is now also a War Doctor.)
Which is fine only Hartnell and Troughton were kinda the Fugitive Doctors too.
Yeah, but they never had the Judoons coming after them.
They might have had Judoons (the plural of Judoon isn't just Judoon?) after them and dealt with the half-wits so easily that the BBC couldn't be bothered to film it...
Yeah, but they never had the Judoons coming after them.
Until they have Marshal Gerard coming after them, none of them are Fugitive Doctors.
Who?
Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard, played by Tommy Lee Jones in the 1993 movie The Fugitive. He is the man pursuing Dr. Richard Kimble, played by Harrison Ford, the titular Fugitive of the movie.
Oh gods, I SAW that thing last time my brother came to my mother's and INSISTED on watching whatever •••• was on TV instead of Fugitive OF THE JUDOON (he refuses to admit JODIE! is the Doctor cos she's a woman - can't WAIT for him to meet Ruth) OR Extremis (he's a Catholic so that was my OTHER suggestion, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the whole Doctor-having-sex-with-the-Pope thing?) but I intend to leverage the fact I sat through that sodding Fugitive thing last time (albeit whilst surfing the net and asking what were probably really annoying questions cos to be honest I couldn't tell the fugitive and the pursuer apart so it was really confusing, come to think of it maybe one of the reasons I fell so hard and so permanently for Who is the number of people who helpfully wear funny clothes/monster costumes to help with my face-blindness) to force him to watch MY choice of Fugitive the next time he turns up...
'Look at me. I know my own life. I'm Ruth Clayton. I am 44. I'm married. I'm a tour guide. And I am scared.' - OK, you do remember that, in point of fact, you're WIDOWED not married, the Judoon HAVE just helpfully played you a tape of your husband's execution...
Ruth hasn't thought of the lighthouse - her CHILDHOOD HOME - for years?
'I guess we all rebel against our parents. It's part of growing up, innit?' - alright, I know she's speaking from her fake-human-memories but still, it's an ironic line coming from a Timeless Child who just sat in that chair and let Mummy torture her/him to death a lot.
Why does Ruth take JODIE! with her aboard her TARDIS? Did she automatically, and rather Doctorishly, decide to replace the late unlamented Lee with a new Stray even if she didn't LIKE her?
Still not buying this rubbish Timeless Child thing.
How about you try WATCHING SEASON TWELVE to see if it grows on you...?
(Admittedly the Timeless Children aren't really growing on ME but Ruth is totally worth any godawful nonsense I have to put up with to get her, even the fact I wasted forty years of my life screaming THE MORBIUS FACES ARE MORBIUS'S FACES! at anyone who'd listen...)
As I said, I have no issue with the Ruth character in of herself. If she were a future incarnation, sometime after JODIE, that would be fine with me.
However, this whole Timeless Children rubbish spits on nearly sixty years of canon. That cannot stand.
It's Mikey Spock all over again. For those of you wondering what that is (yes, Emily, I'm looking at you, it's this creature:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Burnham
This thing spits on fifty years of Trek canon.
Bbcdoctorwho on Instagram posted a drawing of Martin with the comment, 'You're going to love this.'
For several minutes, I thought they were dropping a hint of her return. Then I realised it was just a quote from her first appearance.
But...she WILL return won't she? I couldn't stand it if we were lumbered with this Timeless Children nonsense FOREVER in exchange for only a few minutes of Ruth...I mean, Chibnall LOVES bringing people back even if they're bloody Tim Shaw...
January 26 2021 marks one year since we first met the Fugitive Doctor.
Yep. I watched it in Thailand on a four-day trip. No masks in sight when I went there; nobody not wearing a mask when I returned. So happy anniversary there too.
Our Fugitive Doctor wants to come back to us!
Well, of course she does, though I love the reason she gives for it:
'And you don't want to waste that costume. You know what I mean? That costume – it's a real waste of a costume because it's so swaggy, as they say. So I think that costume needs to get worn again by me.'
•••• right.
DARLING Fugitive Doctor!
'My earliest memory is using up all my mother's tin foil to make my cousin into a Dalek. And I said "I am the Doctor and you are a Dalek." She said I couldn't be the Doctor because Doctor Who was a man...'
It's like learning Capaldi's been a fan since 1963 - it just feels right. I'd love to see more of the Fugitive Doctor!
RUTH! RUTH! RUTH!
Glorious to see her again but my GOD she's almost as short-changed as McGann.*
First she's human then she's a Matrix projection now she's a reflection/flashback...
(I don't s'pose there's any point in asking why she's in her Gloucester Human costume when she defeats Swarm or, um, whatever-the-hell's going on there...?)
*Excluding the several billion McGann novels n'audios, obviously.
I thought what if Ruth isn’t regenerated from the Doctor, metacrisis, Jenny, or Donna, but rather Susan or even Ace?
No! She's THE DOCTOR!
The History of the Timeless Child:
https://www.doctorwho.tv/news/?article=history-of-the-timeless-child&fbclid=IwAR1GZRo3XJSxchS5JW2EW-jAkmbZnus6SWxQowHngsNc0QFeUcmjKvtOlQM&cm_mmc=ExactTarget-_-email-_-DW181_Newsletter_03032022-_-email&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=DW181_Newsletter_03032022
'Smashing through the Time Vortex into the pocket universe where Gallifrey hides'
Um, hadn't it left the pocket universe and decided to lurk at the end of time instead?
'As she and the TARDIS mourned'
The TARDIS mourned?!
DWM: 'The rehearsal script for The Power of the Daleks makes it clear the character had changed many times previously and had always fought against it. At one point he produces a bracelet and states, "I was wearing this the last time I was renewed."' - !!!!!
Jo Martin in Batman Begins:
https://tinyurl.com/jyuxtx25
Jo Martin in DWM: 'I've been crying since I got the job. I can't even find words some days. I'm still pinching myself...I always dreamt about getting a guest appearance. I didn't care what it was. I'd pretend to be a Dalek - although I'm a bit tall for a Dalek...I just wanted to get a piece of Doctor Who' - gods can you IMAGINE just BECOMING THE DOCTOR OUT OF THE BLUE when you didn't even know that's what you were auditioning for...
And gods, can you imagine being her also-rabid-Who-Fan SON finding out Mummy Is The Doctor!!!!!!!!!!!!!! while watching Fugitive...
'I was like, "I'm saying that to Jodie? I'm kicking her off my TARDIS? Are you for real?"' - BLESS!
'When I got in that TARDIS I was just pressing, spinning, turning every gadget. Some good advice from continuity was: don't press too many buttons because you have to remember how to recreate it in every shot. But I couldn't stop myself!' - awwww!
'Isn't Ruth lovely? She's such a warm, cheerful, happy-go-lucky lady, living her suburban life with a lovely husband who gets blown up, bless him' - tee hee.
And she has such excellent taste in Doctors. ('I'm already married; I mustn't try to marry Jodie' 'I would lose the power of speech if I met Tom Baker. I think I'd just be curtseying'.)
Her costume designer says that 'Ruth the tour guide wears ordinary gold hoops...but I found a pair of hoops that looked more otherworldly for her to wear as he Doctor...they feel a little bit more Gallifreyan than ordinary hoops. I don't think anybody's noticed' - I BET they haven't...
The Giggle:
'Donna, I'm a billion years old' - I was just thinking that's either a gross overestimation or a gross underestimation, depending on how much of Heaven Sent he remembers when I realised TIMELESS CHILD REFERENCE ALERT!
Though I'm not sure how seriously we should be taking this estimate, given that a) the fobwatch is still lurking in Sexy's innards and b) one minute Tennant's saying it'll take him a million years to get over the demise of the universe (half the universe. Oh, whatever.) and the next he's saying he's never been so happy...
Also, if there are a billion years of pre-Hartnell Doctors running around we REALLY should have bumped into some of 'em sooner...
Explain the billion years to me again? If he's a billion years old, because the Time Lords trapped him for that long, then they're a billion years old or more themselves, which is not a number that was ever stated before, was it? In his trial, the Sixth Doctor accuses them of just 'ten million years of absolute power'.
Never believe a word anyone says in Trial of a Time Lord! RASSILON says 'A billion years of Time Lord history riding on our backs' in End of Time...which come to think of it is exactly where Tennant got THAT figure from.
'ten million years of absolute power'
So for 990 million years they had less than absolute power.
;-)
Well, unless everyone's using the OLD British definition of a billion, which is a million million....
Of course, the idea of these half-wit chauvinistic losers enjoying FIVE MINUTES of absolute power is ridiculous when you think about it.
Chibnall re the Timeless Children in DWM: 'I wanted to dispel the sense that there was a locked-in fixed myth...to create the sense that there could be as many Doctors as you want. You can tell stories on a much bigger canvas. Some of the inspiration for this was personal, because it's an adoption myth and I was adopted. The thing about where you're from versus who you are...that's really personal to me, but I also think it's built in to Doctor Who.'
I didn't know he was adopted!
Chibnall - Some of the inspiration for this was personal, because it's an adoption myth and I was adopted.
How many times did his adopted mother try to kill him and why was she so bad at it?
Good point, I'm now picturing the guy's poor parents' faces when they see THAT after being told their darling son will be exploring his adoption-experiences on-screen...
"'I wanted to dispel the sense that there was a locked-in fixed myth."
That tells me he was absolutely the WRONG person to be put in charge. RESPECT the 'locked-in fixed myth'! RESPECT what came before YOU! RESPECT Lambert, Wiles, Lloyd, Bryant, Sherwin, Letts, Williams, Nathan-Turner, Davies and Moffatt! YOU have a job because of THEM! You didn't need to tinker with the mythos because NOBODY was asking for it!
"...to create the sense that there could be as many Doctors as you want."
Again, WHY?! FOURTEEN people aren't enough for you?!
"You can tell stories on a much bigger canvas."
Again, WHY?! You already had the biggest canvas in existence-- to quote the Eleventh Doctor; "All of time and space. Everything that ever was or ever will be." The only difference being instead of the Fourth or Seventh Doctor, you would have some imposter saying "I'm the Doctor" or have a flashback of some unknown person or kid and we're just supposed to accept it.
Nope. Not gonna.
And now it won't matter, since RTD won't touch the subject with any detail one way or another.
Fair points all of 'em, though let's just wait and see what RTG will do...