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There's a pretty easy way to retcon The Timeless Child with the Toymaker. Everything we saw was real. There was a kid from another dimension with regeneration power. Tecteun gave it to the Gallifreyans. That kid became The Doctor, was in a police box TARDIS and travelled time and space on secret missions for the Time Lords over hundreds of regenerations, including one as Fugitive Doctor. Then they died. A Time Lord kid is Nobody in current Time Lord society gets the connection because the existence of the Timeless Doctor was so secret. It basically is the story of The Other from the NAs where he jumped in the Looms and was reincarnated hundreds of milennia later as William Hartnell with the same attitude but no memories of living in Rassilonian times. The Toymaker comes in and tells the Master a bullshit version where the Doctor he knows is LITERALLY the Timeless Doctor and wasn't actually born on Gallifrey and breaks the Master's brain. With this we get Chibnall's story and Jo Martin not being decanonized, but we also get Hartnell still being fully Gallifreyan, just another randoid Time Lord who decided to rebel.
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Dec 20, 2023 04:21
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 10:50 |
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Chi Ball is easily the most powerful writer in doctor who and all he had to do is write the worst dw story ever told.
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Dec 20, 2023 05:09
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Say what you will about the movie but god I love the vibes when he's sitting in his armchair reading a book and having a cuppa in that cozy TARDIS interior while the ship hums its way along its flight.
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Dec 20, 2023 05:17
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*Arrives in America* *Is promptly shot to death seconds after stepping outside the TARDIS*
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Dec 20, 2023 05:28
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Astroman posted:There's a pretty easy way to retcon The Timeless Child with the Toymaker. I really don't like this idea at all, it smacks far too much of THE LOOMS which was an idea I disliked from the first time heard of it. Nothing at all against you, of course, trying to deal with the Timeless Child is a fool's errand because it's such a terrible idea that basically the only one who has been able to make anything salvageable from it at all is RTD with a couple of carefully chosen lines, and he's basically the giant Welsh savior of Doctor Who! I'm sure if I tried to write down an idea to make sense of the disconnect between the Timeless Child and well... literally every other second of Doctor Who ever made.... anything I came up with would be terrible and disliked by most too. That's why we're not writers on Doctor Who. It's also why writers on Doctor Who, such as Chris Chibnall, should get rapped on the knuckles when they decide,"It's me, I'M the one who is going to "solve" this "problem" of <thing that really doesn't relate or matter to the Doctor as a character in the first place>" Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 06:01
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Loom fans > Womb fans
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Dec 20, 2023 06:08
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Infinitum posted:*Arrives in America* The tv movie really was ahead of it’s time
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Dec 20, 2023 06:40
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Big Mean Jerk posted:The tv movie really was ahead of it’s time To be fair, the lovely healthcare he got killed him more than- oh, right
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Dec 20, 2023 07:49
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Is anyone else fixated on the "he's not a myth, he's an actual thing!" line from the Goblin song? Really shouldn't have scattered salt at the edge of the universe, I guess.
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Dec 20, 2023 08:01
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Open Source Idiom posted:tbh I assume they'd have mostly been purged under Rassilon. Nah. He needed them during the war and he got defanged after The End of Time. He was pretty pathetic in Hell Bent. I don't think he had the leeway to start purging anyone.
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Dec 20, 2023 08:49
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CapnAndy posted:Is anyone else fixated on the "he's not a myth, he's an actual thing!" line from the Goblin song? There's an odd line about coincidences in the preview as well. I definitely think this is relevant. Things are getting, well, Myffic.
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Dec 20, 2023 10:17
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CapnAndy posted:Really shouldn't have scattered salt at the edge of the universe, I guess. I'm gonna be honest, I don't really understand why he did it in the first place. Like, I get that he was invoking a superstition about vampires, but... uhm, why? Why did he think to do that, and why did it work?
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Dec 20, 2023 10:32
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Cleretic posted:I'm gonna be honest, I don't really understand why he did it in the first place. Like, I get that he was invoking a superstition about vampires, but... uhm, why? Why did he think to do that, and why did it work? The not-things were still evolving and learning there own limitations, and they hadn't fully cloned either mind yet, so by invoking a real superstition he was able to keep them at bay. They weren't developed enough to know he was bluffing that it would harm them, and because it's a real superstition they had enough knowledge of it in their developing minds for the seed of doubt to be planted.
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Dec 20, 2023 10:34
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Cleretic posted:I'm gonna be honest, I don't really understand why he did it in the first place. Like, I get that he was invoking a superstition about vampires, but... uhm, why? Why did he think to do that, and why did it work? They are somewhat ill-formed not-beings whose only understanding of the universe is through the things they absorb from others (REALLY not unlike the Midnight creature as has been remarked). So I think the thinking was to trap them inside a narrative, a way of being, and frame them as explicitly boogeymen affected by anti-boogeymen actions. It made sense to me!
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Dec 20, 2023 10:36
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CapnAndy posted:Is anyone else fixated on the "he's not a myth, he's an actual thing!" line from the Goblin song? On the one hand, I loving love that line. On the other hand, why is that line in a goblin song for goblins? Do goblins not know about the Goblin King?
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Dec 20, 2023 11:02
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Captain France posted:On the one hand, I loving love that line. Until the event with the salt he was just a fable, a religious figure to the Goblins, and then one day he was just there, made flesh, and the Goblins both knew he had always been and never was.
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Dec 20, 2023 11:10
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Astroman posted:There's a pretty easy way to retcon The Timeless Child with the Toymaker. Nope, hate it. The whole point of the Doctor (imo) is that they choose to be who they are and what they do. They grow over time and become themselves, so being overwritten by some ancient space person wrecks that whole theme entirely. Their not being Gallifreyan isn't actually much of an issue, it's that by not being so they're special by birth. I feel like you're getting too hung up on the mechanics here, they're not actually the problem
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Dec 20, 2023 11:28
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Make it so it turns out nobody's quite sure if it's the Doctor or the Master who was the Timeless Child, and then never answer.
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Dec 20, 2023 11:32
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My preference for The Timeless Child is that it's never mentioned again. Just leave it in the history bin. The Toymaker made enough of an allusion to him meddling in the Doctor's past, and then immediately mentioned interacting with The Master, that I can head cannon it as being nonsense, and if anyone liked it they can head cannon it as being correct. No need to address it ever again. Sadly, the one thing we know about Ruby Sunday is that she's an orphan who doesn't know her parents, so thematically at least it seems like Russel thinks there something their to mine.
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Dec 20, 2023 11:36
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Rassilon: There was this weird kid, kind of An Ungallifreyly Child. Doctor walks away whistling nervously This would also be a terrible idea, by the way!  PriorMarcus posted:No need to address it ever again. 
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Dec 20, 2023 11:39
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I've figured out how to make the Toymaker's line make the Timeless Child work: It's canon. But so are the Looms. And the Other. And the Doctor being half-human. And the Morbius Doctors. The Toymaker doesn't do things by half-measures; if he's going to 'turn someone's past into a jigsaw puzzle' he ain't gonna make it some lame 250-piecer with clear edge pieces.
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Dec 20, 2023 11:39
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Cleretic posted:I've figured out how to make the Toymaker's line make the Timeless Child work: It's canon. These were already consistent tho The harder one to make work is Sky Pirates! Adder Moray posted:Nah. He needed them during the war and he got defanged after The End of Time. He was pretty pathetic in Hell Bent. I don't think he had the leeway to start purging anyone. I doubt he lost that much power given that he was still in charge. tbh I imagine that Timelord society turned inwards and continued to kill its own people for a while before stabilising, regardless of who was in charge. They were all in on it, not just one or two bad dudes at the top of the pile -- though that they continued to stay at the top of the pile post-war suggests there wasn't that much of an overhaul of the status quo.
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Dec 20, 2023 11:41
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Barry Foster posted:Nope, hate it. This. It's also basically the problem with the Timeless Child in the first place. The Other works slightly better because there's no implication that the Doctor was inherently special just that they were smart and in the right place in history.
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Dec 20, 2023 12:12
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Five days left until the new Doctor's adventure... this'll be the best Christmas Walford's ever had!
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Dec 20, 2023 12:40
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Well it just wouldn't be Christmas without ol' Rusty's Doctor Who special!
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Dec 20, 2023 12:42
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Jerusalem posted:Well it just wouldn't be Christmas without ol' Rusty's Doctor Who special! This'll be my first time watching a Rusty Christmas Special as it airs (I came into the show with Eleventh Hour, so I had to go back and retroactively watch them) and I am kind of excited. Hoping for more Runaway Bride than Voyage of the Damned tho.
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Dec 20, 2023 12:48
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I visit with family at that time of year so I don't know if I'll get a chance to watch it live or even the day of, but I can't wait to see it, it's gonna be loving great.
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Dec 20, 2023 12:54
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Jerusalem posted:I visit with family at that time of year so I don't know if I'll get a chance to watch it live or even the day of, but I can't wait to see it, it's gonna be loving great. I visit family on Christmas Day as well… which makes the drive the best time to listen to The Chimes of Midnight again!
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Dec 20, 2023 13:00
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CobiWann posted:Five days left until the new Doctor's adventure... this'll be the best Christmas Walford's ever had! I dunno man, it depends for me very much on whether Big Ron or Mandy helps the Doctor.
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Dec 20, 2023 13:40
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Just for fun, I tried having a go writing out my understanding of the show and its backstory as it pertains to the history of the planet Gallifrey and all that jazz. It's just my stupid, overly complex take on things, so you might find it dumb or interesting, I dunno. Anyway, I spoilered it for length, but have a read if you want to. Or don't, it's all good. 1. Prehistory, also known as the Dark Times The universe exists, but not as we know it. A handful of Gallifreyans develop great and powerful technology to chart the universe, and in doing so they come into conflict with the ancient powers of the prehistorical universe. Rassilon, their charismatic but paranoid leader, forces the Gallifreyans into an arms race to develop new technologies and abilities, and thus secure their dominance over not just the universe, but the entirety of history. To this end he decides to develop the ultimate tool of control: time travel. During early experiments with time travel one of Rassilon's allies, Tecteun, finds and then experiments on a lost traveller from another universe. In the process she develops regeneration, and she provides Rassilon with this technology. He, in turn, Another ally, Omega, works to develop the Eye of Harmony, an artificial black hole that anchors the Web of Time and thus secures Timelord hegemony over all creation. Other forces agitate to stop this process, most notably a twisted form of cancerous space time that corrupts and spreads itself throughout the time vortex (AKA vampires). Rassilon defeats the leader of the great vampires by banishing them to another universe, but he fears the threat will return. Around the same time Omega finishes work on the Eye of Harmony, but in the process he also *mysteriously* finds himself trapped in another universe with no way to return. Seeing the writing on the wall Tecteun also flees Gallifrey and isolates herself in a space between the current universe and the next. 2. Pythian Gallifrey With the universe secured, and several threats to his power disposed of or (very) conveniently neutralised, Rassilon works to consolidate his power. Gallifrey becomes dedicated to the study of the time vortex, with the vow to never change history and only to observe it -- because to change it would be to threaten Gallifreyian control. For cases that require more active intervention Rassilon develops the Division, which is used to destablise emerging temporal threats. The Doctor stifled by Rassilon's Gallifrey, steals a TARDIS and runs off to explore the universe. However, for various reasons he still has strong roots on Gallifrey and frequently returns to the planet. Over several lifetimes he, and sometimes she, works for the Division and does their dirty work. The Doctor also becomes a hero to their own people, repelling an invasion by Omega from another universe, forging a peace between the Sontarans and the Rutans, and other great tasks. The Doctor eventually takes a wife, the woman who will one day be known as "Patience" (though this is not her name), and together they have several children. However, during this period Rassilon turns his paranoid eye inwards, and decides it's best to cement his internal legacy by establishing himself as a religious figure. He works to mythologise the founding of Gallifrey, and spins a yarn where he's the leader of a founding triumverate of timelords that include him, Omega and a third "Other" about who little information is known. This process is threatened by competing local religions, which he acts to banish. The most notable of these are the Sisters of the Sacred Flame, who under their leader Pythia operate with very real, very powerful magic -- so in order to destablise them he reshapes the Web of Time once again, erasing all magic from the universe. This, however, fails to completely erase the Pythians, and so he orders his followers to attack them, resulting in a civil war. Pythia uses whats left of her powers to curse the Timelords with sterility, though Rassilon counters this with the invention of genetic printers called "Looms". The Doctor and their wife secretly work to break the Curse of Pythia, and eventually find some success. In secret they give birth to a child, which they raise in secret. That child then gives birth to her own daughter, and that's when all hell breaks loose. Rassilon quickly discovers what "Patience" has achieved, and he quickly moves on the Doctor and his family, along with all other political rivals. "Patience" escapes in a damaged time machine, while the Doctor jumps into a genetic shredder in order to destroy all knowledge of her flight. Rassilon follows this with even more reprisals. In the process he develops the ultimate killing device, a machine so deadly and efficient that it reorganizes the Web of Time around the victim such that they never existed in the first place. When tinkering with the device he discovers that everything destroyed in this universe gets emptied out into yet another universe, but in the process he himself gets sucked into that dimension and gets trapped. In an even greater irony, the manner of his disappearance means that he's almost immediately forgotten, and only survives as a figure of myth. The Division maintains control over the device, calling it The Oubliette of Eternity, and they continue to use it without realizing just how broken it is... 3. The First Seven Doctors. The genetic waste that the Doctor was shredded into makes its way into the pool of biological waste that all new Loom born Timelords are generated from, and eventually a critical mass of that stuff is generated into a new Timelord. This Timelord goes through the Academy, naturally gravitating towards other Timelords with outsider temperaments. Then one day he snaps, realizing the extent of how decadent and perfidious the Timelords are, he travels into the planet's own past. There he meets Susan, and steals a TARDIS that he finds there (coincidentally the Doctor's previous TARDIS, encouraged to choose it in a predestination paradox prompted by an appearance of a woman from his own future) and flees the planet. The Timelords pursue them both, but they don't catch up to them until the events of The War Games. The Division, now calling itself The CIA, employs the Doctor in various different missions to maintain their transtemporal domination. One of these missions sees the Doctor go up against the Daleks, but instead of wiping them out in their cradle as he was charged he accidentally changes history such that their creator survives. Though he doesn't realise it yet, this choice will have serious consequences down the line. As the Doctor ages he becomes increasingly obsessed with big picture thinking, leading him to some very Rassilon like behaviour in his "Seventh" incarnation. He continues his war with the Daleks, wiping out their homeworld and largely eliminating their threat from the universe, though Davros remains a threat, and their access to time travel technology makes them hard to properly eliminate. The Doctor's interactions with Gallifrey, however, become less fraught. He installs several of his former companions in significant roles on the Capitol, notably his timelord companion Romana as Lord President, and through their efforts they're able to permanently break the Curse of Pythia. Life returns to the planet and all seems well. 4. The Eighth Doctor and the Time War Overconfident and lassez faire, the Eighth Doctor fucks everything up when he throws caution to the wind and meets Charley Pollard, a girl who history says should have died but the Doctor says should live. He saves her from dying in the destruction of the R101 airship and takes her travelling with him. However, everywhere they go the timeline gets torn to shreds, quickly earning the attention and the ire of his own people. However, a faction of diehard fanatics within the Timelords realise that Charley represents a possible opportunity: there are parallels between her and what happened to the great and powerful Rassilon centuries ago. They use this opportunity to access the pocket universe that Rassilon is trapped in and attempt o install him in power back on Gallifrey, however the Doctor quickly defeats the guy and chucks him in YET ANOTHER pocket universe. However, agents of Rassilon act to slowly destablise Romana's reign. Over this period Romana fights off several threats to her own sovereignty, but she becomes hard and cruel in the process -- particularly after she regenerates into her third incarnation. She drags Gallifrey into a Time War, which she badly loses, resulting in the destruction of the planet and the severing of the Web of Time. The following power vaccum results in the emergence of new temporal powers and -- more significantly -- the return of magic to the wider universe. The Doctor acts to repel the worst of these new threats, but the universe is fundamentally changed and history enters a state of flux. In an act of desperation the Doctor manages to restore Gallifrey, but in a far weakened state. Its own history is now vulnerable to attack in a way that it never was before, as insurgent forces prove when they retroactively wipe Romana's third presidency from the face of history. Facing threats from without and within, the universe falls to infighting on a scale not seen since Rassilon's prehistory. So of course someone has the bright idea to retrieve the guy from his own universe. He almost immediately consolidates power (which involves chucking Romana into... another universe) and reorganises the planet around the binding principle of being a fascist death cult. Thus we enter properly into The Last Great Time War, a period of conflict between the Timelords, the Daleks, and literally anyone else who wants to have a go. The Doctor attempts to stay out of the conflict but is slowly drawn into the action and eventually becomes so committed to the action that he begins to lose any sense of his own morality. Driven to the edge he puts a fundamental end to the conflict, but it leaves him damaged. 5. The New Series This mostly plays out as we saw. The Doctor recovers from his severe PTSD, fends off the reemergence of the Daleks and the Timelords, discovers her secret exploitation by the Timelords, finds Gallifrey, loses Gallifrey, all that good stuff.
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Dec 20, 2023 13:51
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Open Source Idiom posted:Just for fun, I tried having a go writing out my understanding of the show and its backstory as it pertains to the history of the planet Gallifrey and all that jazz. It's just my stupid, overly complex take on things, so you might find it dumb or interesting, I dunno. Anyway, I spoilered it for length, but have a read if you want to. Or don't, it's all good. This is all great, but it involved Time Lords other than the Doctor, who was just a random Gallifreyan become Time Lord washout who'd eventually see the rot in his society and escape with his biological granddaughter to see the universe.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:00
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Yeah, the story is very simple. - A Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey stole a TARDIS and took his granddaughter with him to go explore the universe. - He briefly stayed on Earth with his granddaughter Susan, and used the pseudonym Dr. John Smith. - Susan's teachers Ian and Barbara called him "Doctor" due to that pseudonym when they met him, and the name stuck. - The Doctor, initially arrogant and aloof regarding humans, comes to first respect, then value, then genuinely like Ian and Barbara, who in turn help sand off his rough edges. - By the time first Susan, then Ian and Barbara have left the TARDIS, the Doctor has both firmly adopted that title as his name as well as become a conscientious figure with a moral drive to help people thanks to Ian and Barbara's influence. For the next 60 years, we've seen that Doctor have multiple adventures, regenerate into new forms including becoming a woman and changing race, and it's been a wonderful adventure that I hope continues for many decades (and more) to come.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:28
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Warthur posted:Is shot to death by a Silurian but I can see why you would forget that, given that he then gets crackgobbled anyway which overshadows what the Silurian did. Movies and TV shows do this all the time and it drives me nuts - setting an arbitrarily short deadline on a thing then either going over that time limit or making characters do stuff stupidly quickly.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:32
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When I watched Independence Day as a kid I once put on a stopwatch at the end when they have to escape an explosion in 30 seconds, to see exactly how much longer than 30 seconds it actually was
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Dec 20, 2023 14:34
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Independence Day taught me a valuable message: If an outside force with a huge technological advantage comes to your home and does untold damage purely because they want to extract resources from your land, it is the right and moral thing to do to become a suicide bomber.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:46
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https://twitter.com/readonlymike/status/1737258648680710342?s=20
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Dec 20, 2023 15:02
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2house2fly posted:When I watched Independence Day as a kid I once put on a stopwatch at the end when they have to escape an explosion in 30 seconds, to see exactly how much longer than 30 seconds it actually was Those five minutes on Planet Namek did a lot of damage to a lot of nerdy kids.
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Dec 20, 2023 15:03
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hell yeah
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Dec 20, 2023 15:04
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Thread title material here.
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Dec 20, 2023 15:08
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 10:50 |
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Doctor Who Bi-Generated Thread: Grinning/Serious/Grinning Again
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