Series 7, Episode 13 - "The Name of the Doctor" - No Spoilers until episode airs plz!

Doctor DooM

So... has anyone else realised Clara knows the Doctors name now?

Not only would she have remembered from the reawoken memories, but she would have heard River saying it.

Jelle1880

Doctor DooM wrote: »

So... has anyone else realised Clara knows the Doctors name now?

Not only would she have remembered from the reawoken memories, but she would have heard River saying it.

When would she have heard River say it ?

As far as I remember River only ever mentioned it twice, and one of those times was when she lied about it in The Wedding of River Song.

If Clara does know then she would have gotten it from the book in the Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS episode, but it's revealed now that that Clara is just one of many versions and since that timeline was changed again the memories are lost.

All mighty confusing

coffee_cake

River ... oh you mean the mental link. She was too busy being attacked though, I doubt she would have heard her say it, nobody did

CastorTroy

In the prequel she said she found out the name on Trenzalore

McLoughlin

Loved the intro hopefully it could lead to more of that seeing more of that even older characters. The ending very 7th Doctor/Cartmel Masterplan esque. Fantastic.

brianon

Not Season 7 related but do we know if Matt Smith & Jenna-Louise Coleman are in for Season 8 (not counting the 23rd November special) ?

Professey Chin

brianon wrote: »

Not Season 7 related but do we know if Matt Smith & Jenna-Louise Coleman are in for Season 8 (not counting the 23rd November special) ?

Yep. Both there

mariebeth

First time poster. Really loved that episode. The doctor saying goodbye to River had me in tears.

The thing I don't understand is why Clara only met 11 doctors in the timeline? I gathered that the timeline was the timeline of the doctor when he finally dies, not the current doctors timeline. Could the lack of future doctors mean that Smith could be the last or am I missing something else that is completely obvious?

McLoughlin

mariebeth wrote: »

First time poster. Really loved that episode. The doctor saying goodbye to River had me in tears.

The thing I don't understand is why Clara only met 11 doctors in the timeline? I gathered that the timeline was the timeline of the doctor when he finally dies, not the current doctors timeline. Could the lack of future doctors mean that Smith could be the last or am I missing something else that is completely obvious?

The Great Intelligence entered the Doctors timeline and killed him a 1000 times over up to that point in his life (The 11th Incarnation) and Clara entered the timeline to save all previous Doctors (though I didn't see the 8th)

Doctor DooM

Jelle1880 wrote: »

When would she have heard River say it ?

As far as I remember River only ever mentioned it twice, and one of those times was when she lied about it in The Wedding of River Song.

If Clara does know then she would have gotten it from the book in the Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS episode, but it's revealed now that that Clara is just one of many versions and since that timeline was changed again the memories are lost.

All mighty confusing

River said the name when the companions were being threatened by the whisper dudes. We didn't hear it- but Clara did.

Further to that, she knew anyway, because she remembered all she'd learned in Journey to the Centre of the Tardis.

bluewolf wrote: »

River ... oh you mean the mental link. She was too busy being attacked though, I doubt she would have heard her say it, nobody did

Perhaps, but as above- she remembered it anyway!

pixelburp

Oh my, what an ending, thoroughly epic. I'm not even sure where to begin processing all that.
John Hurt as The Doctor? Oh lordy November can't come soon enough

My contribution to the theorising? He's a very old version of Doctor #8. iirc regenerations can age naturally - afterall #1 was an old man when he left Gallifrey - so it follows that Hurt could be playing an aged version of the McGann Doctor. That way it doesn't contradict all the 8th Doctor adventures, both written and audioplays, and it also avoids stepping on the toes of what number this Doc could be.

Another theory - Hurt is the Valyard. The Great Intelligence did name-check the guy, so it's acknowledged that version of the Doctor still exists. In fact it's more surprising that character wasn't mentioned earlier, given how often the new series has presented the Doctor as an anti-hero, and someone who lives very close to the dark.

As for the points being made about Clara not seeing future Doctors - well of course she didn't, those Doctors haven't been cast yet There's no way Moffat is that daft that he would have shown a bunch of extra silhouettes and plunge the show into a deeper mythological quagmire. Any future producers would not thank him to know they're restricted into casting a new Doc to match a fleeting glance from this episode.

On those sequences - I loved the little cameos by the older Docs - but did anyone else think the FX used to composite Clara into the various scenes was fairly awful? Particularly the Tom Baker cameo, it looked like something from the 70s using the old yellowscreen CSO technique. Maybe that was the point, cos it looked pretty bloody ropey. Either way though, those little moments just makes me sad we'll never get to see a 'proper' cross-Doctor story featuring the Classic series' Docs.

And in the middle of all these revelations we forget that River may still be alive. She does point out that when Clara disappears her hologram persists ergo she must still exist in some way, shape or form; spoilers indeed! I know River is hated quite a bit among some fans, but for me it was nice that her & The Doc for once got to be genuinely tender with each other. I always thought their interactions had a believable spark, and were those of equals, making the romance seem more realistic (as opposed to #9/#10 with Rose)

Further questions though - why did The Silence want / not want the Doctor to go to Trenzalore in the first place; where have they disappeared to? I kinda agree with the point above that Moffat is creating more new threads & arcs than he is closing off the existing ones (edit: I also recall Dorian talking about "the fall of the 11th", which didn't seem to occur / have any relevance in the end. Man, sometimes this loose approach to mythology gets annoying )

Doctor DooM

pixelburp wrote: »

Further questions though - why did The Silence want / not want the Doctor to go to Trenzalore in the first place; where have they disappeared to? I kinda agree with the point above that Moffat is creating more new threads & arcs than he is closing off the existing ones (edit: I also recall Dorian talking about "the fall of the 11th", which didn't seem to occur / have any relevance in the end. Man, sometimes this loose approach to mythology gets annoying )

I think we're missing the point- obviously the Doctor DOES fall at Trenzalore, as the Silence say- but when we visit it with the Doctor this time, that's already happened and he's brown bread. This aint the trip they were talking about.

mariebeth

McLoughlin wrote: »

The Great Intelligence entered the Doctors timeline and killed him a 1000 times over up to that point in his life (The 11th Incarnation) and Clara entered the timeline to save all previous Doctors (though I didn't see the 8th)

Thanks for that, it makes a lot more sense now.

martingriff

Just wondering is the John Hurt the Doctor before he became the Doctor when he made the decision to end the Time War. When the Doctor says yes you had no choice but it was not the doctors way e.g. you did not give them a choice before doing what he did. I always thought it would be interesting if they did a series about the Great War and how it ended

pixelburp

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I think we're missing the point- obviously the Doctor DOES fall at Trenzalore, as the Silence say- but when we visit it with the Doctor this time, that's already happened and he's brown bread. This aint the trip they were talking about.

Perhaps, but given series 6's primary arc was based around the The Silence & preventing the answer to the First Question, it felt like a bit of a cheat that having reached Trenzalore we wouldn't get some closure on that front; that they might have featured in some way, rather than what seemed to be fairly interchangeable Monsters of the Week. Then again, I guess The Doctor's interference with The Silence's control of Earth might mean they became irrelevant in the grand scheme.

martingriff wrote: »

Just wondering is the John Hurt the Doctor before he became the Doctor when he made the decision to end the Time War. When the Doctor says yes you had no choice but it was not the doctors way e.g. you did not give them a choice before doing what he did. I always thought it would be interesting if they did a series about the Great War and how it ended

No way of knowing 'til November 23rd, all we can do is speculate! If Hurt's Doctor does tie into the Time War somehow - and atm it seems like the most obvious guess - it could be a nice way to wash away the stain that was End of Time & give the Time War a proper rounding off. And if a narrative reset was hit to revert the events of that execrable Tennant finale, all the better!

martingriff

pixelburp wrote: »

No way of knowing 'til November 23rd, all we can do is speculate! If Hurt's Doctor does tie into the Time War somehow - and atm it seems like the most obvious guess - it could be a nice way to wash away the stain that was End of Time & give the Time War a proper rounding off. And if a narrative reset was hit to revert the events of that execrable Tennant finale, all the better!

Hope its not a reboot

brianon

martingriff wrote: »

Hope its not a reboot

Oh please god no. Too much invested (emotionally)

Doctor DooM

Sooooo... see you all in November?

stevenmu

martingriff wrote: »

Hope its not a reboot

How about a spin-off; John Hurt stars in "The Time War".

Sleepy

With such a big name as the Doctor and such a big piece of the untold mythos to tell, have they finally found the way to do an insanely profitable Who movie?

BuffyBot

Watched it again last night and it all made a little more sense.

The whole River Song thing just felt wedged in for the sake of it. I'm pretty much over her now (I always found her quite annoying) and really hope that's the end.

Made me want to speed through to November all the more however.

psicic

stevenmu wrote: »

How about a spin-off; John Hurt stars in "The Time War".

I would watch that!

I would be in Who-heaven if they tossed in Baker and McCoy and some of the other doctors as some sort of 'trigger' Hurt-Who uses to create the Paradox needed to seal Gallifrey and the time-war.

Also looking forward to a Who that doesn't look like he'll go 'wibbly-wobbly-wibbily' while prancing around in skinny jeans, whip out a sonic screwdriver and then have all the answers. (That's a bit harsh - Smith-Who was a great change, and overall I've enjoyed, but he has has gotten extra childish ala 'boy and his blue box' without - until now - a huge amount of depth development. Compare to McCoy-Who, who seemed to me to get more and more sinister and 'alien' as that season progressed)

Also, I enjoyed Dalton-Rassilon in 'The End of Time' - he is the big bad as far as Time Lords go and the bombastic leader kind of suited that image... I, for one, would welcome a return of bombastic Dalton-Rassilon in what I can only hope will be more than a one-off, trapped in the Doctor's own memory, single episode.

campo

Is it possible that John Hurt is

The Valeyard reason I say this is because The Valeyard was, according toThe Master "an amalgamation of the darker side of the Doctor's nature". In one account, the Master stated, "The Valeyard, Doctor, is your penultimate reincarnation... Somewhere between your twelfth and thirteenth regeneration, but Matt Smith is the 11th Doctor right...Well we forget that David Tenant regenerated we shot by a Dalek but he stayed as David Tennant so could this make Matt Smith actually the 12th Doctor....

Tzar Chasm

I have an importantish question

does Clara now remember all of her lives chasing the doctor, it looked like she had lived full lives in most of those situations before she caught up to the doctor, so if she remembers thm all, say 1000 lives, although its probably closer to a million, at an average of 28 years puts her at a minimum 3000 times older than the doctor, with knowledge an memories of all those lives, all the way from the big bang to the death of the universe, what sort of knowledge will she have, she has lived on gallifrey so she has at least had a time lords education, if not actually been'born'a time lord at some point, so sonic tech should be easy, amy built a sonic'screwdriver could' clara 2.0 build her own time machine, presumably she has lived a human life where time travel was taught ih school, much like we learn about the steam engine.

tl dr
clara could well become the most important character in the whooniverse, the doctor has visited millions of strange worlds, clara has lived entire lives in them.

Tzar Chasm

hang on had an even'crazier thought.

clara has lived in all of time and space, sort of in relative dimensions, see where i'm going here, she appeared in gallifrey and invited him to steal a particular blue box, maybe there is no cannon issue there, she has travelled everywhere with the doctor, guiding his actions and repeatedly saving his life without him fully realizing how important she is to him.

well, is this off the wall, or on the ball

Garseys

campo wrote: »

Is it possible that John Hurt is...

Could be possible

The Great Intelligence mentioned the Valeyard discussing his names before the doctors death

I'm glad though that canon hasn't been ignored by Moffat.

Interrobang

bradyle wrote: »

Is John Hurt the valeyard...but it says the Doctor

I would LOVE if this were the case. The Valeyard is such a great idea, but it was poorly realised and I'd love to see it done justice. I had a mini nerdgasm when The Great Intelligence mentioned him in this episode. It would fit the notion that he is The Doctor but has not done things in his name but under another name. Yeah, I know I'm reaching, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed. I had high hopes when Hurt let slip that

his character is 'part of the Doctor', which would fit with The Valeyard... but then he went and dashed my hopes by saying that he is part of a trinity with Tennant and Smith, which would only fit The Valeyard if the Doctors were renumbered. http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/john-hurt/25560/doctor-who-john-hurt-teases-50th-anniversary-role

Probably more likely is the widespread rumour that he's

the Ninth Doctor, but since this comes from an unnamed Sun source I'm :rolleyes: until I see it: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/4921644/doctor-who-50th-anniversary-special-spoilers.html

BaconZombie

I don't see the issue with other people start the thread.

Cosmic Maybe wrote: »

Sorry I couldn't resist I've just realised that I may have disrupted the space time continuum and untold chaos will now ensue Oh well, once I get to see Saturday's episode everything will be grand :rolleyes:

They would have to know they were going to play an extra clip after the shop months in advance since it's all scheduled ages in advance.

Chinpool wrote: »

From the Dr Who twitter

Interrobang

Useful summary of most of the speculation arising from the episode: http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/doctor-who/25687/the-big-questions-from-doctor-who-the-name-of-the-doctor

pixelburp

Nice article that sums up the possibilities, though I do like it's accompanying images, particularly this one for highlighting a definite truth