Friday 22 November 2013

Landmarks No.50


The Name of the Doctor.
Significant mostly for the appearance of the unknown Doctor in the closing seconds.
Also for that opening scene featuring the Doctor and Susan stealing the TARDIS from a workshop on Gallifrey.
The mystery of Clara is explained - and we get to see her encounter all of the Doctors.
The Doctor's final resting place is shown. Perhaps.
Old friends and a very old enemy meet up on Trenzalore.
With a day still to go until the screening of The Day of the Doctor, at the time of writing, we already know quite a bit about the mysterious Doctor. He's the "War Doctor" - born on Karn to take part in the Last Great Time War after the Eighth Doctor had long evaded it. He will go on to do something which is shameful enough for him to be suppressed. He doesn't deserve the title of  Doctor. I think we can all guess what that something was - if you take a Moment to think about it.
Clara enters the Doctor's time-stream and interacts with the Doctors - sometimes in known adventures and sometimes those unseen. With the First Doctor, she nudges him towards a particular TARDIS, one with a wonky navigation system. Susan is with him, and he appears exactly as he  was first seen in Totters Lane.
This sequence does seem to contradict what is said in The Doctor's Wife - but then again she may simply be pointing to the TARDIS that wants to "steal" the Doctor anyway.
Does Clara's intervention change the Doctor's time-stream, or was she there during all those adventures all along?
The Paternoster Gang are back. Jenny is the latest character to be killed and then be brought back to life - something Moffat does with tedious regularity.
We perhaps thought we might have seen the last of River Song for a while, after the departure of the Ponds. Here, we get a post Library non-corporeal version - though the Doctor still manages to snog her.
Was the Great Intelligence brought back just to be killed off, before we get to see new versions of the Yeti? I hope not.
It is unlikely that what we are seeing on Trenzalore really is the Doctor's final resting place. Clara only sees 11 incarnations (prior to the War Doctor) in his time-stream, and the TARDIS is clearly the current version. Seems this is only one possible final resting place.

So there you go. My 50 landmark Doctor Who stories. Not the best 50. Not my favourite 50. I said at the outset that they would be stories which have been significant in the great scheme of things -  that have developed the story of the Doctor and hence of the programme over the last half century. Here's to the next 50 landmarks. I sincerely hope that The Day of the Doctor will be No.51...

1 comment:

  1. This got me.
    John Hurt got me on Merlina s the dragon., And him playing the Doctor rock. WOW!

    ReplyDelete