< Doctor Who

Doctor Who/Headscratchers


Classic series and show in general

Doctor/Sarah Jane Romance?

  • Wait, The Doctor and Sarah Jane had a romantic relationship? Since when? (it also bugs me that Sarah doesn't mention that her doctor was a middle-aged man with an overly long scarf)
    • It was never actually said, but "School Reunion" implies that Sarah was in love with the Doctor, and Tom Baker and Lis Sladen both theorized that Sarah and the Doctor were "boinking all over the TARDIS," to put it one way. And Sarah had two Doctors, don't forget (and met One, Two, and Five).
      • They did?! When?
      • Not sure who the "they" you're referring to is, but if you mean Lis and Tom's theory, I don't remember exactly when but I think they were at least half-joking, and if you mean meeting One, Two, and Five, that was in "The Five Doctors."
      • And you'd be on pretty dangerous ground if you took everything Tom Baker says entirely at face value.
        • Especially on the subject of shipping - Tom Baker seems to be just a bit of an old perv, really.
      • Besides it wouldn't have to be overtly romantic to be very intense. Micky Smith was totally changed by his time with the Doctor (going from a Series One scene in which he yelled after a retreating Rose to go to the Doctor, since "it's always going to be the Doctor, it's never going to be me!", to an exchange in Series Two where he virtually reiterated his dialogue from the earlier conversation - only this time telling the Doctor to go after Rose, bitterly stating that "it's never going to be me, is it?") and he was straight and had all of two days actually traveling in the TARDIS.
        • Wait, I may be missing a scene here or something, but at no point during this episode do I remember a romantic relationship being outright stated... Sure, "you were my life" and "getting your heart broken" can be interpreted as romantic, but... we're not exactly talking about two normal people in a tv soap opera here. We're talking about people who travelled all of time and space together. That's got to broaden your interpretations of language a bit...
          • There aren't many other ways of interpreting it, and it does seem to be the writers' intention to claim they were in a relationship.
            • Jack Harkness would probably disagree with your saying "there aren't many other ways of interpreting" it. And there's at least ONE other interpretation: a deep, loving but primarily platonic relationship (read, the word relationship obviously does not just refer to romance) which came about as a result of their having seen all the wonders (and terrors) of time and space together. I think people are reading too much into this, I don't think they've ever done more than vaguely implied this stuff.
              • I just thought they meant it as a very intense Romantic Friendship, which I get a very firm vibe for from pretty much every single episode with 4 and Sarah with no other companions...
              • Why Jack Harkness?
              • Becaue he clearly has more complicated (or simplified, depending on how you look at it) ideas about hiow romance and love work. By his time period the kind of relationships that are considered strange or otherwise unusual amongst many cultures seem to be easily accepted. It probably works the other way around too. Present day television always seems to present Love as being a 'one or the other' thing (you're either romantically involved, dealing with UST or both, or you're entirely platonic). Nothing concrete, but I doubt Jack would see it that way.
          • Sarah Jane started her run with the 3rd doctor on his show. The romantic relationship was implied with the fourth doctor. One of the things that shows how important she was to the Doctor is Sarah Jane got K-9. The Doctor cared about her so much she got advanced tech that would protect her. That in the old series. In the new one they were just fleshing out what had been implied with looks and so on.
            • She got a K9. Romana and Leela got K9s, too. For those keeping count that's every companion the Fourth Doctor had parted company with before he regenerated. Plus she was the last to get one, too. Seems less special in that light.
              • Harry Sullivan didn't get a K-9.
            • Except that K9 Mark I chose to stay with Leela; the Doctor merely relented in that case. And in Romana's case, K9 Mark II had to stay with Romana in E-Space, because if he ever returned to normal space, the damage done to him would end up destroying him. It should also be noted that we never see the Doctor travelling with K9 Mark III, which suggests that he built him for the express purpose of sending him to Sarah Jane.
          • Considering that K9 was planned by the writers as being sent by the Master, and ended up actually being from the Doctor only because there was no K9 and Company series to continue the plot thread, that's unlikely. Any series contains "looks" and gestures and random plot elements and random dialog that can be used by sufficiently motivated fans to conclude that there's something romantic between just about any two characters—it's impossible to produce a series where fans can't find this "evidence". This ended up as canon in the new series because RTD was Running the Asylum and got to write fan theories into canon, not because it was really in the original series.
          • The Sarah Jane Adventures made it explicit that it was never a romantic relationship.

Sarah and Harry don't sleep

  • If The Ark In Space, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen, and Terror of the Zygons are continuous, then Sarah and Harry have been active for far too long without rest.
    • Not when they all happen within 16 hours (their relative time). Maybe they are in (almost) real-time, making them around 7,5 hours long.


Disappearing Ace

  • So whatever happened with Ace?
    • In the EU, Ace either:
    • a) Dies heroically as a teenager saving the universe in some way or another (in a Doctor Who Magazine comic "Ground Zero").
    • b) Circa her mid-twenties, after a career as a combination of Dark Action Girl and Nineties Anti-Hero when by most fan accounts she turned into The Scrappy, parts from the Doctor, who gives her her own time motorcycle and polices the timeline of Paris (according to the novel Set Piece by Kate Orman).
    • c) Changes her name to Mc Shane and still travels with the Doctor and another companion named Hector or "Hex" (in the ongoing audio plays from Big Finish).
    • d) Or eventually becomes the last-but-one of the Time Lords after the death (and we mean literal death) of the Doctor in the Elseworlds-ish webcast Death Comes to Time. (Another Time Lord, the Minister of Chance, carries on for the Doctor.) (This last came out prior to the new series revival.) Obviously, the Expanded Universe contradicts itself a lot. Most notoriously in the case of Ace.
    • e) Had the series not gotten cancelled, script editor Andrew Cartmel favored turning into a Time Lady.
      • So humans can be turned into Time Lords? The more you know...
      • Although this has never been dealt with in the series, it is a common fan theory that "Time Lord" and "Gallifreyan" are not the same thing. Time Lord is a title received by going through the Academy, so a person who is not from Gallifrey could theoretically achieve it. On the other hand, the new series has referred to Time Lord as the Doctor's race, and he himself has mentioned having "Time Lord DNA", so this could all be utter nonsense.
        • The Invasion of Time features a group of "savage" Gallifreyans, ones who reside and survive outside the Citadel and clearly lack the cognitive abilites of their fellow Time Lords. Besides, it's been a recurring concept in the classic series that Gallifreyans were just another race of near-humans until Rassilon used his miraculous infinite source of energy, the Eye of Harmony[1] for the invention of all their time-related technology, including the TARDISes, and to introduce and provide power to the regeneration process.
        • The answer has been revealed! Doctor Who confirms it - Amy Pond's daughter Melody aka River Song, is human, but has got traces of Time Lord DNA - exposure to the time vortex can make you a Time Lord even when you're still in the womb!
          • It can give you Time Lord features but even further messing around to try to create a Time Lord on the part of the villains only gave her some Time Lord DNA.
        • Maybe "Gazing into the heart of time" and whatever other fun little ceremony the Time Lords put the adepts through messed up their DNA, and thus "Time Lord DNA" differs from Human AND Gallifreyan DNA and they are thus a species of their own?
        • Again, from the novels, this is kind of true but with nanomachines messing with DNA rather than the gazing. I don't imagine this will ever make it to the series though.
        • According to The Sarah Jane Adventures there's at least one Dorothy running about raising money for charity on earth. That could be Ace.

Time Lords predating Time Travel

  • It's been established that the Time Lords didn't start out as such; their mastery over time was cemented by the likes of Rassilon and Omega, with technology such as the Eye of Harmony. So, who or what were the Time Lords before they were Time Lords? What did they call themselves? How did they develop such things as the "time sense" that the Doctor mentions in The Fires of Pompeii, among others? This Bugs Me.
    • The natives of Gallifrey are referred to as "Gallifreyans", and their ancestors as "Ancient Gallifreyans". Only a very few of them get to become Time Lords. All Gallifreyans have telepathic powers, including being sensitive to time. My source is the following labour of love: Gallifrey Stuff.
      • Technically it's mostly based on Expanded Universe stuff (i.e. it's of arguable canonicity), but it's a very interesting read nonetheless.
        • The thing many people forget about Expanded Universe stuff is that, in the absence of other information, it's the best anyone but the writers/creators have to go on. Thus, in many cases, questionable canonicity items, if they're officially branded and approved, can be considered canon until proven otherwise. Canon is mutable even within the original universe, after all. The most recent information concerning something should be considered the most canonical.
          • Except the bits that do nasty things to or kill off former companions. That's just mean.
            • Everything is canon unless it contradicts the TV show. How's that? (Or unless, as one person said, it kills of loveable characters. So Jamie McCrimmon did NOT become a mentally ill pariah and die horribly, no matter what Grant Morrisson says. So there.)
              • At least that saves Liz Shaw! But what about when two Expanded Universe sources contradict each other? How many pointless deaths has Jamie actually had?

The Genesis Decision

  • People often state that the fourth Doctor refused to wipe out the Daleks. But this is not what happened at all! After watching the serial there are two points where The Doctor could have blown up the Dalek embryo chamber. The first time he hesitates, unsure, before he can make up his mind he is told that Davros has given in and as such the explosives would be needless vandalism. The second time, after the Daleks start mass killing, he was going to until he was forced to take cover and the Dalek chasing him completes the circuit and kills them anyway. So not only did he not refuse to commit genocide (he never made up his mind) but all he needed to do was in fact done!
    • Well, in the second instance, he wired up the explosives, but then hesitated before touching the wires together to set them off. He talked to Sarah and Harry about the moral choice before him, and when the Dalek appeared, he could quite easily have touched the two wires together - it would only have taken a fraction of a second - but instead elected to drop the wires and run. It's deliberately left ambiguous, I think, but there's a case for saying that he refused to commit that genocide in dropping the wires rather than touching them.
    • And the reasons he gives for hesitating are more complicated than just "refusing to commit genocide"—he explains that many formerly warring races were forced into alliance by the Dalek threat, and so without the Daleks the whole subsequent history of the universe could be altered in radical and possibly very unpleasant ways.
    • Furthermore, his mission's parameters included introducing some weakness into the Daleks to lessen their threat. Although he didn't intend to, fanon says that he did so by enabling Davros to survive when his creations turned on him. When he was later revived by the Daleks, he proved a profoundly divisive element that caused violent schisms that plagued the Daleks for centuries.
    • Something also usually forgotten: he also kept the Daleks entombed for an extra few thousand years. I don't know about you, but I think most civilizations would put up a bit more of a fight if they've had an extra millenia or so of existance and progress.


Time Lord mass problems and regenerating in the TARDIS

  • When a Time Lord regenerates, how do they change size? Where does the extra mass go after, say, Tom Baker regenerates into Peter Davison, and where does it come from when Peter Davison regenerates into Colin Baker?
    • You're trying to apply logic to a process where a dying man completely changes his look and personality?
    • I think that one of the Doctors said that the TARDIS was required for the process. If it's dimensionally transcendental, I'm sure it can take or give a few pounds.
    • The TARDIS is required, yes. Also, Time Lords possess the technology to transmit energy and convert energy to matter and vice-versa. The TARDIS is powered by a stabilised black hole, meaning that they can get as much energy as needed for the regeneration, or dump any extra back into it.
    • Also, there's an enormous release of glowy, orange energy when the Doctor regenerates which could at least partially explain changes in mass.
    • In The Doctor's Daughter, Jenny doesn't have a TARDIS, so she shouldn't be able to regenerate. If she took energy from the Doctor's TARDIS, she would have done a full regeneration, not just an energyburp, and the Doctor would have noticed if someone just stole some energy anyways. And when the Doctor regenerated last, he only enerygyburped because he absorbed the heart of the TARDIS. The Master's regeneration into Harold Saxxon shows us that these aren't necessary for normal regeneration...so why did Jenny energyburp?
      • Because she got her power from the Source. The energy that escapes her lips looks like the gaseous form that escaped the globe with the Doctor threw it onto the ground. Think "Search for Spock". She didn't actually have to regenerate, the Source probably just helped along with regenerative powers of its own.
      • Perhaps they need to stop using that same gas effect because to me it looked like effect used in "The Christmas Invasion" that was drawing the pilot fish... er Santas, so I've always thought that it looked more like Jenny was "still in the first 15 hours" window and was simply healed rather than fully regenerating.
        • Nope, different gas effect.
      • Jenny wasn't fifteen hours old, so she probably did the same 'We Can Rebuild Him/Her' thing that the Tenth Doctor did in The Christmas Invasion.
    • She didn't need to regenerate. She had another heart, remember? She was in a healing coma, which is a canononical Time Lord ability.
    • Stop, stop. If a TARDIS is needed for a regeneration, does that mean all the people on Gallifrey who DIDN'T have a TARDIS were just S.O.L. if they needed to regenerate? That just doesn't sound right. I can believe that a TARDIS helps considerably with the process, but not that a Time Lord needs one to do so.
      • Well, presumably Gallifrey is wired up with whatever technology is needed for regeneration since it's the source of the remainder. But there's a couple of close-enough "regenerations" outside a TARDIS anyway (the 7th - 8th switch being the most prominent, as while it started near the TARDIS it certainly didn't culminate in there) so it's no real issue.
    • I doubt that a TARDIS is required. After all, The Doctor half expected Jenny to regenerate then and there, a significant distance from the TARDIS. Same with The Master. He seemed to indicate that he believed Jenny did as The Master and refused to regenerate because she was "too much like [The Doctor]".
    • The whole thing about a TARDIS being required for regeneration seems ridiculous to me. All the TARDIS would do is provide an energy source, but Time Lords are so tapped into the flow of Time it seems they might be able to do that on their own. For instance:
      • Three to Four was right outside the TARDIS, yes, but not inside it.
      • Four to Five was nowhere near the TARDIS. It was on the ground - but I can't remember if it was on Earth or Logopolis.
        • It was on Earth, just across a field - at the beginning of the next episode they get up and run over to it. It's not far.
      • Six to Seven was nowhere near the TARDIS. He was being held captive at the time.
        • BZZT! WRONG! Six to Seven was right there in the TARDIS! He banged his head on the console (lamest regeneration ever, I know).
          • To be honest, death through severe head trauma during a vehicular crash is pretty believable.
        • Seven to Eight, as mentioned before, was nowhere near the TARDIS. He was actually in the morgue.
        • I think this whole deal is just because the TARDIS is just about the safest place in the universe, so when the Doctor regenerates (read: in his most vulerable state) he prefers to be there.
        • This, and the fact that it's his home—when you're feeling unwell and vulnerable, don't you like to be at home surrounded by familiar things?
          • I don't think a TARDIS is necessary for regeneration, but it does appear to have a stabilizing effect on a newly regenerated Time Lord (especially when it has places like Zero Rooms). Didn't seem to help the Tenth Doctor, though ...
    • It's likely that the Time Lord either transmits the excess energy into the local area (as shown when Nine turned into Ten and practically exploded into a ball of light and plasma) or absorbs extra energy from the local area (as shown when Seven turns into Eight, complete with Frankenstein-like electric pulses). The Rassilon Imprimatur (which I think is some kind of addition to Galifreyan DNA) supposedly handles regeneration (likely in a same way that the Heisenberg Compensator Star Trek gets around the problem of quantum mechanics in teleporting something).
      • The answer, as of "Day of the Moon", is a resounding "no". 1103 Doctor starts his regeneration cycle with no TARDIS in sight, and somehow I doubt a little girl, even if she's a little River Song, would be able to apply for a TARDIS, especially not one which the Doctor himself failed his exams at.
    • Here's an idea—it's complete cellular regeneration, which means the cells probably multiply at a rapid rate to create more cells if the next Doctor is taller or fatter, and...ummm...unmultiply if he's shorter? When Hartnell became Troughton I think the cells that came off were at least in part used to give him his new second heart, but yeah, the loss of mass is confusing.


Too Dangerous to Kill?

  • What exactly is the Doctor's standard for "too dangerous not to kill?" He can forgive the Master despite not believing in second chances, and yet doesn't care about Solon's death and blows up the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Zygons, Sontarans, and Nestenes without batting an eye.
    • Well, I suspect it varies from regeneration to regeneration. You know, changes in opinions with changes in personality.
    • He actually failed to blow up the Sontarans himself, was very conflicted about blowing up the Daleks, questioned blowing up the Cybermen, and tried to parlay with the Nestenes before blowing them up (even saying, "I wasn't going to use it!").
      • And, you know, he's probably kind of messed up from the death of his entire race.
        • Not forgetting that he claims to be around 450 years old in the first seasons of the original series, while being other 900 years old in the new series: a few centuries spent wandering, escaping death and watching his own species dying while being in the front line of a losing war might have had an influence as well. Actually, I tend to consider the changing of personality (from the more prudent first doctor to the more aggressive and somewhat crazy tenth) to be a consequence of his past experiences more than a secondary effect of the regenerations
          • Don't take what he says his age is as gospel. Romana outright stated that the Fourth Doctor lied about his age (he was older than he claimed to be) and he's been claiming to be '900 years old' since he was the Seventh Doctor.
            • Since he was the Sixth, at least.
      • The odd thing is, is that in the old series The Doctor was not exactly fond of his people. In one episode he actually claims they are worse than Daleks and Cybermen because they have all this power and sit around and do nothing. As it is implied that it was the Doctor himself who killed his own people, however, it's entirely possible he feels REALLY bad about his feelings and in an attempt to make up for it, he overcompensates on the one Time Lord left, ironically the only Time Lord who would have deserved the destruction of Gallifrey.
        • Also, the Master is the only other Time Lord left. I'd be damn lonely and inclined to forgive someone if they were the only remaining human.
      • Exactly! He forgives the Master because if he doesn't he'll destroy the Time Lords AGAIN! He can't bring himself to destroy his own species a second time.
          • The show is also pretty open that it doesn't necessarily endorse what he does. It may be completely irrational that he'd value the life of the last living Time Lord regardless of how dangerous that person is, but he's not necessarily a purely rational person. After all, he pretty much destabilized the entire government of England and allowed the Master to get into power in the first place out of petty revenge against Harriet Jones.
            • I didn't think this was petty revenge, I thought it was wanting to get someone who would commit mass murder without batting an eyelid out of power. That didn't turn out too well.
                • Mass murder against the race of psychopathic voodoo using alien monsters that were planning to loot and pillage the Earth and murder everyone who got in their way. Oh yes. How terrible of her. Clearly they should have been allowed to live to kill some more innocent people.
                • So you're saying it's okay that Harriet Jones had basically "proven" that humanity were backstabbers who would break their own deals, thus scaring off potential alien allies, and irritating anyone who could actually pose a threat (which is oh, roughly 60% of the species in the universe)? I'm not saying what the Doctor did to her was right (if Harriet were still in power I'm pretty sure Children of Earth would've been a different kettle of fish) but Harriet showed she was quite willing to commit genocide again and again, rather than choose a peaceful solution, just because the aliens still posed a potential threat. That's Cold War talk: firing a nuke at the retreating soviet warships because they "might" come back (sorry for the blunt analogy, it was that or Godwin's Law). Harriet was thinking mostly of the safety of humanity, and she was obviously right to not utterly depend on the Doctor's help in every crisis, but her actions would've had consequences, not least of which was making us look untrustworthy. Plus the Doctor probably knows far more about the "future" of humanity than she does. The human race is going to be around long after she's gone and eventually we're going to get involved in the diplomacy of the galaxy. And thusly, we will now be remembered as "Humans? Oh. Humans! That's the species that murdered a retreating army and then kept the person who ordered it in power... Um, maybe we should go trade with someone else/not defend them in case they stab us too". I like being alive and all, but I wouldn't want our so called Golden Age to be built on that kind of origin.
                • The Sycorax were already fleeing. Of all the monsters he fought, I don't think the Doctor ever struck one who had already backed down. Sure, this doesn't explain why he didn't get Davros and the Master, who aren't likely to ever be convinced of retiring from the Destroy/Take Over the Universe business, out of the picture for good.
        • Agreed. There are several examples of the Doctor clearly not being in the right, including his ridiculous actions in Journey's End, Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords and, most noticeably, Family of Blood/Human Nature where he puts an entire village of innocent people at risk just so he doesn't have to get his hands dirty killing the bad guys, then proceeds to trap them in a LIVING HELL just because they killed a few people he cared about (Compare this to how he's happy to forgive the Master and Davros, people who have slaughtered BILLIONS. But hey, they weren't people he knew personally so no harm done, right?)
        • I don't agree. Oh, I agree how bad those things are, but I don't think the writers meant it that way. It's easy to explain any inconsistently written character by saying "the character is really a hypocrite and doesn't keep his own principles". Except for Harriet Jones, I think the way these actions were presented screams "the writers didn't think about that". It's Fridge Logic—for instance in Family of Blood you're just supposed to think about how awesomely inhuman the Doctor is, and not even notice that his actions are wrong.
          • No you're not, Joan quite openly called the Doctor out on exactly how many people he'd gotten killed by choosing to hide in their village as a human and openly turns down his request that she travel with them at least in part based on that. Donna did a simialr thing during that bit with the Racnoss Queen.
            • Harriet was many things (including rather stupid, thanks for Children of Earth there, Doctor, Harriet wouldn't have stood for that giving away the kids crap) but I really don't think petty revenge was one of them (I do think he was personally affronted but that wasn't the motivator behind his actions - he was personally affronted about Jenny, too, but he made a point of not shooting the guy who killed her). By shooting someone when their back was turned (and effectively committing genocide, which is always gonna get the Doctor's goat) Harriet showed that humans were untrustworthy and violent and would probably have done so again, thus scaring potential allies off, and irking even more powerful enemies. The Doctor also knows more about time and space than she does, while I feel her actions were somewhat justified, I don't think she was seeing the bigger picture quite as well as she thought she was (or rather she was seeing the bigger picture in so far as their survival depended on the Doctor, but nor about earth's future on a whole).
          • The writers in Family of Blood most certainly did think about the implications of the Doctor's actions, since one of the characters gives the Doctor a pretty big What the Hell, Hero? at the end of it all. However, one has to keep in mind that the Family where the last of their kind, and while the Doctor could easily deal with them, doing so would be a genocide. Since we already know the Doctor really hates committing genocide, even when the lives of billions may depend on him doing so, his gambit of going to ground and letting them die out naturally makes perfect sense. It's not that he didn't know there would be risks, but he decided the risk was worth running in order to avoid being responsible for an atrocity. Unfortunately for the people in town, the Doctor lost his bet.
            • We also have to think about what the Family would have done had they gotten hold of him: chaos and death throughout the galaxy. They were dangerous, we saw that in the episode. it was either stop them, or let them get hold of a Time Lord which was heavily implied could have had ridiculously bad consequences for all of time and space, rather than just one village (yes, yes I know morality doesn't work according to numbers but one village vs. many many villages all over time and space). He chose a fairly unlikely hiding place (he could have picked anywhere but it had to be somewhere he and more importantly Martha could at least blend in, which limited him mainly to earth) and did his best to prevent an even worse tragedy happening than even the slaughter of a village.
          • I also want to point out that the Doctor was highly unstable throughout his time as Ten, with the culmination of his "degeneration" of character hitting right at the time of his death. I actually believe all the things he said and did were because he was afraid to regenerate again, knew he would eventually, and led himself down a road of destruction via Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - the evidence is all there: a) His attitude with the Rachnoss AND his actions if Donna hadn't been there in Turn left. b) His reaction to the Sycorax leader who yielded then tried to backstab him. c) The way he was terrified of being possessed in Midnight (he would have in his other regenerations either stopped talking to the creature, or talked to it in a way more likely to help it understand, but only made a passing effort.) d) His method of dealing with the victim of the absorbaloff - instead of trying to get her out of the stone, he just leaves her? Not the sane doctor we know. e) Waters of mars. All of it. His delusions of grandeur were him losing his grip on reality. f) Donna. If he had hypnotic powers and could block her mind, he could also reduce a lot of that Gallifreyan/time lord knowledge WITHOUT "killing" her memories of him and her times together. It also meant he wouldn't need the bloody "booby trap" which would be a lot more work to do mentally on a person, than to just remove the knowledge.
          • Ten may have been unstable, but some of your points don't add up. In Midnight, of course he was terrified of being possessed. Who wouldn't be? And he did talk to the creature in a way to help it understand; it's just that this was a very strange creature so his efforts didn't get very far. Regarding the absorbaloff, obviously he left the girl in stone because it was physically impossible to restore her completely. There's no way he left her in stone-form just for kicks. You've got Waters of Mars backwards, too. The Doctor's actions involved gradeur, but few illusions. The end result of his actions was that two people were alive who otherwise would have died. It would have been three, but the third one committed suicide. It's not like the Doctor made things any worse. As for Donna, just because the Doctor has psychic powers does not mean he can erase Donna's knowledge in this particular instance! What gives you the impression that he had that specific ability, especially considering that nothing similar to Doctor-Donna has ever happened before?
            • Leaving Ursula a stone slab with a face may not have been the kind action he was intending. She'll never be able to talk with anyone who isn't Elton, Elton will never get to have a normal life, there's this expectation they'll be together forever or Ursula is screwed even though they hadn't even started to date yet, and she might be trapped as an unaging piece of concrete FOREVER. What's she supposed to do once Elton dies? She's helpless and she's a secret. That he considers this a happy ending and a good thing to do doesn't speak well for his sanity and this was before he lost Rose! And yes, the end result of his actions on Waters of Mars might be a mostly unchanged history but that is because Adelaide had the courage to commit suicide to keep time on track and he got very lucky there. If she hadn't killed herself or her killing herself hadn't been enough to restore the time line, who knows what might have happened? He was careless and reckless and playing hard and fast with human history even though he knew it was a fixed event. The Doctor's actions there aren't meant to be applauded or defended. He went off on a rant about being the Time Lord Victorious, after all, and he was supposed to clearly be in the wrong.
    • Yes, why doesn't the Doctor kill the Master after all that? (whistles innocently.)
      • Aside from the intense sexual tension, the Doctor himself said it best: "Everything that John Smith was capable of, so am I." It's possible, after a lot of work, and a little love, he could have brought the Master back to his Professor Yana mindset.
        • Sexual tension?? What are you talking about> There's some attraction between them, but nothing sexual. I'm not even sure if the Doctor feels sexual towards anyone. It just doesn't seem to be a part of his personality. (Rose may be an exception, but even then it was romantic rather than sexual)
          • Well, it certainly looks like it will go there with River.
      • Yes, all genocidal sociopaths just need a cuddle.
      • Are we talking about the Master or the Doctor?
        • Let's be honest here, they're both genocidal sociopaths.
          • Yeah, but the Doctor's the nice one.
          • The nice but criminally negligent one.
            • Criminally negligent IS nicer than maliciously negligent!
    • What we need to remember when thinking about things like this is that the Doctor's a complicated guy. He's ruthless and merciful, passionate and cold, old and young. The decision of whether to kill isn't an easy one. Each time he makes it the different aspects of his personality are at war inside of him. Sometimes he's ruled by his head, sometimes his hearts, sometimes by logic, sometimes emotion. Is it really any wonder that his behavior is inconsistant? He's just like a human in that regard. Maybe that's why he's both fascinated and disgusted by humanity: he sees himself in us, just like we see ourselves in him. And is this really such a bad thing? We've seen individuals and entire races without this inner conflict, who have no problem deciding whether they should kill. The result isn't pretty. EXTERMINATE!


TARDIS and the Space Between Spaces

  • Where does the TARDIS go between dematerializing one place and materializing in another? Where was the Tardis between, for example, Dalek and The Long Game?
    • The Time Vortex. You don't think they show the fancy swirls in the opening(s) for nothing, do you? ;-)
      • This was even confirmed in-show when Jack hitched a ride with the TARDIS by clinging onto the outside. It showed him holding on for dear life while the swirlies buzzed around him and the TARDIS.
      • Although it doesn't happen too often in the new series, the TARDIS used to take quite a while to "lock in" on a landing point in the old series; during the Baker era, he'd often wait for the randomizer to actually find a landing spot.
        • "Often"? The randomizer only saw service from the end of "The Armageddon Factor" to "The Leisure Hive," where the concept was swiftly abandoned—the ship's perfectly unreliable all by itself.


The Doctor's regenerations and clothes not fitting

  • When a Time Lord regenerates, one would expect most of their physical dimensions to change- height, weight, shoe size, waist size? How come the Doctor never complains that his shoes don't fit or his pants are too tight?
    • Advanced Gallifreyan technology. And Magic Pants.
    • The seventh doctor spends a lot of time tripping over Colin Baker's clothes in Time and the Rani.
    • This was brought up in the very first regeneration shown - in Power of the Daleks, Ben refuses to believe that the new man is the Doctor, and challenges him to wear the First Doctor's ring, which ought to fit if they're the same man. It falls off.
      • Although this doesn't explain why the Doctor's clothes apparently regenerated with him that time.
        • Well, if Romana's regeneration is any indication, a Time Lord's regeneration can include change of clothing...if you're good at it. The first regeneration seemed to go off without a hitch, explaining the above. There seems to have been a spanner thrown into the works since then, because all the others since have been...problematic.
    • Practically the first thing the Doctor does after regenerating is don a new costume. There was a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip in which, when the Doctor apparently regenerated, he immediately headed to the TARDIS wardrobe muttering "These shoes don't fit at all" (a Continuity Nod to the Eighth Doctor's line "These shoes fit perfectly!") Although, it later transpired he wasn't really the Doctor at all.
      • The Big Finish Doctor Who Unbound alternative third doctor (played by David Warner) says the same thing at the end of his story.
    • Alternative explanation: Time Lord clothes are bigger on the inside...
      • Or Time Lord shoes are designed to automatically adjust to their wearer's feet. Not unreasonable, as it's surely been a post-regeneration problem for plenty of them before the Doctor.


"Day of the Daleks" and "Invasion of Earth" same invasion?

  • Is the 22nd century Dalek invasion shown in "Day of the Daleks" the same one shown in "Dalek Invasion of Earth"? If so, has history been rewritten or did they just spend four episodes running around for no real reason?
    • The "Day of the Daleks" invasion happened in the wake of a nuclear war during the UNIT years, whenever they are. The other invasion occurred 10 years before the Doctor arrived, much later, so they're not the same invasion, conveniently for Susan. If they'd been the same invasion, then when the third Doctor stopped it from happening she'd find her home and probable husband erased from history, quite possibly leaving her in Limbo.
    • But would "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" have happened if the 3rd Doctor hadn't mucked around? And doesn't that pretty much make "Day of the Daleks" pointless?
      • AHistory: A History of the Doctor Who Universe says the "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" happened, then, following their defeat, the Daleks travelled back in time to create the future seen in "Day of the Daleks", then the Third Doctor "unhappened" that future, putting history back on course.
        • For the information of the less Who-savy AHistory in no way counts as Expanded Universe canon, let alone official canon. I just wouldn't anyone to confuse this with Word of God. (Very well-researched book, however.) Anyway, the invasion in "Day of the Daleks" explicitly depends on a world in which World War III starts in the 20th century. and yet a throwaway line in "Remembrance of the Daleks" says that the other 22nd century invasion (seen in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth") will happen, and the Expanded Universe confirms it.
    • Actually, Day of the Daleks, which is a lot closer to "official canon" mentions that they travelled back to the 21st century in the aftermath of World War III (which as far as I can tell, only starts in the 1970s, which was later prevented) following a PREVIOUS thwarting of their Earth invasion. Both stories are set in the same century, but the time the Daleks have occupied Earth is vastly different. Also, the conclusion of the story negated the "Day" invasion from having ever happened.


Doctor preventing universe destruction in Logopolis

  • In Logopolis, why doesn't the Doctor go back in time to before the entropy field is created to prevent the destruction of a large chunk of the universe?
    • Perhaps a more important though smaller scale version of the same question: If Rose is stranded because he can't cross over after the rift closes, why can't he go back in time to a day when the rift was open, cross over then, and then return to the present on the other side? (He'd have to modify his Tardis to work there, but it sure beats burning up a star to send a message through when the rift's not open.)
      • Also, quite possibly a Timey-Wimey Ball thing, where he can't actually go back through, no matter when he goes.
        • Look, people, if the Doctor could do this, he would just do it every single episode. Which would be a rather boring series. In the "classic" series sometimes they would mention the "Blimovitch Limitation Effect" whenever a character would say something like "why can't you just use time travel to . . .(whatever)". In the Fox TV Movie, at the end he goes back in time to save the lives of his companions, which is one of the many things that made us die-hard Doctor Who fans very angry at the Fox TV movie. In the "new" series we had the episode "Father's Day" which showed what happens if you muck around to much with time. --KEVP
          • Come on. We have no idea what the hell was going on in the Movie. We see the words "Temporal Orbit" on the monitor, and then magic glowyness emerges from the eye of harmony and flows into Grace and Lee. The Doctor doesn't do anything. Saying that he went back in time to save them is a big stretch. Exactly what the connection is to "temporal orbit" is never made clear, but the visuals don't indicate that the Doctor somehow rewound time. Some confluence of "Temporal Orbit", flying with the eye of harmony open, and the TARDIS being a "sentimental old thing" caused it to puke up magic resurrection-sauce. Timey-Wimey Ball.
          • The Faction Paradox novel "The Book of the War" (basically a big encyclopaedia regarding this time war between The Enemy and the Time Lords Great Houses) has a neat little entry about the "Protocols of Linearity", about how going back into Gallifrey's The Homeworld's own past may cause the universe to unravel. So, yeah, Timey-Wimey Ball, is the answer.
          • There's also always the possiblity that the rift exists in it's own moment, separate from the rest of time. Once it closes it is, and always has been, closed.
          • The Doctor has actually said that once he's involved in the events of a certain place and time, he can't just go back and change things he's already done. Which makes sense, really. Think of it this way: Let's say the Doctor goes back in time and stops the Master from turning on the silence. Now he doesn't need to go back in time because he went back in time. The Doctor has now fundamentally changed his own past actions, making his current circumstances impossible, and now he's got a paradox on his hands. Typically if the Doctor has a problem to solve, he needs to use his brain, in this case, adapting the Logopolitans' program for use in the Earth's Pharos computer. And with respect to the people who died, unfortunately, there's really nothing the Doctor can do for them without screwing up the timeline. He can't always save everyone, no matter how much he wants to. If you boil it all down, trying to come up with a solution in real time and just going back in time to prevent the problem from happening is the choice between possible death and certain death. Which makes you wonder what the hell he was thinking when he went back the second time at the beginning of Father's Day...


"The Doctor" not being a strange name

  • Why do so few people in the show find it odd that the Doctor's name is 'The Doctor'?
    • Presumably, that's slightly lower on the list of priorities than such questions as "Why are aliens invading?' or "Why is this police box larger inside than out?". In any case, plenty of people ask about it, the Doctor's just good at changing the topic.
      • They look at a guy with two hearts wearing a multicoloured patchwork coat or a twelve-foot scarf or a question mark jumper or whatever and who's babbling about all kinds of insane things about aliens and the end of time and space and the fact that he's just changed his appearance, and reason that, okay, the fact that he just calls himself 'Doctor' is about the least odd thing about him. Besides which, if they did always question him as to this, then we'd have that "Doctor? Doctor who?" joke nonstop, thus making it even more irritating.
        • What? They can see that he has two hearts?
    • Also note that he doesn't always say "my name is the Doctor"—he often just says "I'm the Doctor", which many people take as him stating his profession. In emergency situations (Which the Doctor usually finds himself in) people wouldn't find it strange for a real MD to introduce himself like that—in an emergency, letting people know that you're a doctor so that you can get to where you can help is more important than letting people know your name. This doesn't apply in every situation though, obviously.
    • It's one of his superpowers: "Regeneration", "Shared Instant Translation", "No Questions Asked" (no-one ever asks his name, or if they do ask, they don't press the matter), "Appearance of Authority" (whole armies will follow his orders even if they have no reason to), and "Uninterrupted Monologuing" (when the Doctor is talking, no-one, not even Daleks or non-sentient creatures, ever interrupt him).


The Doctor's Age

  • What's up with the Doctor's age, anyway? Even if we ignore that him being 900 would mean that he's regenerated 4 times, destroyed 2 planets, fought in a war, fallen in love, and gone through companions like chips all in one year, he can't seem to decide whether he's 900 years old, lived through 900 years of time and space (which would mean since he first drove a TARDIS), or been traveling in a phone box for 900 years (the very first episode was the first time, according to Susan, that the Tardis didn't change its shape, which would put him at a few years younger than 450, and would make his current age 1,350 years old).
    • How long is a Gallifreyan year? In Earth time? Compensating for the renewing factor of regenerations (each regeneration is theoretically physically younger than the last, although Three and Six are both problematic in that respect)?
    • For that matter, the Doctor said he was 756 years old when he first met Romana in The Ribos Operation. If he's over 900 as of the 2005 series, that means that from the Doctor's perspective, over 150 years have passed between the 1978 series and the 2005 series. What was he doing that whole time?
      • Romana?
      • The Time War lasted a long time, I guess. And then there's the mourning over the lost civilisation of the Time Lords, redecorating the TARDIS, learning how to speak with a Northern accent, this all would take * ages* . The real question is: why did he come back to Earth in 2005 and not, say, 1989?
        • He had to stop the Nestene Consciousness from taking over the planet.
        • Nine came back to earth several times before meeting Rose in 2005. Remember the Conspiracy Theorist in Rose who had evidence of Nine appearing on Earth at several points in the past. Since he was by himself, it would mean this was all before the point in Nine's time-line where he meets Rose.
    • The seventh Doctor said he'd had 900 years practice. It's easy enough to fit any number of years between 'Trial of a Time Lord' and 'Time of the Rani', but they doesn't quite fit with the tenth Doctor being only 900. Squint a little, and the new series comments can be interpreted as referring to how long he's been travelling in the Tardis, but this still leaves Pertwee's apparent claim to be several thousand years old to be explained.
      • The Seventh Doctor actually gives his exact age. It was in the 920s.
        • Actually, it's 953, given in "Time and the Rani". He mentions that the Rani is the same age.
    • The Doctor has lied about his age in the past- Romana's called him on it, although she wasn't exactly innocent in that herself...
    • We don't know how long the Doctor and Romana traveled together, and both of them were Time Lords, so they both age slowly. On fact, you could make a case for the Doctor and Nyssa traveling with each other for a long time, considering that we don't know how long Trakenites live and how fast they age.
    • And assuming we're not counting Expanded Universe novels and audio plays and the like, there's been plenty of times where the Doctor was by himself or otherwise engaged in adventures we don't know about (his sixth self before 'meeting' Mel after 'Trial of a Time Lord', his seventh self after 'Survival', his entire eighth self pretty much), so there's room for a few hundred years to have passed there.
    • And there's the time between "The Hand of Fear" and "The Face of Evil" where he travels alone (as far as we know) and between "The Invasion of Time" and "The Ribos Operation" accompanied only by K-9, who doesn't age at all...
      • Well, not much. K-9 had "aged" a bit by the time of "School Reunion".
        • That's a different K-9. There are four in all.
    • And there's the time between when he tells Rose that the TARDIS travels in space and when he tells her it travels in time at the end of the first new series episode.
    • You know when ladies and gentlemen of A Certain Age claim that they're actually 30 years old despite all evidence to the contrary? Like that, but with a few extra digits.
    • This comic is probably the best explanation.
      • Also this one
      • He was measuring in Gallifreyan years.
      • Alternatively, due to the chaotic, nonlinear nature of his life, the Doctor lost count of his age, so he picked a plausible number and started counting from there.
    • Steven Moffat has publicly given the opinion that the Doctor has no bloody clue what his age is any more. And since he's in the top job right now....
    • I, personally, think that the Doctor is just embarrassed from finally reaching the big 1000, so he keeps setting his age back a bit.


Mel and the Trial Paradox

  • Doesn't the Doctor leaving with Mel at the end of Trial of a Time Lord constitute a weird paradox? If she was plucked out of time to testify about events in the Doctor's future, shouldn't the Doctor have not actually met her yet from his perspective?
    • Long answer 'yes' with an 'if', longer answer 'no' with a 'but'. But it's possible that the Time Lords simply erased his mind of the whole affair. The Expanded Universe novels just suggest that 'present' Sixth Doctor returned Mel to the point in time where she'd been taken from the company of 'future' Sixth Doctor, but still remembered what was going to happen.


No "?" in Title

  • Why isn't there a question mark at the end of the title?
    • Because it's not a question, the "who" is just a placeholder to emphasize his mysteriousness. It's like calling the show "Doctor X" - and "Doctor X?" would make no sense.


Killing the Doctor in Illness

  • The Doctor spent the night in Castrovalva. He was tired, very ill and possibly slightly drugged. Why the hell didn't the Master just kill him then and there, when it would have been really easy, instead of waiting until after breakfast the next day? Does he just like to make things difficult for himself or something?
    • No, he needs the Doctor alive in order to have fun humiliating him. E.g. Turning the Doctor into Dobby in Series3 finale.
    • The Master's just like any other evil arch-nemesis; he's an insecure egotist who can't handle the fact that the Doctor has so consistently proved himself superior by foiling his plans and beating him so many times. It's not enough to just kill him; the Master has to make the Doctor suffer, take absolutely everything away from him in order to prove once and for all that the Master is the better man. And furthermore, the Doctor has to be very much aware that he's lost for the Master to be satisfied. Where's the satisfaction in killing him when he's asleep and none the wiser?
    • This is tehe Master we're talking about. The Rani said he'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line.


Species bias

  • Why is the Doctor so rarely seen saving aliens? Logically authorial species bias shouldn't apply to a protagonist who's a Sufficiently Advanced Alien with the powers of a god, so why make him apparently speciesist?
    • As the Doctor himself noted in "The Ark In Space", "It may be irrational of me, but human beings are quite my favourite species." Small wonder then that he should show some favoritism.
    • Bothers me, too.
      • Just because he likes humans the most doesn't make him negligent to other species; I'm pretty sure the writers are just going for relatable cast members, and therefore is going for humans first instead of aliens, assuming (wrongly or rightly, I don't know) that we would find non-human entities less relatable. Also, less make up involved.
      • In the Original Series he saved quite a few aliens. It's just that most of them were Human Aliens.
    • The recorded Doctor Who stories are only a small portion of the Doctor's adventures, even if you factor in all the expanded universe stuff. Probably the Doctor does visit totally alien planets often, we just don't get to see it.
    • Note that the Doctor does try to save Aliens when they aren't the antagonists. He tried to save the two crewmen in Planet of the Dead (failed but tried) and Voyage of the Damned could arguably count. (Alien planet, humanoid appearence). Not only that but in The End of the World he saved a bunch of aliens. He just doesn't hang around other aliens much.
      • On this note, I am more bothered by the lack of non-human companions. Or for that matter, c=human companions who are not from present-day earth. Can we have some more aliens and time variations in this show now, please? There are plenty of eras to choose from.
        • On that note I'd like to point out that he does get them from various eras. Katarina, Leela and Jamie McCrimmon were from past eras, Zoe Harriet (I think) was from the future.
        • Leela was actually from the far future. Katrina, Jamie and Victoria were from the past. Vicki, Steven, Sara Kingdom, Zoe, K9 and Captain Jack were all from the future. Some companions blur the line by being from (what was then) the near future, Grace Holloway from the TV movie for example, she appeared in 1996 but she's from 1999. And then there's Liz, Jo, Sarah Jane, Harry Sullivan and the whole UNIT dating controversy. Alien companions, again all of whom are Human Aliens, start with Susan and then there's a fourteen year gap until Romana who was quickly followed by Adric, Nyssa and Turlough.
      • Technically, every companion between Adam and Donna (in series 4) are from a year or more into the future.
      • What about the Ood? He saved them. What about the glowy thing in "Fear Her"? He saved it. What about the Vashta Nerada? He didn't kill them, and understood they needed a breeding ground, so he let them stay instead of obliterating them. Or the Star Whale, and how he agonized over his choice? He might be a jerk at times, but he does have compassion. Also look at the above entry for the Fly Beings from Planet of the Dead.
    • The serial "Galaxy 4" involves two species (the Drahvin who are Human Aliens and the Rill who are Starfish Aliens trying to escape a dying planet. The Doctor wants to help both of them, but the Drahvin's one sided hatred of the Rill prevents him from doing this, so he only saves the Rill.

The Doctor pre-doctorate

  • What did they call the Doctor back in his University days? "Hello, I'm the Sophomore,"
    • Theta Sigma. We’re not sure why (It’s confirmed as NOT being his real name).
    • We hear that that was his nickname in "The Armageddon Factor". In the Doctor Who gamebook "The Garden of Evil", it's revealed that all students at the Time Academy are referred to by two Greek letters, representing their physical and mental abilities. (In the book, you play a student called Delta Delta.) A gamebook is about as far from canon as you can get, but it was written by David Martin, who also wrote "The Armageddon Factor".
      • I've heard they came up with "Theta Sigma" because ?? looks sort of like "WHO"... or "WO" sideways at least. Probably unintended, though, was that ?? (with an overline) was an ancient Greek code for "God" (that is, THeoS minus vowels).
            • And, as a side note, funnily enough that was exactly who the writer of Silver Nemesis was hinting that the Doctor really was. Yes really.
    • Maybe he was The Master before he got his PhD... oh boy, there's a WMG...
    • Joking aside, the Doctor does have a real name, he just never uses it, and almost no one knows what it is (the viewer included). Part of what makes him mysterious.


Sontaran neck vents wide open

  • Why haven't the Sontarans developed an armored cover for that vent on that backs of their necks that seems to be their only weak spot?
    • Flatly answered on-screen in The Sontaran Strategem. Their weakness to attack from behind means that they can never retreat; they must always charge forward. In other words, macho crap.
      • It also means that a Sontaran attack can be flattened by any rudimentary flanking maneuver. You'd think a race touted as the greatest soldiers in the universe would understand the need to both attack and defend in any direction as the battle dictates. I guess Sontaran tactics haven't evolved beyond Napoleonic Era line formations.
        • Possibly their usual tactics account for flank attacks. Besides, Sontarans are pure Proud Warrior Race Guy - death before dishonour, any day. Life is probably cheap to the Sontaran generals anyway, when they reproduce by cloning.
          • It's a vent. By it's very nature, it must vent something. Presumably, it is something the Sontarans would prefer to have vented, rather than have it build up inside because they covered the vent.
              • The Sontarans are essentially an entire race of football hooligans...arrogant, posturing, testosterone fueled thugs who think that they can take on every other race in the universe and win. Their also all completely insane to the point of loving war so much it borders on Cargo Ship.
              • I've always seen the Sontarans as, essentially, representing the "Blimp-ish" type of pre-war British militarism. They're very fond of war and aggressive but they're also rather pompous and weighed-down by tradition. The "vent" seems to be a part of that - it's to stop them retreating or turning-away from the enemy but despite the obvious impracticalities they don't get rid of it because that's the way it's always been.
                • Go back to the first response for a moment - it may not be possible for every clone to be free from fear. It means that even the most cowardly, well, especially the most cowardly will face their enemies. They only have to stand back to back and try to bump into each other.


Davros making more Daleks

  • Why does Davros keep making new Daleks? They betray him every bloody time.
    • Mostly because he's just so damned convinced he can fix the 'errors' of the previous models, or that the Daleks are just the perfect machines ever. Interestingly, though, one of the audio dramas in the Unbound series takes a look at this and makes Davros almost an entirely different character in execution. Not only is he less monomaniacal, but he even shows a desire for his Daleks to be more than the exterminating beasts we love.


Time Lord mutilation and regeneration

  • This might have been answered in an episode I haven't seen, but what happens if you cut a Time Lord's head off, or tear out its hearts, or do some other thing that would render it almost immediately dead? Would it still regenerate? Would it regrow its head/hearts/whatever? Would it regenerate and then immediately die?
    • I'm not sure, need to find a source, but I believe they just die permanently.
      • They do. In the episode 'Turn Left', the doctor dies 'because it happened too quickly for him to heal. Remember, regenerating takes time.
        • Or in that scenario, without Donna there to pull him out of his dark place, he just preferred (like the Master) to not regenerate.
      • I could be wrong, but from what I recall Regeneration is used to save a Time Lord from death, not overcome it (okay, yes, the movie does explicitly that, but lets not confuse ourselves). If the Doctor was ever hit full in the face with a Dalek ray, for example, that's it. Finito. All the times the Doctor has regenerated previously, he's been dying, not dead (..except the TV Movie. Stop bringing it up).
    • In the commentary for "Smith and Jones" Russell T. Davies mentions they set 'guidelines' and one of them is that Doctor would die and not regenerate if shot in the heart. Um- one of them.
    • Time Lords in the EU can be taken out immediately, permanently, and irrevocably if you stab them through both hearts.
    • Time Lords can be killed by stuff that kills instantly. Dalek exterminations kill instantly, as is demonstrated practically every time they shoot someone. The Doctor is hit by a Dalek extermination. He is not killed, or, apparently, physically harmed at all. Wha?
      • What do you mean not physically harmed? The Tenth Doctor was struck at the side (not hit head-on like most Dalek cases) and began to partial-regenerate, while the Eleventh was hit by a ray from a severely weakened Dalek, and was still incredibly short of breath and injured when the gang found him in the Pandorica.
      • All of this aside, isn't it said that regeneration is not a foolproof process (at his impending death the fifth doctor says that he "might" regenerate, but he's not sure.) Maybe sometimes it just doesn't work.
    • "The Caves of Androzani" had the Doctor, poisoned, say that he "might regenerate", implying that with too much damage, regeneration is not certain and he could just die.
    • In "The Impossible Astronaut" it's stated that a Time Lord who is killed again while regenerating is down for good.


Time Lords already destroyed Earth

  • Here's one. In "Trial of a Time Lord," the Sixth Doctor discovers that the Time Lords moved Earth halfway across the Universe, how were the Ninth Doctor and Rose able to watch its destruction several million years later?
    • They moved it back?
      • Think about it this way- if a rackety old Type 40 TARDIS like the Doctor's can move planets as long as it has six pilots, imagine what the Time Lord high council at the height of their power can do. It'd be ridiculously simple for them.
        • But that was only with the atmospheric shell that the Daleks had already used to protect it and the life on it when they moved it. When the Time Lords moved Earth, it wiped out almost all life on there.
          • Because they wanted it to; the whole point in that case was to wipe out Earth so as to protect their secrets. That particular High Council was a bit corrupt.
      • After they'd filled out the proper paperwork and skipped 3 times around the Fountain of Rassilon, naturally. Also, I'm pretty sure there's a handwave at the end of Trial here a Time Lord mentions they've fixed up all the wacky shenanigans their predecessors got up to.
    • Even if the Time Lords didn't restore Ravolox to its original position at the end of Trial of a Time Lord, the Time Lords had already been removed from history by the time the Ninth Doctor took Rose to witness the final destruction of the planet. There's no reason to think the events of the earlier story still happened.


The title is more trouble than it's worth

  • So his name isn't "Doctor Who," I get it. So why is the show called "Doctor Who"? I mean, seriously, it's a rather weak joke that creates more confusion from the ignorant than amusement from the informed. And if they're going to use that name it should have a question mark at the end!
    • Because "Doctor Who" was sort of a pseudonym/false name for him. The credits referred to him as Doctor Who for ages (until Peter Davison's era, I believe, and it was listed as such during Eccleston's time). It's really only fans who get so picky about it. Either way, it made a lot more sense back when the Doctor was much more mysterious, and we didn't know anything about his home planet, race, or back-story. Back in 1963, we didn't know anything about the Doctor except what was shown directly onscreen. And if creates confusion for the ignorant, well, that's their fault for not being able to figure it out. It's really pretty simple.
    • "Doctor Who" is a catchier title (and easier to trademark). It would be weird if the title was just "Doctor", or "The Doctor".
      • And I always thought that if the show was just called "The Doctor", It would sound more like a hospital drama rather than a science fiction program. And since The Doctor Isn't an actual doctor, it would make no sense.

Doctor reacts more to Cybermen than Daleks

  • Despite the Daleks being infinitely more dangerous than the Cybermen, the Doctor reacts to the latter with a lot more fear, always saying "Do as they say!" and "DON'T fight them!!" With the Daleks, you have to stop him from getting into a sarcastic, light-hearted conversation with them. Not once does he ever look truly scared for his life. The Sontarans are the same "YOU CAN'T FIGHT SONTARANS!!!!" why the fear, you'll let them blunder into a fight against the cult of Skaro no problem, but against an enemy they can actually beat..... they better fall back
    • You claim that the Cybermen is more dangerous than the Daleks is a fact? Ensue Nerd Rage in 5...4...3...2...
    • No, read again, they said the Daleks are alot more dangerous than the cybermen. However, the Doctor REACTS to the Cybermen as more dangerous (for example the end of Rise of the Cybermen).
      • The Doctor probably knows that the Dalek's aren't just mass murdering psychopaths (they're organized mass murdering psychopaths) and he's been fighting them much more then any other enemy, so he knows something about their strategies and weaknesses. Cybermen however, he hasn't seen so much and even though he knows their weakness, he isn't likely to carry gold dust/bullets/anything with him on his person. As for Sontarans, they are militant, stubborn and their only weakness is directly behind them. Sontarans and Cybermen he can deal with easier but shows more fear to since he doesn't know exactly what they may be up to, but Daleks he usually has a pretty good understanding (i.e., them killing everything not Dalek)
    • Resisting a Cyberman gets you immediately "deleted", but surrendering gives you until they get you to the conversion chamber to act. Fighting a Sontaran means dealing with them on their terms, terms that are very much in their favor, but surrendering might put them off guard long enough for you to think of something clever. With Daleks, on the other hand, it's the other way around - surrendering gets you immediately exterminated with extreme prejudice, whereas baiting them, especially if you're their long-established enemy, might confuse them long enough for you to get out of the situation.
    • My theory? The Doctor's filled with such hatred for the Daleks by this point that it's more powerful than any fear he might feel towards them.
    • Re: The Cybermen. Personally, I think it's because of the Squick factor involved in creating Cybermen and the inherit Body Horror of the concept. To an invidivualist like The Doctor, the concept of a monster that turns you into a mindless drone while still leaving you technically alive has got to be a horrifying idea - far worse than the simple extermination you'd face at the hands of a Dalek. As for the Sontarans, The Tenth Doctor - more than most incarnations - was a Technical Pacifist who had serious issues with military authority. The Sontarans bothered him because they were even more of a mindless soldier race than the Daleks. Put simply, Sontarans are generally too single-minded to be fast-talked, unlike the much more paranoid/scheming Daleks.
    • Sarah Jane observed in The Mask of Mandragora that the more worried the Doctor is, the worse his jokes get. When he's not joking, he's not really worried.
    • In "Dalek" Nine looks at the severed head of a Cyberman and gets downright nostalgic, calling it an old friend before correcting himself "More like an enemy--the stuff of nightmares, really. I must be getting old." When he sees the Dalek, though, he starts pounding on the door and begging and pleading to be let out of the room until he realizes it's disabled. (Yes, the decapitated Cyberman head was disabled, too.)
    • Going back to the original question - it's very simple, really. The Daleks may be more dangerous than the Cybermen and the Sontarans, but there's one major difference: the Doctor scares the absolute crap out of them. He's their version of Satan, and he *knows* it. That gives him leverage.


First Doctor longevity

  • Way back at the very beginning, the first Doctor had survived for goodness knows how long without regenerating. The second the show's time-line begins Doctors start dropping like flies and he racks up ten regenerations in just a few decades. I get that it's just a TV show and some suspension of disbelief is required, but how did he survive for 900+ years without having to regenerate until relatively late in his life?
    • Possibly because the show's starting point marks the time the Doctor began hanging out with humans? Companions tend to cause a lot of trouble for the Doctor, and now he's got friends to protect. Any adventure becomes more dangerous when you've got a bunch of hangers-on who constantly need rescuing.
    • The Doctor never dies without companions. Between companions, he adventures for months (or years) before picking up another. The months rack up. Simple enough.
      • I like the idea this brings up of a Doctor-companion Death Range :D
    • Also, in the old days at least, things were a lot safer on Gallifrey than out facing Daleks, Cybermen and such. Presuming the Doctor and Susan hadn't been too long gone from Gallifrey, it makes sense that the Doctor would've spent more time in his first incarnation without any dangers in his way.
    • 1 wasn't 900 years old. 6 claimed to be "around 900", Romana remainded 4 he was 759 while he claimed to be 756. He's been travelling for much longer than the show eh... shows.
    • And, as Steven Moffat has pointed out on at least one occasion, the Doctor doesn't exactly keep a calendar in the TARDIS. The most logical explanation is that he lost track at some point, and around his ninth incarnation started over again at 900 because it sounded good. The Doctor could be a million years old now, for all we know. After all, Eight could have had a long time before the Time War came about...
      • If you go by the Big Finish audios, he spent six hundred years trapped on an oceanic planet, with another bout of partial amnesia (Eight really is prone to that, poor guy).
    • Adding on to this, the Doctor fought in a massive war against the Daleks and only had to regenerate once, from Eight to Nine. A huge war against the Daleks, and the Time Lords, and he managed to avoid everything being thrown from both sides, save for one time (presumably near the end, before the events of Rose)?
    • I've sometimes wondered if the First Doctor is not really the first Doctor, if there were others before the show started. But I haven't watched much of the old series, so maybe that's about the dumbest thing a person can say.
      • I had a weird idea watching The Impossible Astronaut that the little girl in the astronaut suit right at the end of the episode is actually an earlier version of the Doctor, before the Hartnell version. I don't think I'm dumb, but I may well be crazy.
      • The Hartnell version was the Doctor's first incarnation.
        • The production crew decided to imply otherwise in "The Brain of Morbius," stating that the other faces we saw (theirs) were "even earlier Doctors and past Morbiuses, but this was Jossed.
    • The adventures that happen on screen aren't his whole life. Most of his incarnations lasted at least 100 years (on his personal timeline) going by his age given in various episodes. The first doctor died at 450, the third at 748, the forth was 813, the sixth was 953, and the 7th was 1009. The new series threw these references out the window with Steven Moffitt pretty much saying that any reference the doctor makes to his age in the new series is meaningless because the Doctor doesn't really know how old he is anymore. The show has been on for nealry 50 years, and what we;ve actually seen of his life is still just the tip of the iceberg.


Molten ice?

  • There's an old Third Doctor episode, "Planet of the Daleks", where the Doctor stops a frozen Dalek army from reviving themselves by triggering an "ice volcano". Apparently, this floods the cavern they were in with "molten ice". I might be missing something, by isn't molten ice essentially water? An entire army of unstoppable death creatures were put out of commission by getting a bit wet?
    • What they say in the episode is that it's an allotrope with a much lower freezing point, so that it's liquid at sub-zero temperatures. The Daleks were being brought out of hibernation by increasing their temperature; immersing them in supercold allotropic water reverses that process.
      • So something like liquid nitrogen, then?
      • More like the cryomagma expelled by Real Life cryovolcanoes on outer-planet moons like Titan, Enceladus and Triton.


Human-hand-operable Dalek ships

  • In the classic series, on several occasions the Doctor and companions escape by stealing Dalek ships. (Examples: the end of The Chase, The Daleks' Masterplan.) Why do Dalek ships have controls that you can work with hands?
    • In the Expanded Universe book "Alien Bodies", the Doctor, needing to turn the lights on in a Dalek ship, produces a sink plunger from his pocket to use the controls.
    • Maybe they have slaves for menial jobs? One can't really imagine Daleks doing the dusting.
      • Perhaps they keep the Ogrons around for more than just killing people.
      • Possibly the controls are for the "robomen" that'd appeared in one of the early Dalek stories.
    • Same reason Time Lord tech in the new series can only be worked with Dalek plungers, presumably.
    • THEY WILL EXPLAIN LATER! * Curse of the Fatal Death Referance.*
    • Possibly Daleks don't bother to build ships from scratch, if they can retrofit the vessels of beings they've wiped out.


Master in the TARDIS without unlocking it

  • If Chang Lee had the only key, how the hell did the Master get into the TARDIS in the TV Movie? Did he find the spare key, or what? It's certainly plausible, but he probably wouldn't put it back when he was done.
    • Well, let's see. The first time we see him in the TARDIS it's as that blue snake thing and that's because the Doctor's giving his ashes a lift off of Skaro. The second time, he was with Lee, who had the key on him from when he gave the Doctor a lift to the hospital. In fact, the Doctor ended up having to use a spare key, which he kept in the POLICE BOX sign right behind the P.


The Doctor and money

  • The Doctor being "vague" about money. Huh? Even if Time Lords don't use money, doesn't he know that it's very important for the late 20th/early 21st century humans (and society) he tends to hang around with? Doesn't he understand the idea of bartering for something he needs but doesn't have? A sonic screwdriver and a piece of psychic paper will only get him so far. Besides its only basic math! When he needed, say, 400 pounds for the rent in a recent episode why didn't he just realize, "oh that's just 8 of those little pieces of paper that say '50' or 20 of them that say '20'", instead of just handing a whole bag of money over asking "is that enough"?
    • I don't think he's really that vague on understanding it (though granted, it must be tricky to remember all the different types of currency in the universe). The Doctor is the master of Obfuscating Stupidity. We've seen him manipulating cash venders and so on with reasonable understanding of what to do. When he handed Craig the bag of a crazy amount of money he probably knew it was at least a crazy amount of money. He just had to get into that particular house and knew a human probably wouldn't say no to that much cash.
      • Especially if you consider that someone who looks like he knows exactly how much money is there is more likely to raise suspicions than someone who just throws it around without understanding how valuable it is.
    • One word: inflation. Ask your parents if they ever have problems with how much they remember a dollar as being worth compared to how much its worth now. Then look at the Doctor, who never spends more than three days in any given century. It'd be a bloody miracle if he was somehow able to keep track of the absolute spending power of the pound for every time unit of entire duration of its existence as a currency.
      • And not just pounds. Even the Doctor couldn't remember the exact value of every denomination of currency at every point in time for every civilization he's ever encountered and still have room in his brain for everything else he has to know!
    • My thought: The Doctor does know currency values, he just tends to throw it away because it's paper, and he knows where to get more of it if he needs. After all, in Voyage of the Damned he is quick to point out to Mr. Copper the conversion of pounds to credits, making Mr. Copper rich.
    • I don't think it's that the Doctor doesn't understand money. I think that he just doesn't *care.* He's basically a space hobo, by nature and inclination. If he really cared about little things like money, he wouldn't be the Doctor, now, would he?
    • Craig Hinton's "The Crystal Bucephalus" posits that he makes obscene amounts of money through the Time Travel Compound Interest Gambit. So much, in fact, that he has to deliberately make terrible business deals just to siphon some of it away!


Master's got a magic gun?

  • In a Third Doctor story Colony in Space, the Master gets angry at an ancient alien for not allowing him to use powerful weapon to destroy the universe. He then points the gun at the alien which is then suddenly magicked out of the air. What. The. Fuck?!
    • It's hardly the only weapon in Doctor Who which completely destroys the target.


Multi-Doctor-proof memory

  • Why does the Doctor not remember what happened in multi-Doctor episodes?
    • Timey-Wimey, Wibbly-Wobbly.
    • In "Time Crash," Ten saved both his and Five's TARDISes in the nick of time. When Five asked him how, Ten said, more or less, "When I was Five I watched me do what I just did, and I've remembered it all these years. Now you'll remember it when you're Ten." However, Ten also says "By the way, I just fought the Master," and even though he remembers the exchange from Five's perspective, he's still surprised that the Master survived the Time War.
      • Well, there was quite a long time between Five and Ten. There's nothing unusual from Five's perspective about fighting the Master and at most he'd be like "God, he is never going to quit, is he?" By the time the Time War happens and he kills all the Time Lords, he's not going to remember every little (seemingly) unimportant detail of a meeting with his future self. Ten might have even completely forgotten about it until it happened again. Even if he didn't, more information about how the TARDIS works is going to be of a little higher priority than details about his life five regenerations hence.
        • I guess, but a lot happened in that intervening period to bring it to the Doctor's attention. Before he met Rose, Nine spent a lot of time thinking about how lonely he was with his species extinct, and surely he would have had at least a fleeting "Oh wait, that's right." Neither is there such a moment when Nine and Ten are so very frequently moping about their Last of the Time Lord status. Not even when Ten looked in the mirror for the first time and presumably thought "I've seen that face before . . . This must be the life in which that exchange took place." And "You Are Not Alone" didn't ring any bells. Also, in the movie both Seven and Eight seem to think the Master's gone for good. Eight in particular had the amnesia thing going, and both of them could have the concerns you describe, but you'd think the postwar Doctor would think be reminded of the comment at SOME point, given how often his "last of my kind" status comes up.
      • Because "Time can be re-written." The Doctor probably just assumed that the Time Lords' getting eliminated from the normal flow of space and time would also eliminate any future interaction he would've had with any of them.
      • Plus, for all Five knew, Ten could have fought a previous version of the Master, rather than one of those that'd survived the Time War. If a prior Doctor can show up for a storyline, why not a prior Master also?
    • Doesn't one of the earlier multi-Doctor episodes imply that meeting your own regenerations is against the rules, and that you'll forget it once the event is over?


Changed My Jumper

  • Why does no one ever question the Doctor or his companions' clothes? Sure, I can accept that a suit is pretty multipurpose, and maybe that nobody would notice it doesn't quite fit current styles, but why doesn't anyone react to Martha and Rose running around in pants, or Amy with a lot of leg exposed, when they're in Elizabethan London or Renaissance Venice? Or Four's mile-long scarf, for that matter?
    • They do comment on it occasionally, but most of the time they are concerned with more pressing matters—such as the crisis going on, or the mysterious guests acting strange enough to begin with that clothes are the least of their worries. (Remember, Shakespeare's biggest surprise about Martha was that she supposedly came from a land where women could be doctors!)
      • Yeah, they do comment on it occasionally. I specifically remember an episode called "Tooth and Claw" or something.... Where they call Rose a naked child (due to the fact that she was wearing short-legged overalls and a t-shirt), and The Doctor makes a comment that Rose is a feral child. LOL!


The Keeper was the Doctor?

  • When Tom Baker had his last moment as the Doctor, we see the Keeper rising into the air as he changed into the Peter Davidson incarnation. One of the characters says something along the lines of "The Keeper was the Doctor all along." What did they mean by that? How did all of that work? I came in mid-way through the Baker-era so maybe I missed an earlier episode that would've explained that.
    • First of all, he is called the Watcher. But no, he was never explained. All we know is that he is some sort of manifestation that started to exist during the Fourth Doctor's final days and aided him in his regeneration. We have seen OTHER such creatures though, for example; the Observer who was a Watcher for the Doctors friend Rallon and the Doctor's mentor, K'anpo Rimpoche had Cho Je. My idea is that they are extra lines of defence against death. See, regeneration doesn't bring Time Lords BACK from the dead, it saves them from the BRINK of death. So I like to think of them as little pockets of Regeneration energy given form so that if the Time Lord that created them DOES die they can bring them back. Of course, that is ALL Wild Mass Guessing.
    • It's been a while since I've seen them, but I was sure that the Watcher was the Doctor from the future, come to warn his past self about the dangers he was about to face. He merged with the Fourth Doctor at the end because, by then, time had been changed so that the Watcher's timeline never existed.
    • Apparently the Watcher is meant to be a manifestation of the First, Second and Thirds doctors.
      • Actually, a manifestation of the Fifth. Four mentions something to the effect that he has "dipped into the future." Not the past. And apparently this was unclear when they edited the episode, so Sarah Sutton (Nyssa) recorded an extra line cold to voice over the "merger" at the end. Not understanding the context, she emphasized this as "So he was the Doctor all the time!" instead of "So he was the Doctor all the time!" ...and based on this JBM entry, it is still confusing.
    • The Watcher was not the Keeper but, as mentioned in the bullets above, a manifestation of the Doctor's future regeneration, created ahead of his regeneration to help the fourth Doctor regenerate when the time came. Why this regeneration should be particularly difficult for the fourth Doctor is never explained, since all he does is smash himself by falling to the ground from a great height, but the difficult regeneration is mentioned in the following story, "Castrovalva". Some fans have theorized that the fourth Doctor held onto his regeneration too long and that was why he needed outside assistance. Further, there is precedent. in the third Doctor's final story, "Planet of the Spiders", we meet one of the Doctor's teachers, who is posing as the Abbot of a British Buddhist monastery. The Abbot is very old and dies in this story, but one of the Abbot's top students, Cho Je, reveals himself to be a projection of the Abbot, who then becomes the Abbot's next incarnation after the Abbot regenerates. I've always assumed that the Watcher was on this model.


The Doctor's lingual skills

  • So the TARDIS translates everything anyone says unless the Doctor is unconscious or whatever; I get that. What I'm wondering (and I don't know if it's ever been addressed), can the Doctor himself speak English? Because presumably he could just be hearing his companions as speaking whatever language they spoke on Gallifrey. Seems most people (fanfic writes and stuff) assume he can speak English, but I'm wondering if they're ever explicitely explained this?
    • (Same as above) OR, is it that the TARDIS can only translate when the Doctor is around because it somehow... uses him? I mean, like if the Doctor actually knows many, many languages, and the TARDIS can only translate what it gets from his brain, and does it for the benefit of his companions and not the Doctor himself? And if he came across aliens who spoke a language he didn't know, the TARDIS wouldn't be able to translate it? Or what?
      • Well, in the episode "The Satan Pit" a man had writing on him that the Doctor didn't understand so it appeared as random symbols, and we have seen him flat out speak Judoon. So I'm gonna go ahead and say; Yes, the TARDIS only translates languages the Doctor happens to know, he just happens to know ALOT of them and yes, if he came across a language he didn't know then it wouldn't translate it.
      • Actually, the Doctor specifically says that if the TARDIS can't translate the letters, they must be a very ancient language. So that seems to confirm that the TARDIS translates whatever languages he doesn't understand.
      • That, and the Doctor is still able to speak English when seperated from the TARDIS.
      • My understanding is that The Doctor is able to personally understand most languages telepathically and it is the TARDIS that allows him to share that ability with his companions at will. This would also explain the occasions where The Doctor speaks to someone in a foreign language (i.e. The Third Doctor speaking Chinese to a fellow Time Lord, who is also fluent in the language) but his companions do not understand what is being said.
    • Do note that in The War Games, the Doctor had not yet learned French.
      • Also, in Planet of the Dead, The Doctor says he speaks every language
      • Though if he really does or if the TARDIS just translates for him is debatable.
    • For what it's worth - since most people don't take the books as canon - one of the novels has the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory stranded in France, and the Doctor states that if they lose contact with the TARDIS entirely "you'll have to learn French and I'll have to learn English".
      • Would that mean that the Doctor already knows French?
      • According to Susan, he's a big fan of French history... maybe some time after The War Games he made the effort to learn the language?


Sontarans should curb-stomp Rutans

  • Why are the Sontarans taking so long to beat the Rutans, much less losing to them? The Rutans are green jelly! Green jelly that can shapeshift, but Sontarans are cloned super soldiers being cranked out at millions every 240 seconds. Its like if the 501st was on the losing end of a battle with the Slime monsters from Dragon Quest.
    • The answer is in the question. The Rutans can shapeshift. Their natural form is that of a huge jellyfish, but I seriously doubt they'd ever go into battle like that. They can turn into any number of nightmare creatures to fight the Sontarans. What's more, who says they can't shapeshift into Sontarans to infiltrate their ranks and take them down from the inside? The question then becomes, with that kind of power, why are the Rutans taking so long to beat the Sontarans?


Doctor's TARDIS key unlocks Rani's TARDIS

  • What about in The Mark of the Rani When the key to The Doctor's TARDIS fits and works in the lock to The Rani's TARDIS? With no explanation how that possibly works.
    • TARDIS keys are most likly less "*TARDIS keys* and more *TARDIS* keys. That is, they are keys unlock TARDIS(s).


Time Lords aging

  • This is more of a question, but do Time Lords age normally? I mean, I imagine One had a pretty long life before he left Gallifrey, but how long, exactly? During 'An Unearthly Child' One looks about 60-70, but is he really, or is he much older? Will a regenration age normally? My theory is the 'original' will age, then regenrate before it dies, and regenerations don't age. Any canon/fanon theories?
    • According to the wiki, he described himself as having been "a kid" at age 90, having been a "teenager" for 50 years, and having spent several centuries at the Academy, so its pretty sure that they age slowly even before the first regeneration.
      • The first doctor was around 450 when he died of old age, so I would assume that's the natural life span of each regeneration.
        • Actually, it would depend on what "age" each regeneration was when they were "born". For example, I'm willing to bet that the Eleventh Doctor would have a much longer natural life span than the Third Doctor, as the latter was "born" older than the former.
    • Speaking of, how old is River Song/Melody? Her orignal incarnation seemd to be the little girl inthe space suit, then she became Mels when she regenrated at the end of Day of the Moon, then River during Let's Kill Hitler. So to me, when she becomes River, she's about 30 years old. My problem is, how long did she spend being trained as 'the perfect weapon?' Eight or ten years i don't think will cut it.
      • 1969 + 42 = 2011 (the rough year Let's Kill Hitler is set). So, she's probably at least that old, and spent that long trained as a weapon.
  • Why is the series so adamant on making every episode between companions come immediately after the last? Tennant isn't going to stick around forever, so we need some time for his Doctor to age. Going further, isn't the Doctor kinda pissed that right after defeating the Master after a year's wait, he bumps into two crisises in a row? When does this man sleep anyway.
    • As for sleeping, we're not actually sure he does...
      • Taking into consideration just how "canon" the new novels are, in the book "The Last Dodo", the 10th Doctor mentions he doesn't sleep much.
      • I think he dozes off in The Tomb of the Cybermen, thinking about his family at the back of his mind.
    • Practically speaking, it's so that the writers can throw in a teaser at the end of the season that will get everyone to come back for the Christmas special. Not that it matters - we don't know how much time elapsed (er, so to speak) between Doc10 defeating the Queen of the Racnoss in "The Runaway Bride" and him meeting Martha in "Smith and Jones". He could have been moping about elsewhere for a while. I imagine there will be a similar gap between this year's Christmas special and the start of season four.
      • They used to do this back in William Hartnell's era, as well. Every new serial would begin with everyone standing exactly where they were at the end of the old serial, in the same costumes, even if those costumes were never seen again in the new serial.
        • I believe they did this right up to the end of the Second Doctor serial The Invasion, and even then it was production troubles that meant the serial that would have directly continued from then wasnt made.
    • I'm pretty sure 6 years have passed for the Doctor. (In "Aliens of London", he says he is 900 years old. Then in "End of Time Part 1" he says he is 906. Pretty safe to assume some time has passed for him.


Doctor meets all time-travelers in order but River

  • With so many time traveling characters, each with their own time stream, why is River Song the only one whom the Doctor meets out of order? (And the woman from "Blink," I guess, though she wasn't a time traveller.)
    • She's not. There was at least one in the old series. Melanie Bush was her name.There's also a character in the expanded universe who met and traveled with the 8th doctor, then later became a companion of the 6th doctor.
      • Thanks, I haven't seen too much of the classic series yet and there are like sixty companions so I lose track. But still, you'd think it would be more common than it is.
    • Not sure if it's official, but if you wanna accept that Jack is the Face of Boe, the Doctor met the FoB first, then Jack.
    • Most other companions only ever travel in time together with the doctor, which I guess makes it easier for him to keep their timelines in sync (perhaps the TARDIS herself keeps that straight for him). River Song has traveled back and forth quite a bit through other means, which probably scrambles their history together. Though other time travelers seems to stay in sync, but since The Master and The Doctor grew up together on Gallifrey I suppose their timelines sticks together. Only Jack Harkness seems to be completely without an excuse.
      • If you want to accept the Jack is the Face of Boe theory, then he has a legitimate excuse. The Doctor meets the Fo B with Rose. Fo B tells Martha and the Doctor last message. When they end up at the edge of the universe, Martha reminds the Doctor of Fob's message, with Jack standing right behind her. Later, after the Master is defeated, Jsck mentions to the Doctor and Marthathat Face of Boeshane was a nickname from when he was younger. Eons later, when Jack is the Face of Boe, he meets up with The Doctor and Rose to finish his side of the time loop. Also, Jack has the time manipulator, which works as the plot demands.


First Doctor leader by default

  • In multi-Doctor stories, why do they all defer to the First (even when he doesn't even bother showing up, like "The Three Doctors")? The usual response is he's the wisest and has the soundest judgment. I guess that could be based on something other experience, but for the most part they tend to act like they're deferring to his age, and while he may be the oldest physically, every one of them has memories of all his experiences and then some. The most recent Doctor should be the one who takes the lead.
    • I think its less "knowledge and experience" and more "psychological stability". One is measurably less insane than his successors, who seem to become more unhinged and damaged by their life experiences each time they regenerate. One is, while more eccentric than the average man (or average Time Lord for that matter), still the Doctor best able to keep focused on task, think things through clearly, and avoid needless shenanigans. He has the soundest judgement not out of experience but out of not being as guided by his emotional scarring and coping mechanisms as the later ones.
    • I'd say it's his ruthlessness. The Doctor has experienced considerable character developement since the early days of the show. He knows that, if there are multiple versions of himself running around, time is seriously messed up. When things get that bad, the various Doctors will defer to the one with the least experience but also the least emotional baggage and the fewest moral qualms.
    • I always assumed it was out of feelings of nostalgia. He was their first body and, in some ways, his true incarnation. The First Doctor was the one who had a childhood, grew up on Gallifrey, married (presumably), and raised his children and, eventually, Susan. When the other Doctor's see the First, they remember all that. It's respect to the man he was born as.
    • It could just be because the First is the crankiest and bossiest of the lot, and they all know it. In the first multi-Doctor story (The Three Doctors), all three attempt to assert leadership, and the First ends up smacking down the other two ("So this is what I've become? A dandy and a clown?"). Later incarnations presumably remember this and decide that discretion is the better part of valor.


"Pull to Open"

  • Here's one that I didn't notice until it was pointed out to me. The TARDIS clearly says "pull to open" on it but has a push door. Was this intentional as far back as "An Unearthly Child" or just a mistake that they ran with all this time?
    • I thought "Pull to Open" is for the small door with the telephone behind it.
      • It refers to both. Real police boxes definitely opened outward.
    • I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I do know that the writers are aware of this. They brought it up in "The Doctor's Wife".
    • The very first TARDIS was deliberately 'wrong' as a police box in many ways - the door opened inwards, the lock was on the wrong door, and there was a St John's Ambulance logo on the door. I think this was to suggest that the Chameleon Circuit, even when it was working, was an unreliable as the rest of the TARDIS.
      • Further research shows that real police boxes usually weren't made of wood either, so this seems to make a lot of sense.
    • I always thought it was just part of the disguise. The TARDIS doors open inwards, but the sign itself was simply copied from a Police Box. Or maybe the sign prevents people from stumbling inside. When they pull to open it they can't, so they assume it's broken and move on.
    • If it was an accident, it's a very persistent one. Every time the TARDIS has been redesigned the words 'Pull To Open' have got slightly larger, as though she's trying to get the Doctor's attention.


Daleks philosophize?

  • In "The Daleks" (First Doctor serial), the Thals describe the Daleks as being "great thinkers and philosophers". How could that be if, as stated at other times, they were created for the sole purpose of wiping out everything non-Dalek?
    • They were probably referring to the Kaleds there. For reasons that should be obvious, there would be significantly less cultural crossover and survival-of-encounters between Thals and Daleks than there would have been between Thals and Kaleds, so in absence of other sources of info, they probably (mistakenly) attributed characteristics of the Kaleds to their Dalek successors.


Davros not encoding Daleks with anti-backstabbing orders


Invasions the Doctor hasn't thwarted yet

  • If something only happens when the Doctor goes and experiences it, why is the world not in ruin from all the alien invasions the Doctor has yet to stop?
    • That's not true. River's gone through all sorts of things that the Doctor hasn't yet. And even if that were the case then presumably those invasions also didn't happen until the Doctor showed up if he were a part of the events at all.


What happens to people who experience events that have been internal-retconned?

  • If time is in flux, then are people vanishing in and out of existence? For example, the Cyberman invasion in the 80s must not have happend, so what happend to the people who went through that?
    • Timey-Wimey Ball. That's the best explanation you're going to get,
    • If the Doctor were here, he'd probably be able to give an explanation, not that we would understand it at all.
    • Multiple time-streams. Take the effects from the Cracks, for an example: They wipe out everything, but that doesn't mean they wipe out what people do. Amy was still born, but her parents were not. River Song still existed in an universe without the Doctor, so did Amy, and pretty much everything. Only the events were retconed, the number of people is probably the same. People who died are still dead and people who were still alive probably are still alive. Now, the guys who were still alive probably formed other time-streams, different from the original one, by the Multiverse Theory. So yeah... Timey-Wimey Ball.


Traveling to before the Time Lock

  • The Time Lords are all dead, right, but can one time travel to before the Time War? Could a Time Lord travle TO the Time War? I mean, the Time War can't be THAT locked, the Dalek Emperor from the first series of NuWho and the Cult of Skaro where able to get out. In fact, one of the Cult was able to go back in and get Davros!
    • Both those examples would indicate that yes, it's possible to break through the time lock... provided you don't mind ending up completely insane.
    • The Medusa Cascade is described as being the oldest thing in the Universe... perhaps it IS the Time Lock.
    • There is no "before" the Time Lock. The events of the Time War were almost completely written out of the timestream. As for how the Daleks (and later, the Time Lords, however briefly) were able to leave it... well, anything that can be locked can be unlocked, if you know how.


United Nations Intelligence Taskforce becoming Unified Intelligence Taskforce

  • Why was UNIT changed from being a UN set up? Another troper on the 2005 Headscratchers said "complaints", but why?
    • I haven't heard any specific complaints. I think they were just concerned that there might be something to complain about in the future, so they decided to head things off and make the change now.
      • Considering that Tosh's origins in Torchwood had her locked in a Guantanamo Bay-style prison by UNIT, it's probably for the best.


The Doctor's belly button

  • Why does the Doctor have a belly button? For humans, it's basically a scar left over from cutting the umbilical cord. Yet we've seen that his later incarnations still having one when it should have been healed from regenerating. If we assume it's not a scar, what do Time Lords use it for?
    • To pass for human. presumably. There are remarkable number of human-looking species in the galaxy. It wouldn't do to have such a standout feature.
    • But as the Doctor always says, "you look Time Lord". Presumably the Time Lords had that appearance before humans ever existed.
    • Had the appearance, yes, but (since I'm fuzzy on their timeline) they didn't always have the regeneration. At some point they may have felt it wise to make sure their regenerations fit in with the natives, so to speak.
    • Also, there have been some hints that not all Galifreyans became Time Lords; as a result, there may have been some Uncanny Valley and fitting-in-with-the-masses going on.
    • Because the actors who play the Doctor all have belly buttons.
    • For the same reason he has body hair, toenails, and nipples: regeneration doesn't eliminate normal bodily features just because they serve no physiological purpose.


The Daleks succede in exterminating everything, now what do they do?

  • The Daleks' mission is to exterminate every other creature in the universe and prove their own superiority, but what are they planning to do once they've accomplished that? What happens to them once their sole reason for existing is gone?
    • Nothing. All they care about is the extermination of other life, they don't really plan beyond that. Maybe they wait for new life to evolve and then exterminate it.
      • So the Daleks are the first Reapers?


Charged for something he hasn't done(yet)

  • In Terror Of The Vervoids, how can the Time Lords charge the Doctor for a crime he hasn't actually committed yet?
    • Wibbly wobbly, Timey Wimey.
    • I know what you mean, because doing something like that would cause some sort of paradox. Like, if you went back in time and killed Hitler before he did all the terribly things, then he'd never be able to do it. It's confusing.
      • The trial is a sham. The Doctor hadn't encountered/killed the Vervoids yet, and the Valeyard/Time Lords cherry-picked it out of desperation, anything to find the Doctor guilty and sentence him to death, which will give the Valeyard all of the Doc's remaining regenerations. Also, the proceedings are more of a smokescreen to cover-up the Time Lords' genocide when they moved the Earth out of its normal location. The Time Lords, after all, are the ultimate hypocrites: it's all right for THEM (collectively) to commit genocide, but when the Doctor does it...ho boy, the axe is gonna fall!

(Then again, the whole "Trial" arc is very confusingly handled...)


Classification of the Time Lords


The 51st century

  • Why does Steven Moffat seem to be so fond of the 51st century. I can think of at least six or seven of his episodes which take place in that particular era, and he has introduced two major characters from then as well. Does this century have some sort of significance in the Who canon? Or does Moffat just have some particular affinity for the number 51?
    • No special significance, it's just a convenient shorthand for "far enough future that everything could have changed". Just like RTD had a fondness for the 42nd century and the era of 5 billion years from now.
    • I always thought that the 51st century ws the Doctor's Second Favorite time period (because obviously the 20th-early 21st is his favorite. he spends so much time here!) because it was his home century. in "An Unearthyl Child" there's a throwaway line where Susan says she was born in the 51st century, so i always assumed the Doctor was born then too, or at least associated it with happy times. He goes there so much because it's his home.


A Temporal Non-Interference Clause...as long as it's something big and historical

  • The Doctor clearly can go to any place and time he wants to. He (allegedly) is a very moral person who will act to stop things he thinks are wrong. So why does he never seem to show any interest in going back in Earth's history to stop small things like the Holocaust, the famines in Maoist China and the Soviet Union, the Rwandan genocide, the entire war in Congo or the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of South and Central America? Obviously the real reason is that the writers can't just write them away but considering how clear it has been made that the Doctor can interfere why doesn't he? The Doctor somehow makes the Meddling Monk look good, one suspects that in 1066 the people in England wouldn't have been too happy about William's victory.
    • Canon says: TARDIS is alive, Doctor goes where he needs to go, not where he wants. Besides, fix points in time. All those terrible things are canon by history, can't ever be erased. When you think about it, The Silence probably created these fix points in time so the Doctor couldn't alter human history that much.
      • There are at least several times where the Doctor shows that he can go exactly where he wants to and in The Waters of Mars he decides to break a fixed point in time with no apparent consequences. Admittedly the woman he saved decided to kill herself but one would assume that beforehand he knew whether or not there would be consequences.
        • No apparent consequences? The bell was ringing inside the TARDIS. If history hadn't been quickly fixed by Adelaine, we would have probably had a scenario similar to when River tried to rewrite another fixed point in time. And we all know how well that went.
    • Apart from the above, there's the consequences of any change he makes. Don't destroy Pompeii? Pyroviles take over the Earth. We know he can sense fixed points, so he can probably tell when it's safe to mess with time and when interfering will make things go kablooey. Then there are things that will happen no matter what, a la The Aztecs. Finally, there's the whole "changing a fixed point will break time itself" thing from The Wedding of River Song. Take your pick.
    • There's also the issue of how much intervention in the development of human civilization is justified. The Doctor is here to protect humanity from external threats, not to circumvent our own decisions as a species. If he takes steps to prevent an atrocity that was engineered by aliens, or to stop humans from exploiting alien technology they can't build on their own, that's protection; if he starts re-writing our history to avert tragedies that were entirely our own damned fault, then he'll wind up ruling the Earth instead of defending it. He needs to let us grow, and learn, for ourselves sometimes, else we'll never be anything more than his hapless pets.
      • Protection? From using extraterrestrial technology to advance as a species? That sounds more like repression. Aside from that, based on his treatment of Harriet Jones humanity already isn't allowed to do anything he doesn't like. Getting past his opinion on human sovereignty what about when humans get off the planet? Is he going to stop interfering?
      • Harriet Jones used a weapon Torchwood stole from aliens to attack other aliens. If she'd used a human-built guided missile, that might have been more acceptable to him as a species defending itself with its own technological resources. And, despite what he said to her, he wasn't the one who removed her from power; he didn't bad-mouth her publicly or charge her with a war crime or even vote against her in an election. He simply acted to plant doubts in the minds of a few humans from her own political party, and let us decide if those doubts were sufficient cause to supplant someone he'd inadvertently helped place in authority to begin with. If anything, it reduced his own level of interference to depose her, as she'd still be a minor local figure if they'd never met. As for getting off the planet, by Time Lords' standards that's barely any greater an advance than our learning to cross the oceans; maybe when we start time-traveling by our own means, he'll consider us ready to fend for ourselves against technologically-superior exploiters.
      • Based on the Doctor's own statement that he could bring her down with just a few rounds (and how she was brought down was ridiculous enough) he clearly expressed the opinion that he could and should interfere in U.K politics. Beyond that, what is humanity supposed to do after the events of season 6? Based on that the Doctor is going into hiding and the planet (or at least the U.K which is the same thing) has been left with the impression that the Doctor has taken over Earth's security and will bring down politicians that he gets angry with.
    • This is a problem you're going to run into with time travel, Time Lord Victorious or not. Sometimes bad things happen, and we need to be able to learn from them. Let's say the Doctor (or any time traveller, really) goes back and prevents the Holocaust. He's saved millions of lives, but he's also erased it from humanity's consciousness. So what's to stop someone else from committing similar or worse atrocities in the future, with no one being able to recognise the warning signs? With that in our recent history, it will be really hard for someone else to try and kill their way to the top like that without someone saying, "Hey, does this guy remind you of anyone?" Evil will always exist, and with experience comes the ability to recognise it when we see it, and hopefully put a stop to it. For a more technical, timey-wimey explanation, the events you mentioned pretty much all had a huge impact on history. If you go around changing major historical events, you're going to seriously screw up the way things develop. Six million is a huge number of people, and their collective fate is going to have a huge impact on the world depending on what happens to them. The more people who's fate you change, the more likely it will be that there's going to be a huge change to the future, and you'll have no idea whether the changes will be good or bad. The reason the Meddling Monk was seen as a villain was that despite his good intentions, he was recklessly changing history with no regard for the consequences. The sad reality is, you can't always save everyone.

Questions about River Song

  • It's heavily implied that River is running into the Doctor in a completely reverse order, e.g. the first time he kisses her is the last time she kisses him. If that's the case, then what's the point of comparing notes with the TARDIS journal? If their timelines are completely reversed, there would never be a case where they already shared the same adventure in their own personal pasts since any event would always be in one participant's past and the other's future.
    • I have a feeling it's not completely reversed, only as a general rule. Not to mention that 1103 Doctor's meeting kind of fudges that.
      • Exactly. It’s mostly ‘back to front’ and in general. from their perspectives, the Doctor and River keep meeting younger versions of each other, but there is a ton of wiggle room. For example we know that an older version of the doctor (probably 11 possibly 12) who knows River very well, visits her and gives her his screwdriver just before 10 meets her for the first time in the Library.
      • I assume some ambitious fan out there has compiled (or will soon) a list entitled "episodes in order from River Song's POV". If anyone creates or finds such a thing, please link it here. kthx.
        • Chart:
      • Here you go:
      • Melody Pond: A Good Man Goes to War
      • Little girl: The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon
      • Mels: Let's Kill Hitler
      • River Song: Let's Kill Hitler, Closing Time/The Wedding of River Song, A Good Man Goes to War, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone/The Wedding of River Song, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
        • Actually, River Song shows up twice in the same episode, but not necessarily around the same point in her time stream. The final appearance in A Good Man Goes to War seems to be set after The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, she's wearing the same dress, which she got from the TARDIS wardrobe, while birthday!River Song seems to come from before the events in the season premiere.
        • Which she got from where? When?
  • What's to stop the Doctor and River from just traveling together and cutting out all this back-to-front business? Why doesn't River just hop aboard the TARDIS and they can be together just like it is with all the usual companions, and then they'll experience things in the same order? And why does River keep going back to prison, of all places, when she could easily just stay free?
    • Because if they travelled together in the TARDIS it could ruin their fixed points, namely when they meet each other and their adventures. If River travelled with the Doctor, then eventually she would end up meeting a younger version of herself. As for the prison, I'm gonna go with the same reason that the Joker keeps going to Arkham, she likes it there and she has no problem leaving.
      • The Joker is insane and River doesn't seem to be any more so than some of the other characters (who aren't what we'd call stable, perhaps, but are certainly no Jokers) so I highly doubt that she enjoys prison. In the Angel episode she mentions she's working towards a pardon and if she liked prison so much she either wouldn't bother helping or would help for free. She said that she was going back because she had a promise to keep. What that promise was and to who are still a mystery.
        • Now that we know who River Song is (as of S 06 E 07), and can deduce from that how she was brought up, this 'prison' is likely her home of sorts.
      • Maybe she feels like she has to be punished for what she did and thus goes back to her prison. I guess it's a bit of psychology playing here.
    • I guess the deal is that, somehow, the back-to-front meeting order has "already" happened. At any point, all events in their relationship (past and future) have already been personally experienced by one of them. If they try to muck that up, they'll end up causing some kind of time paradox and the Reapers won't be happy about that.
      • Yes, it's all already happened for at least one of them IF you go by the exact back-to-front meeting (which the existence of diaries and ritual comparisons seem to suggest is not the case) but there's still free will involved for both parties within limit. The Doctor can never tell River how she dies as she didn't know when she got to the library, for instance, but if Rever decided to go around traveling with the Doctor (assuming she hasn't been told she never will) then that will have always been the case.
      • Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey, so basically it's whatever the writers want to do
    • Speaking of the "First Kiss/Last Kiss" thing, we know that the Doctor takes River to the Singing Towers of Darillium sometime after this episode (from her perspective) and before she goes to the library. Wouldn't, at some point, he kiss her then? So this wouldn't be her last kiss, it would be at Darillium.
      • River doesn't know that she'll be going to the Singing Towers of Darillium, she doesn't know that she'll be meeting The Doctor any more times than he knows he has. The Doctor only said that it was the first time she's kissed him because from his perspective at that time, it is the first time she's kissed him and she is too shocked at that moment to think they might kiss any other times in both hers AND The Doctor's futures. After The Doctor finds out why she's in prison, he goes to visit her while Amy and Rory are asleep as shown in "Night and The Doctor." Basically any time between episodes, The Doctor could be traveling with River and they have their own adventures and dates. However, River doesn't know this and assumes at the time that when The Doctor said "first time," it meant "last time" for her.
  • So now that the Doctor and Amy know that River is Amy's daughter wouldn't you think he would mention that he saw River die in the Library? True she isn't strictly dead thanks to a McGuffin Sonic Screwdriver but you would think Amy would find it pertinent information.
    • The exact same reason why Amy and Rory didn't want to tell the Doctor about his death. Yes, the Doctor knows about being invited now, but that was an accident.
      • Good point, but thinking further I unfortunately have some other problems with this situation. We now now that River can regenerate; so doesn't that make her death in the Library problematic? it also makes a farce of the fact that the Meta Crisis Tenth Doctor explicitly claims that he can't regenerate because he only has one - those are his exact words. Seeing as we know River only has the one, wouldn't that logically mean that either River shouldn't be able to regenerate but can, or the Meta-Doctor can't regenerate but should be able to?
        • She specifically says in the Library that the Doctor wouldn't be able to regenerate from this type of death. That now implies that neither could she.
        • Does River only have one heart? Anyway, you're forgetting something - Handy was the result of the metacrisis, whereas River is a human who has begun the process of evolving into a Time Lady because of her conception inside the vortex, just like the early Time Lords. She isn't a half-human, half-Time Lord hybrid, she's a proto-Time Lord. Plus, according to the classic series, Time Lords are as they are now because Omega or Rassilon, or one of those ancient Time Lords, I forget which, diddled with their DNA, presumeably that's why they now have Two Hearts. Actually, it might have been EU stuff rather than classic series. Presumeably he did that to make regeneration more likely to occur, or to impose the limits, or because he likes drums or something.
          • The first Doctor only had one heart before he regenerated, didn't he? I always thought that their second heart grows during their first regeneration.
          • "Time Lords grow a second heart on regeneration" is from one of the novels: it originates from a bit of overly complicated fanon to explain why there's a story where Ian listens to the unconscious Doctor's chest and doesn't comment on anything strange about the heartbeat.
      • He never stated that two hearts was part of the regenerative process, just that he had one heart AND had a normal human lifespan. The two hybrids are apples and oranges as to how they came about, especially as River was born that way and Donna/the hand wasn't. Also, what problematic bits in the Library are you talking about? She can't regenerate from that - she said that even the Doctor couldn't come back from that...that's why she sacrificed herself.
      • Possibly she was on her last life?
        • It wouldn't matter if she was as Ten had lives to go and it didn't sound like she was dying so that he wouldn't have to regenerate. I mean, Ten really didn't want to but ultimately he was willing to regenerate for the sake of saving other people. If he canonically did it just to save the eighty-year-old Wilf, of course he would do it for Donna and over four thousand people.
        • It's been answered now by canon. River Song has no regenerations left after the events of 'Let's Kill Hitler'. So even if she could theoretically have survived through regeneration (even though it was explicitly stated she couldn't, so I don't get why people are debating this), she didn't have any further regenerations to use. End of.
    • Would you tell your best friends "Oh hey, not for nothing, but I know how your kid's eventually going to die. And there's nothing you can do about it." Why would they want to know or thank him for that?
      • Especially when River dies in his place. That's awkward to mention in the first place. And while Amy might be cool with that (as much as she could be), River doesn't die for HER Doctor, but for a regeneration. So her daughter essentially dies for a man she never knows.
        • I think River dies for Eleven as well as any regenerations she meets. If you mean she died for Ten, who Amy doesn't know, then if it hadn't been for River then Amy never would have met the Doctor and Amy's life would have been completely different, as would River's. She wouldn't even be a part Time Lord if Ten died then.
          • Ten or Eleven, he's still the Doctor. I don't think she meant "my Doctor" in the way we use the phrase. He was still the man she loved, even if he hadn't yet grown into the person he would become. And she flat-out stated that she refused to let him change her past by dying.
    • I think that Eleven still hopes that somehow he would be able to save River, that's why he said "Time can be rewritten" in Time of the Angels. Plus he doesn't want to upset Amy without any point. Plus Amy might be long dead by the time River dies.
      • River is already dead from some perspectives and Amy is most certainly dead by the 51st century but with all the time travelling that doesn't really matter. She can still find out about it from the Doctor or by going to the future and hearing about the death.
  • Why the secrecy - why didn't River reveal herself as Melody right from the start? or indeed, why does she refer to herself as River and not as Melody? the Tenth Doctor, past Eleventh Doctor, past Amy and past Rory wouldn't know who she was anyway... she could have called herself Betty and it wouldn't have made a single bit of difference.
    • She's called River Song because that's her adopted name for most of her life due to translation-wation and "the only water in the forest is the river", or whatever it was.
      • Her whole name/title now makes perfect sense. Doctor River Song. As was pointed out by River Song, Doctor means 'Warrior' to the people who raised her. (Which makes all those quips where people would ask her 'doctor of what?' and she would just smile and evade the question all the more meaningful.) I caught the name similarity as soon as The Doctor said 'Melody Pond' that there must be some connection, but didn't make the big reveal any more dramatic.
        • She's quite open about the fact she's a doctor of archaeology. But...if the Doctor came to that soldier's planet when she was young and they have 'doctor' mean warrior because of what the Doctor did then, why was she surprised when Amy said he wasn't a warrior because his name means warrior to them? The Doctor came and acted like a warrior so they define 'doctor' as 'warrior' but why should that mean that the guy who introduced them to the word doctor referred to himself as the Doctor because he was a warrior. She seems to be mixing up cause and effect.
        • I'm finding it really hard to parse that sentence, but it's Lorna, not River, who assumes the Doctor is a warrior, and she may not know that he's the whole reason the word "doctor" means that in her language.
          • Lorna does have a quote along the lines of "If he's not a warrior, then why do they call him Doctor?", however River Song's the one that tells the Doctor how because of him and his actions, Doctor does not mean medic or wise man, it means warrior. You have to remember that the only characters actually speaking English are Rory and Amy, and that etymology can be quite different in another language, even if the word roughly means the same thing, the 'back meaning' of a word might not be relevant (this is why jokes are rarely funny when translated, because double-meanings are lost)
      • It's unlikely that the Doctor's visit to Lorna's planet was the specific event that caused people to use the word "Doctor" to mean "Great Warrior". He's been showing up everywhere and all throughout time, there are probably myths about him on thousands of planets which all contributed to the meaning of the word.
    • To answer the first part of the question; Spoilers.
    • Do you realise how that may affect her timeline? It could delay her...erm, beginning, and another child could have substituted. Even if that doesn't happen, it would alter her own history. For an example, her life suggests she was a Child Soldier for quite some time. When mommy and daddy learn this, they will do all they can to prevent this. River changes her timeline, leading to a completely different person. And then the Reapers descend. Now is likely the only possible date she can tell them this without creating a massive paradox. Indeed, it could lead to a Stable Time Loop where an earlier River meets her parents and they know who she is. Their surprise and questioning makes her realize the next time she meets them, she will tell them who she is.
      • So the River that just confessed she's Melody doesn't explain anything so the next time they run into her they pester her about everything? That seems pointless because any questions that a past River can answer, the current River can answer.
    • As of Let's Kill Hitler, it seems that River got her name (well, both names) as a result of a Stable Time Loop: Amy named her after her best friend who turned out to be her daughter, and the Doctor was the first person to call her River Song. Given her relationship to the Doctor, she prefers this name to Melody Pond (probably).
  • Why didn't she know what was happening in Impossible Astronaut/ Day Of the Moon if she'd already been there as the little girl; why didn't she immediately recognize the time and place of the phone call and her suit, and why was she surprised when she (or at least her old suit) shot the doctor? Is she just that good of an actor?
    • The same reason she didn't gush over seeing Amy and Rory (her parents). Alerting them to the future would endanger her own existence.
      • I have a WMG about that. Remember that River Song was designed as a weapon to kill the Doctor... and what did she do on that beach? either she knew and wanted it OR she knew and knew how the Doctor gets out of this situation (we all know he isn't really dead...)
    • We don't yet know for sure if the person wearing the space suit that killed the Doctor is River Song, since we never see their face. We assume from the rest of the episode that it is the girl who wore the space suit, but yet we never see who is inside it when the Doctor is shot. Assuming it is River Song, I'm inclined to believe she forgot due to trauma, which is the only thing that truly makes sense to me, based on her other reactions.
      • The ending of Closing Time confirms that it is River in the spacesuit, in her familiar third body. "Tick tock goes the clock, 'til River kills the Doctor..."
    • Well she's regenerated since then hasn't she, so she's a different person, one that might not feel the same way about Amy and Rory because of that.
    • That entire event involved the Silence—especially for young!River. While you forget about any Silent you've seen when you look away, information about the Silence erases itself over time as well. So simply put, River forgot.
    • She did know. She later said she was lying to maintain the illusion of the Doctor's death.
  • If River really is Amy and Rory's daughter why is she in "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang"? Wouldn't she have been erased from time?
    • Since Amy continued to exist after her parents were erased from time by the cracks, presumably it doesn't work that way.
      • Easiest way to think of it is that the "cracks" are basicaly massive Paradox Generaters, they remove something from time, yet dont remove any effects it had, yet nothing existed to cause those effects, which still happened, etc...
        • "How can it be a duck pond if it hasn't got any ducks?"
      • Word of God confirmed thi.
  • Exactly what is it about River that makes her such a great weapon to use against the Doctor? She hasn't done anything that a well-trained normal human couldn't do.
    • There's a reason they kidnapped her (and by extension, her mom) soon after she was concieved in the TARDIS: she's a proto-Time Lord. All that extra timey-wimey stuff she's got cooked into her DNA makes her the perfect candidate to cement the Doctor's death into a fixed point in history, guaranteeing that he stays dead. Didn't exactly work out for them, but hey, you can't say they didn't try.
  • Maybe I'm missing something but how does River have Timelord DNA?
    • She doesn't. Her Time Lord properties are a side-effect of being conceived in the Time Vortex (i.e. while the TARDIS was in transit). There are non-Time Lord Gallifreyans, so presumably Time Lords are made, not born. This is corroborated by the fact that if the old series hadn't gone on hiatus, Ace (a non-Gallifreyan) would've enrolled in the Time Lord Academy.
      • Except she totally has Time Lord DNA. It says specifically that in A Good Man Goes to War. They say she is Part-Human, Part-Time Lord. River is part Time Lord because she was conceived in Time Vortex, something that took most evey other Time Lord billions of years to do. River can regenerate, but has, as far as we know, a human body. We don't know if she has two hearts, but it can be assumed she doesn't, because her parents are human. Time Lords are apparently made at first but born thereafter, because the Doctor is not billions of years old, but is a Time Lord who can regenerate, ergo they can be born if one is more than half Time Lord- the Doctor is stated at one point to be part human on his mother's side during the classic run. River, being River, probably qualifies as a Time Lord/Lady. YMMV on if this gives River Mary Sue status or not.
  • In regard to River Song being raised to kill the Doctor and the spaceman suit. I thought that she was selected for this purpose because of the fact she's part Time Lord or whatever, and that she would have been carefully trained for the task, and appropriately brainwashed. Yet the in the episode where she actually shoots the Doctor, she's put in a spaceman suit that she can't control and does all the killing for her - or intends to, anyway. Surely they didn't need River for that at all? Couldn't have just put any random person in the suit and let it do its thing?
    • Wasn't it stated that Utah was kind of like a linchpin for making fixed points? Maybe the Silents and Madame Kovarian wanted to get as many Time Lord-like people in that area just as extra insurance that it happened. The Doctor is known for being trick, after all.


Companions and families

  • How is it that The Doctor seems to attract pretty girls like a magnet would attract metal?
    • As far as Nine and Ten go, they're Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. And I say that as a straight man.
      • David Tennant may get a pass here, but what about all the other incarnations of The Doctor?
        • The TARDIS is a chick magnet.
        • Paul McGann and Peter Davison weren't bad looking, let's not forget. And whilst the other Doctors might not necessarily have been conventionally attractive, they weren't exactly beaten with the ugly stick either.
        • Hell, McGann has his own real-life Estrogen Brigade.
        • Charisma and free exotic travel go a long way, and probably put him well above most other guys who'd probably try to feel them up at the bar on Friday nights.
        • "Want to see my time machine?" is an awful chat-up line though.
        • Not if they believe it, it isn't. And he wouldn't want to bother with the ones who don't anyway.
        • Is this guy boring you? Why don't you come talk to me instead? I'm from a different planet.
  • Why hasn't Captain Jack Harkness gone insane from dying so many times? For god's sake, he was buried underground for almost 2000 years, and lived through a large part of it. How does he manage that?


  • Now that the Pandorica has reset the entire universe, Amy has had parents who have taken care of her her entire life. Why haven't they checked up on her? Yeah, I understand that they're involving time travel and they could be back before they actualy left, but Rose, Martha, and Donna all had episodes that involved the people left behind picking up the pieces. Especially considering her childhood imaginary friend just materialized out of thin air in a relic from the 1960s, danced like a raver at their wedding, and then appeared to kidnap both of them on their wedding night. It just seems jarring that Amy hasn't gotten a frantic "Where the hell are you!?" call, that Eleven hasn't gotten one of his "Mother Slaps" yet, and that Rory hasn't had to awkwardly explain how Amy has already conceived, gestated, and delivered a child.
    • Amy presumably got the whole imaginary thing explained away satisfactorily enough between Eleven materializing and everyone dancing at the wedding. In series five, Amy was only gone for five minutes between going off with the Doctor and picking up Rory which proves that it is possible to just not be gone for very long. Martha, too, went half a season before stopping back at home the morning after she left. It was only when she spoke with her mother on the phone a day or few days later that it was established that Martha was gone for longer than a few hours. Obviously, no one would think that they were kidnapped on their wedding night as they did say goodbye and for all we know the Doctor dropped them back off the next morning after who knows how much adventuring. Remember, Amy and Rory comment on how the Doctor dropped them off two months ago at the beginning of season six so they have had time to sort out any misunderstanding involving the wedding couple leaving the wedding (though people probably assumed honeymoon) and continuing to live their lives. Since Amy and Rory haven't contacted home yet, we don't know when they will return. Perhaps they will return five minutes after they left. And don't forget, not only do Amy and Rory not actually live with their parents so they can be gone for a few days without everyone freaking out but they had also travelled to America and presumably informed people of their intention to do this. For all their families and friends know, they're still on vacation in America. And when, exactly, should Rory have explained anything about the baby? He only found out about it right when Amy was dissolved and then it was more important to build an army to go after her than to check in and after he went after her, the episode ended so he hasn't had an opportunity to. Assuming Amy gets Melody back to raise and returns home, she'll need to be gone a year thus inviting questions and worry, claim Melody is adopted, or explain what really hapened. And for that matter, does either Amy or Rory even have a phone that's been modified to call anyone at any time?
  • Does Rory have any kind of extended family? Amy at least had a mention of how odd it was that her parents weren't around and she didn't seem to remember them, but Rory's had nothing. Not even after sitting around for two thousand years does he mention missing anyone but Amy. I guess not everyone has to be close to their family but that all of his emotions seem to be focused entirely on her strikes me as a little odd.
    • That's how it was with Mickey up until their first trip to Pete's World. I think Rory is the production team's attempt to redo Mickey without turning him into a complete Butt Monkey. Thus far they haven't done too well, though since he's married Amy at least he's not a complete and total third wheel.
    • Also, after Amy said "Hey, cool, my parents are back!" she hasn't gotten in touch with them since. Neither has she reached out to the aunt who raised her, even in the episodes where they were in contemporary London anyway. Maybe they're trying to move away from the heavy familial involvement that Rose, Martha, and Donna all had and are instead playing with the OT3 dynamic.
      • Even ignoring the fact that her aunt probably doesn't live in London (Leadworth's closer to Gloucester), I'm still not entirely sure what you mean by "in contemporary London". The only story to my knowledge set in "contemporary" London was part of "The Big Bang" (which was still 14 years in the past) and "The Wedding of River Song", and even the latter's London scenes focused on the Doctor and Winston (not to mention Amy technically not being Amy).
      • We don't really need scenes of Amy or Rory visiting relatives. While Martha's family never knew until the Master showed up and Donna's mother found out around the time Donna lost her memory, they implied that Rose visited her mother more often than was spelled out on screen. Amy in series 5 couldn't really visit her family as it all took place in one night. Amy and Rory had two months after their wedding to spend all the time they wanted to with family and as they keep traveling they might stop back and say hi at some point.


The Time Lords/The Time War

  • What's going on with the Time Lords being wiped out? It's implied that they weren't just destroyed yesterday, they were wiped out of history. Does that mean that if you were to go in the past and tiptoe past some scenes you'd now see the Doctor being exiled to Earth by nobody, the Doctor having to leave Sarah Jane on Earth because he had to go and do nothing, the Great Vampires being destroyed by bowships built by nobody, etc.? And how does the Doctor still exist?
    • The Racnoss Queen's reaction to the word "Gallifrey" proves other people remember the Time Lords too. I got the impression that anything they did in their own subjective timeline before the Time War still holds, but they can't have any new effect in any era. It depends on the entire universe working on something like San Dimas Time (so time marches on, even for time travelers), but it's the only explanation I've found that sort of works.
    • The first season stated that while the 'Higher Races' (whatever that means) retained some memory of the Time Lords, to most of the universe it's as if they never existed. Prying too far into how this interacts with the Earth and the Doctor sounds like a recipe for killer flying time monkeys.
    • It's all about the Ontological Inertia. Gallifrey wasn't part of normal spacetime to begin with. The Time Lords fail to have ever existed, but in such a way that anywhere they actually interacted with the universe at large, the interaction still occurred—it's grounded to the universe's continuity. But rather than a time lord having left Gallifrey and shown up somewhere in the normal universe, he's just literally popped into existence out of nowhere. Of course, he doesn't know that, on account of he's popped into existence with a full set of memories. If you believe that history as a whole has some kind of inertia-like property, it shouldn't be too hard to conclude that the necessary force to cause something to cease to have ever existed would be far less than the necessary force to cause it to cease to have ever existed and cause the rest of the universe to change such that its interactions with it did not occur. The arguments against the Time Lords having been yoinked entirely out of existence all hinge on a notion of purely linear causality in which there is a "before" and "after", which, we are told outright in "Blink" is not the case.
      • And, as a result, I like to think that the reason the Doctor survived is because, thanks to his travels out in the normal universe, he had a substantially greater Ontological Inertia than the rest of his race—he was just too tightly wedged into history to be excised without smashing the whole universe to bits. Erasing a species from history is like vacuuming them up off the floor. The stuff that's on top gets sucked up easily, the stuff that's ground-in takes a lot more work and leaves some spots behind. The Doctor's a stain on the carpet of time that's soaked in so deep that you'd have to just tear it up and buy laminate.
        • The "greater Ontological Inertia" bit is canon. "Invasion of the Dinosaurs." Even when the entire history of humanity has already been erased the Doctor still has a few seconds left to act before history catches up.
      • EVERYONE remembers the Time Lords. From talking trees to the Shadow Proclamation. They weren't erased from history they were just wiped out. And, because it was a "Time War" this apparently means it's no longer possible to travel to points where they still existed. Simple.
      • The same Shadow Proclamation that called Time Lords "a myth"?
        • We're forgetting that San Dimas Time and Timey-Wimey Ball are tropes, not explanations. They don't actually make sense. Imagine someone going back in time to watch the Great Vampires being defeated. They'll see one of four things: they were never defeated (in which case history is changed), they were defeated by someone else or just never existed (in which case history is changed), they were defeated by the Time Lords (in which case the Time Lords aren't wiped out of history after all), or there's some day on which they suddenly disappeared for no reason at all (which is silly). "The Time Lords were erased from history, but the past didn't change" just isn't a coherent concept.
          • OR it becomes impossibe to travel back to see it.
          • It makes perfectly good sense to me. The Time Lords weren't erased from history; everything they did time-travel-wise before still exists, but they can't create any new effects.
            • I agree. I think of time travel in Doctor Who (and specifically the part about not being able to go back on nd Jones". He could have been consequence of a time traveller travelling in one MORE dimension than exists. So, just as a topo map is a two-dimensional trace of a three-dimensional landscape, a video is a three-dimensional trace (two dimensions + time) of a four-dimensional experience—and a time traveller's memories are a trace of his travels in five dimensions. You can freely travel in four dimensions, but not the fifth. Think of Back To The Future II: once Marty is in Bad!1985, he can't go back to warn himself not to buy the almanac—because to do that, he'd have to go to Good!2015, and that timeline isn't accessible from Bad!1985 (Bad!1985's future is Bad!2015). So the Time Lords * did* exist, in all the timelines that the Doctor remembers, and they * have* been wiped from history—inasmuch that any timelines with them in it are inaccessible from the Doctor's present timeline.
              • Actually, this entire explanation makes no sense within the model of time travel used in BTTF. (Note that after Biff changed the timeline, 2015-A replaced the original 2015 - so Marty and Doc departed to 1985-A from 2015-A. Word of God asserted this as well.) Marty could have warned himself not to buy the almanac, but it would have created a paradox. There's a lengthier explanation for why exactly it would have created a paradox, and I could write it in detail, but I'm leaving it out as it isn't relevant to this page.
          • You need to read more Pratchett and Gaiman. The idea of the past being malleable is an old one. Both feature variations on a shop that appears out of nowhere, but has always been there, prompting people to ask "I know it's always been there, but had it always been there yesterday?" If you can't suspend your disbelief and accept that kind of logical illogic then you might as well give up on the series as a whole and go read some Arthur C Clarke.
            • The shop that disappears has nothing to do with time travel per se. (A trope in itself, actually.) But yes...
            • Actually, the novels present a related theory, namely that the presence of a time traveller "crystalizes" time: any bit of history that a time traveler hasn't visited is still in flux, and could be changed, but once someone actually steps out there, that bit of history has to happen: crystalized history can't be changed no matter what or the whole universe breaks down. (I gather this was largely inspired by that scene from "The Pyramids of Mars" where the Doctor shows Sarah a destroyed 1980: since he'd never been there yet, that bit of history was still in flux) The two theories together can give us a view where any bit of normal spacetime that a time lord has been to is fixed, and therefore their presence remains even after the Time Lords are written out, but now those bits of history are anomalies, and thus wherever the Doctor goes now, the Time Lords can't be there, as they don't exist (And, of course, crossing one's own timestream is forbidden, so he can't travel to any of the bits of previously-crystallized time).
              • CoughcoughFather's Daycoughcough
                • Yes, and look what happened there.
              • I liken it to having two layers of time - Time being what we live in, which we normally experience at a forward rate. Add in a concept of Overtime - This is the time that exists in line with the stories. Overtime is still sequential - It's the subjective time experienced by time travelers, and to be convenient, the timeline of the show. In Overtime, the Time Lords were destroyed - everything they did prior to their destruction happened and you can see them throughout time. They just can't do anything else.
    • It's all the Blimovitch Limitation Effect. The Time Lords jumped around time so much in the conflict that they tied all the time they occupy completely taut. Any time-traveller attempting to interact with any one of the events leading up to the Time Lords' extinction would, through butterfly chaos, have an influential effect on Downfall events past, present, and future. Since the Blimovitch Limitation Effect makes it impossible for a time-traveller to alter his own past, time-travellers just can't visit any of the events. Persistence might be rewarded with either equipment failure or an object lesson in Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act.
      • The Timelords were a race whose hat was utter indolent arrogance. Damn it if the Sontarans can invade, even if it was only for a day, the Daleks have far more than an even chance of wiping them out. Remember that the Timelords seem to have no weapons to defend themselves with, they managed to lose their killer statue and FORGET that their city is built over the eye of harmony. They had no sodding clue how to fight a war.
      • I should point out that most of the wiping out was the work of either the Eighth or Ninth Doctor.
    • Personally, I actually prefer the lack of explanations about what exactly is up with the Time War. It makes it feel like this vast, mythic event
      • Sort-of like the Eon War during a random Marvel Comics time traveling event during the fourth Captain Marvel comic series.

"The Eon war. The massive temporal conflict which brought an end to what you call the First Heroic Age. But history includes none of the details, because the war erased all records of itself after it occurred. It was the Chinese food of war. Half an hour later, it was as if there hadn't been one at all."

        • let's be honest here: The Dalek's would SLAUGHTER the Time Lords. A bunch of jumped up old men in fancy robes, with about half a brain cell between the lot of them, versus the ultimate killing machine, BORN to destroy everything and anything that doesn't have tentacles and a plunger for an arm. It's no wonder they needed the Doctor to save the universe. An average Time Lord couldn't change a light bulb without express written consent, signed in triplicate, let alone fight a decent battle.
    • I wouldn't be surprised if the Eternals took sides during the war too. I can see Death (no, not of the Endless) wanting to give the Dalek's a little nudge in the right direction, in the interest of sending more work her way.
      • Expanded details in one of the Annuals state the Eternals fled this universe during the Time War.
      • Death would almost certainly side with the Daleks for the obvious reasons. Although I wouldn't be surprised if she helped the Time Lords too, just to keep the war going longer and keep the body count rising.
    • I think you're all forgetting something: the post-Time War Doctor can, and does, go back to Gallifrey pre-Time War. He did so in Season 23, as the Valeyard. So the Time Lords must exist in history.
      • The Valeyard was called "a distillation" of his later selves, and was called back by the High Time Lord Council. THEY created him and brought him back.
        • Kind of-sort-of explained in The End Of Time. Apparently Gallifrey and the events of the Time War are sealed in a kind of pocket of time...presumably this applies to Gallifrey throughout it's history. As to going back to view events that the Daleks and Time Lords were involved in before the Time War, it's implied in Prisoner of the Daleks that it's very hard to do this, or at least do this deliberately. And the events of the Time War are supposedly impossible to travel back to, not that this stopped Dalek Caan.
        • As a side note, the "time lock" has been known of eighteen months earlier in "Journey's End" (or was it "The Stolen Earth"?.
  • How can all of the Time Lords be dead? If the Master managed to flee to the end of the universe, wouldn't some other Time Lords have fled as well? I'm pretty sure a whole bunch of them would've done that. Not to mention, what would have happened to Time Lords vacationing right before the Time War? Did the Council, douches that they are, conscript the whole race? And not leave any contingencies?
    • The Master didn't just survive because he fled. He survived because he fled and turned himself human so that when all the Time Lords were wiped out he was immune. Sure, there could be more surivors but they'd probably be trapped as humans with no idea that they should open that old thing they've had forever but never really looked at.
    • Considering the incredible threat that the Daleks posed to the Time Lords (and thus the rest of the universe), it's not hard to imagine that the council conscripted every Time Lord to help fight (whether on the front lines or just helping with supplies and such). They were so desperate to win the war that they weren't really thinking about contingencies. And besides, whoever would've planned for a scenario where both sides lose and get trapped in a Time Lock?
    • Well, it depends on how you define a Time Lord. After River dies, there's still Jenny left.

Torchwood One and previous un-encounters

  • Why does the Doctor never run into Torchwood during one of his many visits to Earth between 1879 (Tooth and Claw) and 2007 (Army of Ghosts)? They don't seem to notice even when he's been exiled and is officially working for UNIT.
    • Possibly, going back to the San Dimas Time issue, Torchwood didn't exist until after the Doctor influenced Queen Vic to create it in Tooth and Claw. Of course, it's also possible that - and it has to be said, judging on the available evidence - Torchwood, for all the hype, are a massively incompetent organization.
      • Torchwood existed in "The Christmas Invasion", which was set chronologically (er, by The Doctor's time... you know what I mean) before "Tooth and Claw". Blame it on the Timey-Wimey Ball.
        • If it weren't for the fact that Torchwood occasionally gets results and when push comes to shove they can be somewhat competent than chances are Torchwood would have been disbanded or at least given new membership.
    • Possibly, Torchwood were working under the auspices of UNIT until just recently.
      • No. UNIT is, by definition, a UN organization, while Torchwood is specifically and uniquely British. Possibly Jack's been running interference all this time, waiting for the right one to come along. Don't ask how he'd know which one that was. Or they just didn't recognize The Doctor as the Doctor. He looked quite different when he worked for UNIT, after all.
      • He'd know about "the right one" because he'd arrive at the Cardiff Rift sometime after the events of "Boom Town". In Torchwood, he was also predicted to meet him sometime after the turn of the 21st century.
      • Actually, they've dropped the UN aspect due to real life complaints. UNIT's still United Nations-funded (I think), but as of 2008 it's the Unified Intelligence Taskforce.
        • I think that's probably the best explanation, although it still leaves the "The Christmas Invasion" plothole: why didn't Torchwood nab the Doctor while he was chatting to Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North Prime Minister? Oh well, probably because they were busy firing the giant laser.
    • I assume Torchwood (or, for that matter, any British government agency) would have had a rough time trying to observe the Doctor due to technological limitations (no CCTV in London, etc) until he came back to Earth during the era of CCTV London and did some cool Timey Wimey stuff to get noticed.
      • They answer to Queen Elizabeth and have contacts with the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, but Torchwood aren't a government agency.
    • The answer to this one is amazingly simple: messing with the Doctor at any point before the Tenth would potentially cause Torchwood to cease to exist; obviously an outcome they would rather not have. Additionally, we know from Torchwood (the series not the organization) that Jack Harkness was associated with Torchwood 3 from the turn of the twentieth century and even if they were dumb enough to try and create a paradox, Jack certainly would be smart enough to realize just how monumentally bad that would be for both the Earth and himself personally. He probably tried his hardest to try and protect the past Doctors; maybe even going as far as to explain the whole destruction of the universe thing to Torchwood 1 during Third's stay with UNIT. Finally there is the question on how they would have messed with him; I get the impression that Torchwood was never particularly large - their power came from their vast connections to the British government more than anything. Attacking/kidnapping Three would have meant getting through the Brigadier and his ability to amass a very powerful army at a moments notice - he would have found Torchwood and he would have caused some serious damage before the British government told him to back off. Every other Doctor had a fully working TARDIS and, like stated above, without CCTV or GPS, finding an out-sized blue box would be next to impossible.
    • Then there's the fact that he's rarely in one place long enough for Torchwood to get their hands on him. As for the big exception to that pattern, can you imagine the shitstorm that would ensue if they tried to nab a UNIT employee? I imagine there's sort of an unspoken rule that the various major alien-fighting organizations don't interfere with each other, lest they wind up spending more time and resources fighting each other than the aliens.

The Daleks in general

  • Why do they keep saying Daleks have no emotions? They show plenty of them. Aside the obvious (hate), they have agitation/anxiety (shown by speaking in a higher-pitched tone), surprise/fear (a little scoot backwards), smugness (saying each word with a tiny bit more deliberation), and panic (when rendered immobile/sucked into a vortex/whatever. "Help! Help!"). And, of course, Dalek Caan laughs it up all the time after he goes nuts (if he did - he might have been faking), which you shouldn't be able to do if your emotions have been "genetically removed", even if you are insane.
    • Who's "they"? The Ninth Doctor once told Rose the Daleks had removed every emotion bar hate.
    • In that same episode, a Dalek didn't kill Rose when he had the opportunity, because there was an element of human in him.
    • And Dalek Caan (who was nuts, your words not mine) was a member of the Cult of Skaro. Those four Daleks were explicitly said to be Daleks whose emotions were unaltered.
    • Daleks have some emotion, just not very much. And they like to claim that they have no emotion at all.

Broadcast news

  • In numerous episodes of the new series we see an American network reporting on the alien attacks, but what's an American network doing in Britain?
    • British TV news programmes often report on events taking place in America, so surely US news networks have "International news" too!
      • If someone blows up something in Europe we see it on the news in Costa Rica, I assume that if London was invaded by aliens the guys from CNN Español and others would be there taking notes
    • One word: Sky. I could get FOX News in the UK if she wanted it. I don't particularly, but I could.
      • Exactly. The American network isn't "in" Britain. Its signals are sent live to a satellite to satellite dish into a TV.
    • In "Aliens of London" we see the Ninth Doctor getting all sonic screwdriver on Rose's TV, flipping to AMNN a second later. Presumably he did the exact same thing to it as he did with her cellphone, allowing him to pick up international TV, which is further evidenced in Army of Ghosts when they view broadcasts from France, India, and Japan with it. Any other time we see an AMNN broadcast after that its never presented from the character's point of view either, meaning its just exposition at work.
      • This American Troper just assumed that prominent American TV stations could be bought as a sort of package of extra channels from the provider, in the same way here in America you can watch the BBC and other foreign stations if you're willing to pay the extra money. Are you saying that this isn't possible over in the UK?
      • In terms of news channels at least, that is completely correct. No idea about foreign channels that broadcast drama, sitcoms and sci-fi though.
      • The pure exposition explanation is the most likely. It's something of a common trope in America to have roughly the same story being told by different reporters in various languages (Like France, India, and Japan above). It's used as a quick and easy way to show the danger of a situation, basically saying "The ENTIRE WORLD is watching!" It's basically just to say, "This isn't a UK problem, it's a world problem."

Questions about the Weeping Angels

  • Okay, we know an image of an angel is an angel. But how exact need that image be? Unless televisions in the future have infinitely fine resolution, there's obviously some room for approximation. Would a detailed painting create an angel? Would a doodle? Could someone who had never heard of the weeping angels depict something that happened to look enough like an angel to create one?
    • The most straightforward answer I can think of is that it's the same threshold as "observing" an angel, whatever that may be. Forgetting about the "image" thing for a moment: if a totally blind person is near an angel, they're screwed. Someone who needs glasses but doesn't have them on hand is probably okay. It should be similar when it comes to the detailed-ness of the image, only in reverse (the less detail you can percieve, the safer you are). Still, it's not totally coherent how this works anyway.
      • It may have to do with intent too. The book can't have illustrations, since even if you make them abstract you still mean for them to be an angel, it's like not thinking of the word Hippopotamus. Wheras the statues on Earth that just happen to look like angels are harmless, we hope, because there was no intent to make them a Weeping Angel.
        • If you look back at Blink, Sally gave the doctor a photo of an angel.
        • Maybe since the photo was only from the waist up, that eliminates it. Maybe the whole "image of an angel is an angel" thing only works if it's a complete (however abstract) image of an angel. The looped video clip began with a full body image.
        • As for the pictures in "Blink" not coming to life, I just figured that there are multiple subspecies of angels. So the angels we meet in Time of the Angels just like to kill people, but the angels in Blink like to send people back in time. Similarly, the angels in Time of the Angels have the special power of "that which takes the image of an angel itself becomes an angel", but the angels in Blink don't have that power.
  • OK, Moffat has stated that he's tried to work in a scene that mentions being able to trick the Angels with a mirror. So, with a little patience, we'll have an answer to that theory. However, there's another fan theory that consists of basically "Have someone look at Angel until it's stone. Grab large sledgehammer. Pound on Stone Angel until Stone no longer has shape of Angel." I could see an Angel recovering from losing a limb, but what if it's pounded to dust?
    • It's often been theorized that the Angels don't actually turn into stone; it just looks like stone. The actual material is this weird "quantum locked" stuff that is literally indestructible. (Well, Angels can lose their form after awhile as we saw in The Time of the Angels, but that's the result of starvation rather than being smacked by an external force) This makes sense when you remember that the freezing-solid thing is supposed to be a defense mechanism. How can it be an effective defense if it allows your opponent to just stand there and smack you to death? (Unless all your predators are cat-like in that they have trouble perceiving a motionless object, of course). The obvious answer is that standing still isn't the defense mechanism. The defense mechanism is making yourself indestructible, and standing still is just a side-effect of the indestructibility. (Heaven help us if they ever develop a way to be indestructible and mobile at the same time.)
  • Seriously, why don't people wink when they're keeping an eye on the angels?
    • Seriously, how is that so easy to do?
      • Close one eye, keep the other open. Better than having the two closed. While it's natural instinct to blink, I'm pretty sure the circumstances can prove to be an exception.
      • Amy tried in "Time of the Angels." It's not as easy as it looks, you have to actively remember to do that (as opposed to blinking, which is something of an automatic response.)
  • If an Angel sent someone back in time to feed on their potential energy, what happens if they got a hold of a time machine and went into the future and lived out their lives there? Would there be a pull of energy from the Angel, weakening it?
  • So, watching "Flesh and Stone", I couldn't help but wonder—did no one think of "blink as you pull the trigger"? The angels are implied to become flesh (or flesh-like) when not observed. Assuming (and, admittedly, this is a big assumtion) that they have muscles and skeletons and perhaps even a few energy-processing "organs", they shouldn't be Immune to Bullets. Against a few angels (large groups would swarm you even if you took down several) it's at least worth a shot.
    • Remember, the Angels are extremely fast, even the scavenging ones in Blink. Just blinking would probably get your neck snapped right away.
    • Also, a lot of things in the Whoniverse are Immune to Bullets anyway. And who says the Angels become flesh when they move? For all we know, they turn into pure energy. (Which would help explain their speed, incidentally...)


Questions about the Silence

  • Are they called the Silence or the Silents? Because I think the answer to this question has massive plot connotations. For instance, their little catchphrase, "Silence/Silents will fall", takes on completely opposite meanings. If it's "Silence", then we can assume that they are using that word to represent their goal, they are Silents, and they bring about Silence - "Silence will fall" is the same as saying 'we will bring about Silence'. BUT, this does not work if they are saying "Silents". If they are saying "Silents will fall", then they are not boasting, but instead they are predicting their own defeat - "We, the Silents, will fall". I personally prefer this second reading, as it implies that not only were they aware of their upcoming defeat at the hands of the Doctor and the feet of Neil Armstrong, but, perhaps, they have actively planned it! My guess is that 'Day of the Moon' has taken place at an earlier point in the Silents' timeline than the events of the last series, and that the events of 'Day of the Moon' have actually CAUSED those later events. For some reason the Silents wanted to get thrown off the Earth, in order to enact some grander plan of universal domination, and have used the Doctor to bring this plan into action. (I'd also like to think that the fact that the Doctor is under strong hypnotic suggestion excuses the moral disonance his ordering humanity to engage in what is essentially a Rwanda-style genocide against another sentient race).
    • Their race is called the Silence. An individual is called a silent. 2 or more of them together are then silents. bringing about "Silence" is also their goal.
  • "We ran from the Silence" "Through some we saw worlds and people. Through others we saw Silence." Signora Calvierri references the Silence, but how did she remember them? I suppose it could be that the memory wonkerz just don't work on...Saturnynians(?), but it works on Time Lords just as well as on Humans and they're way different on the inside, so why wouldn't it work on the fish people?
    • Who says they remember what it is that they ran from? They probably remember as much about the Silents as the Doctor and friends did during Day of the Moon when they weren't looking- knowing its something, but having no idea what that something is. All they probably really remember is that they had to leave due to something called The Silence; if they knew any details or could remember seeing them they'd never have settled on pre-moonwalk Earth.
      • Or maybe the Silents followed Saturnynians to Earth and that's how the Slients got here. (I know, I know, belongs in the WMG page)
    • Personally I've always assumed that the Silence we're talking about on this page are not The Silence that Calvierri was talking about- for one, it doesn't explain that bit at the end when all noise stops, and neither does it explain the TARDIS being taken over. More likely, it's some sort of mysterious, powerful, and literal Silence that represents, um, silence.
  • As of Let's Kill Hitler, "The Silence is not a species. it is a religious order, or movement." So what is the species (the one that you forget) called, then? Unless this is some sort of Fridge Brilliance about how they forgot the species.
    • Maybe people of any species can join the religious order, and when they do they convert themselves into proper Silents like we've seen before.
  • Is it possible for strong willed individuals to resist a Post Hypnotic Suggestion? The case of River Song suggests so (with time only collapsing because she is half Time Lord. Otherwise her case suggests so, but its never outright stated...

Questions about the TARDIS

  • Speaking of the TARDIS, you're telling me an advanced Sentient spaceship that can take any form and travel in time has no autopilot that allows it to conviently materialise over The Doctor's body when say, A Sontaran decides to go Sontar Ha! on his face? That would be a good way to more easily escape certain situations. I mean really Doc? You've never tried any of these things? You're much smarter than that.
    • Actually, he isn't. It's like how there are many people who are capable of driving a car but not so many who can repair/assemble one themselves. Lest we forget, the Doctor originally stole the TARDIS and the particular model he stole was an older TARDIS which was about to be recalled and that particular TARDIS also had a wonky Chameleon Circuit, which completely broke down shortly after the first televised adventure. Basically, in Earth terms, The Doctor stole the equivalent of an 1999 Camero with power windows that didn't work and a broken radio.
      • It has also been a running gag since the original series that the Doctor really isn't able to pilot the TARDIS all that well. Apart from the rather spotty control that most of the Doctors seemed to have about reaching precise points and locations the Fourth Doctor admitted to having shot the owners manual for the TARDIS into space at one point and Romana was a much better TARDIS pilot than the Doctor was. This continued into the new series, with Journey's End revealing that the TARDIS is meant to be piloted by six people and that the Doctor did a lot of jiggery-pokery to get it to where he could run it by himself. Not to mention River Song's revelation that the infamous grinding noise of the TARDIS materializing is due to The Doctor leaving the parking brake on.
    • Re: The TARDIS' sentience. There is quite a bit of debate as to just how sentient the TARDIS is and to what degree it can control itself. It could be that the very nature of the TARDIS prevents such an auto-pilot from being possible since it would tantamount to Mind Control of another sentient, which is something The Doctor would personally be against.
      • Fair enough on all points. That being said, he still could have tried something. I mean, there must have been a way for him to figure it out. Heck, if the TARDIS is sentient to some degree, why not do a mind meld or some kind of psychic whammy to establish a system: say, if you hear something yelling EXTERMINATE!!! DELETE!!! or SONTAR HA!!! come running. And if you see statue of a Angel, THEN FOR GODS SAKES, HAUL ASS AND SAVE MY TIME LORD BEHIND BEFORE I'M RETGONED!!!See, simple. Heck the TARDIS having a brain makes it even easier.
      • ......Angels don't Ret Gone? Are you confusing that with the cracks they fell into in one episode?
        • Considering how unreliable the TARDIS is at the best of times (twelve months too late, over a decade late, oops, this is Cwmtaff, not Rio), the last thing I'd want is it trying to materialise around me on autopilot. Squashed Doctor, anyone?
        • No, because the TARDIS materialised over Rose and a Dalek in "The Parting of the Ways" with no ill effect (apart from an exploded Dalek by unrelated means).
          • I assumed that was due to Bad Wolf's influence.
        • And how would the Doctor and Jack know that?
          • Maybe the TARDIS has one of these, but it's never needed to use it because The Doctor hasn't ever been in a situation he couldn't escape from. Maybe one day we'll see it used, and the companion at the time will wonder why he didn't use it in a previous deathtrap, and he'll say "because the TARDIS knew I'd get out of that one".
      • My understanding is that the TARDIS actually has, as part of the Cloister Bell system, a directive to bring its user to the site of temporal dickery that needs fixed, which means that when the Sontarans decide "SCREW IT! WE'RE INVADING 12TH CENTURY CHINA!" The TARDIS will interrupt the Doctor's trip to Space Florida and drop him unceremoniously in 12th Century China and wait patiently for him to fix what once went wrong. Or is about to go wrong. Or might go wrong. Time travel.
        • As of The Doctor's Wife, the TARDIS is DEFINITELY sentient, and does indeed drop him off wherever he's needed.
          • Sentient, yes, but not necessarily the same kind of sentience as you or I, what with seeing all of time at once and all that.
          • Since we see the Idris Tardis as a sort of Cloudcookoolander Bitey Mad Lady, I assume that the TARDIS is like her, sort of the machine equivalent of mentally ill. A well working TARDIS would be able to do all those things, but Sexy is not.
      • There was a Jon Pertwee episode where the Master dematerialized the Doctor's body somehow, but the TARDIS was able to bring the Doctor back. However, the TARDIS required Jo to pull a particular level first, to "give it permission" to do it. Apparantly, the TARDIS can act on its own, but requires some sort of user input to allow it to do certain things. Which makes sense: Think about moving files around on your computer. Sometimes you accidentally drop a file into the wrong folder. When the message pops up that says, "Move this file: Are you sure? Y/N" you can just click "N" to stop it. The TARDIS has the same kind of safeties. Imagine this: A Dalek confronts the Doctor. It's about to shoot him. Suddenly, the TARDIS materializes around the Doctor and saves him. And the Doctor screams, "Nooooo! I was just about to do something really clever! You messed it up!" You know that's what would happen.


Aging

  • Why do the older versions of characters always look taller? They are fully grown adults, apart from Amy in The Eleventh Hour and River in Let's Kill Hitler.
    • In The Girl Who Waited Older!Amy is at least 1/2 an inch taller than Present!Amy.
      • Older!Amy may have been wearing thicker shoes, as part of her armor.
    • In The Wedding of River Song the Doctor seems to have grown by about 4 inches. This is never explained.
      • He didn't seem taller to me, so I'm not sure what spot you're referring to, but I'll note that the Doctor is actually the Teselecta for much of that episode, so maybe that explains physical differences.


Magically Appearing Jelly Babies

  • In the movie, Lee steals the Doctor's stuff. So where did he get the jelly babies? You can't get those in America, as far as I know.


Misunderstanding the Reapers

  • Why do so many people misunderstand the presence of the Reapers in Father's Day? The reason they showed up is that Rose caused a temporal paradox - she had traveled to that day specifically because it was the day her father died. By saving his life, she removed any motivation for her to have traveled there - therefore, she would then not be there to save him, and he would die (similar to the remake of The Time Machine). The Reapers showed up to correct this paradox. But for some reason, a lot of people can't understand why they don't appear every time someone changes something in the past, even though it has no effect on their personal histories.
    • Because of the Butterfly Effect. The further you go back in the past, the more likely that you change something about your own life. If you change ANYTHING on earth more than a 1000 years ago, chances are more than even that it'd affect your own personal history.
      • Changing your history is fine just as long as you don't lose your reason for time traveling to when and where you did.
  1. ↑ actually a black hole, which he somehow discovered how to "harvest"
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