Doctor Who – Classic Series / Fridge

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WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!

Fridge Brilliance

General Classic Doctor Who Fridge Brilliance

A small but weird point... when one of his companions pointed out that Time Lords look human, he replied by saying that Time Lords came billions of years earlier, so really humans look Time Lord. But is there more to it than that? Before Rassilon, there were all kinds of uber-powerful non-anthropomorphic aliens running around. Then Rassilon shows up and there's all these wars against the Nimon, the Nestene Consciousness, the Great Vampires, etc. Over the course of the series, that's a lot of Sealed Evil in a Can that the Time Lords locked away. Now suddenly most aliens are human-looking, and the Time Lords are in charge but suddenly have a Prime Directive. But they're time travellers. So during their rise to power they fight all these time wars with their rivals. Then once they win, they re-arrange time to suit themselves, making themselves undisputed masters of reality, and making sure that most aliens are basically inferior Time Lord look-alikes. Even the Daleks started out human-looking. Then, once they have history the way they like it, they make it illegal for anyone to meddle in history so that they can keep themselves Number One for eternity. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. This is canon in the Big Finish Expanded Universe.
The single most brilliant line ever uttered in DW as a throwaway joke has insane levels within it. When the Doctor explains the TARDIS being "bigger on the inside than the outside" as "dimensionally transcendental". From a canonical viewpoint, this is true, as the inner portions of the TARDIS exist in a different dimension (as he attempts to explain to Leela). Therefore she transcends (overlaps) dimensions. On another note, however... the word "transcendental" also refers to something being beyond its properties. Her internal size transcends that of her outer plasmic shell: literally "Bigger on the inside than the outside".
In "Genesis of the Daleks", the Doctor starts the Time War. He also travels to Skaro's past to do so via a "time ring" provided by the Time Lords rather than by using the TARDIS, which is brilliant because Sexy can see the consequences of the Doctor's actions and would not have willingly brought him there.
- While it appears at the end of "Genesis" that the Doctor has only delayed the rise of the Daleks by a thousand years, which he says isn’t much on the cosmic scale, it is worth noting that their next few televised appearances placed particular focus on the Daleks’ lack of initiative and imagination; while the Daleks prior to this were aware that they lacked a proper understanding of humanity, they were still able to take the initiative, such as their attempts to manipulate the Doctor into helping them isolate the Dalek Factor (“The Evil of the Daleks”) or their efforts to master the power of invisibility (“Planet of the Daleks”). With this in mind, it is tempting to consider that the Doctor’s efforts here did have a deeper impact on Dalek development; since his presence indirectly provoked Davros into activating the Daleks before Davros had finished preparing them, the ‘new’ Daleks lacked the initiative they had possessed before, requiring them to resort to other measures to overcome their reliance on brute force and raw power as combat strategies, such as reviving Davros (“Destiny of the Daleks”) or ‘recruiting’ the creativity of a little girl to utilise human ingenuity for their battle strategies (“Remembrance of the Daleks”).
- Additional Fridge Heartwarming: The Doctor's line about "out of the evil of the Daleks must come something good" may seem a little cheap, but given how Caan pulled a Heel–Face Turn in "Journey's End" and Rusty helps the Doctor in "Twice Upon A Time," not to mention the other good Dalek in "The Power of the Doctor," it looks like the Doctor was actually right.
THE ENTIRE SERIES, every adventure, every single incident, the universe, time itself, and the freaking MULTIVERSE being saved. All because Ian and Barbara were suspicious of Susan. If they didn't follow her to the TARDIS, in turn accidentally triggering the Doctor's series of adventures, the Doctor and Susan would probably "still" be in that junkyard having done nothing for the last 50 years. Since the Time War would have likely never happened since the Daleks first discovered the Time Lords through the Doctor.
Fans have been poking fun at the ungainly frill-and-shoulderpad collars used as formal dress by Time Lord officials ever since they were introduced. Word of God asserts that these costume parts were originally designed to make Tom Baker look ridiculous when he wore one. However, if this style of dress is especially ancient by even Gallifreyan standards, there could be a logical reason for it: those ornate collars would, if trimmed back a bit and hardened, provide a great deal of protection for someone's neck. So it's plausible that they're an elaboration of neck-armor that was worn by Ancient Gallifreyans during their war with the Great Vampires and their throat-chomping minions.
Most rank-and-file Ice Warriors were awfully clumsy and plodding in the Classic era, owing to the bulky costumes' ungainliness and lack of flexibility, as well as how they impaired the wearers' eyesight. Although that's the out-of-Verse explanation, there's an in-Verse one that actually justifies their awkward, cautious way of moving: as natives of Mars, they're adapted to conditions of much lower gravity than Earth's! So any time we see one of them cautiously shuffling along on Earth, Peladon, or any human-occupied facility with artificial Earth-level gravity, they're just trying to cope with (to them) a Heavyworlder environment.
The Master's Khalid disguise is ridiculous and over the top, and people have complained that there's no real reason for him to keep it up while alone. That being said, it is very in character for him; look at the fun he has with being Rev. Magister, Professor Thascales, Harold Saxon, Razer...
- Also, while the "Arabian magician" disguise is rather racist, again, this is the Master we're talking about. He probably enjoys being politically incorrect.
Practically confirmed by Word of God, but why is the Master constantly coming up with these ridiculous plans that backfire and force him to work with the Doctor? Because it's the closest he can get to working with his best and oldest friend again.

First Doctor Era

At first it seems bizarre that the Doctor would say something as breathtakingly racist as his "Red Indian" rant in "An Unearthly Child". But given how Time Lord society is later portrayed — corrupt, conceited, dismissive of lesser races — it's perhaps understandable that he latched onto the equivalent attitudes of the planet he'd been marooned on, despite the fact that he'd abandoned Gallifrey for those very reasons. Part of his development as a character (in addition to getting rid of the impulse to commit self-serving murder) was recognizing that he was not as different from the other Time Lords as he'd have liked to believe, and striving to be better.
- Perhaps the Doctor was merely adopting the views and manners of speaking that he believed to be the norm in 1960s Britain in order to more easily explain the idea to the locals. Given how many different cultures he encounters on his travels he must have experienced many different Zeitgeists to which he has to adapt in order to fit in.
- Which also explains his sexist comments in "Twice Upon a Time"!
Why would a middle-aged schoolteacher like Ian Chesterton handle fights so well? Given his age, there's a good chance he served in World War II! (If he's the same age as his actor, he turned 18 in 1942). According to the wiki, he was a private in the British Army in 1950, and spent his service in Malaysia. So there's a good chance that he picked up some very useful skills there.
It seems hard to imagine that the Doctor and the Master were ever friends, right? But look at the First Doctor — originally the kind of person who'd kill an injured person for slowing him down. That sounds more like a friend of the Master, now doesn't it? Big Finish runs with this idea in the story "Master", a kind of "Human Nature" for the Master. It's the Doctor, not the Master, who commits the first murder. And then Death herself gets involved.
The very first episode of which the Daleks appeared, "The Daleks", had some nice irony: despite the Daleks being Nazi parallels, the peaceful race they'd been going to war against since their creation were blond-haired, blue eyed Aryans. Not to mention that the actual Dalek is physically the farthest thing from what the actual Nazis desired...
The change in delegates in "The Daleks' Master Plan" seems odd, with Zephon turning up late despite apparently having convinced Beaus to join. Considering Mavic Chen claims there have recently been attempts to displace him it makes sense he couldn't leave the Fifth Galaxy for the first meeting.
Steven and the Doctor are both eager to take Dodo with them in "The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve", the Doctor remarking that she reminds him of Susan and Steven remarking that she has the same last name as the girl he befriended in Renaissance France — Anne Chaplet — and could possibly be a descendent of her. Surnames at that time were exclusively passed down patrilinearly, meaning that if Anne had descendants, they would take her husband's name... unless Anne had mothered children out of wedlock. This is something that would be very, very rare, unless Steven had some reason to believe it had happened...
- Alternately, she could have wound up marrying a second or third cousin from another branch of the Chaplet family, which wasn't all that unusual if an extended family wanted to keep its property to itself.
A one-off joke in "The War Machines" becomes a bit of Fridge Brilliance thanks to modern Doctor Who. At the start of that serial, the TARDIS arrives in the sixties and the Doctor places an Out of Order sign on the TARDIS to, as he explains to Dodo, prevent anyone from trying to use it as an actual police box. Indeed, exactly that happens as a Funny Background Event as the Doctor is saying this. What turns this into Fridge Brilliance is modern Who's introduction of the Perception Filter, which makes people not notice an object's presence. They've consistently been shown to stop working once someone is aware of it, and to rely on the fact that no one is actively looking for the filtered object in the first place. Obviously, it doesn't come up here because this is decades before the idea ever came about, but at the same time, would a perception filter have even worked in this instance? Police boxes were a fact of life in 1960's London. Were they needed, people such as that policeman would be actively looking for it, possibly allowing them to spot the TARDIS, filter or not. The Out of Order sign suddenly becomes more than just a simple gag.
If you assume Time Lords have two hearts in their first incarnation, rather than growing a second one upon regeneration, a line in "The Tenth Planet" becomes fridge brilliance. When the Doctor is passed out, Ben checks on him and says his pulse is normal. If the Doctor's pulse is normal for a human, one of his hearts must have stopped. No wonder he is so weak for the rest of the serial and dies at the end.
- Alternately, his pulse is normal because half his arteries receive blood from one heart, and half from the other. Each artery's pulse would therefore only reflect the contraction rate of one of his two hearts, not both.
The First Doctor's character was originally intended to be a grumpy old man, stubborn and set-in his-ways, but very wise. However, in hindsight, it makes more sense to view him a young man who acts impulsively without thinking, but is very clever. In this light, many of his actions (stealing an antiquated TARDIS that he didn't know how to operate, running away from Gallifrey with his granddaughter, abducting two humans, nearly killing an innocent man with a rock to save himself, nearly getting himself, his granddaughter, and his companions killed from radiation poisoning because he wanted to go exploring, drugging his companions and accusing them of sabotage, threatening to abandon his companions during the French Revolution, and leaving his granddaughter on post-Dalek invasion Earth, to name a few) make more sense: He wasn't a foolish old man; he was acting without thinking. Similarly, he's not wise, but very clever: In both of his multi-Doctor stories, he constantly insults his future incarnations without thinking that he would someday be receiving those insults. Yet in both cases he comes up with the plan to save the day, showing his cleverness.

Second Doctor Era

So, why was the Doctor happy to take Jamie aboard the TARDIS when he'd quite recently near-destroyed his friendship with Steven by leaving Anne Chaplet to face the St Bartholemew's Massacre? He wouldn't take Anne because he'd so recently rescued Katarina from another massacre (the fall of Troy), only to see her perish soon after in a future world she couldn't understand. But he then took Dodo instead, only to see her cold nearly wipe out the human race in the far future. He must have reasoned from that that taking companions from any era had risks, so why not an 18th century Highlander he rescued from the massacres that followed the Battle of Culloden?
The Doctor seems unusually unwilling to get involved in overthrowing Salamander in "The Enemy of the World." However, given how many Second Doctor stories involve characters and factions out-gambiting each other left, right, and center, with heroes often being revealed to be working for the villains and vice versa, it's understandable he doesn't want to throw his weight in until he's sure he's on the right side.
The character of Zoë Heriot seems like human Zeerust — who would bother training a human to be a walking computer? But when you consider how often advanced computers go insane and attempt to destroy humanity, it makes sense that people would want a human backup, just in case. Judging by what she does to the computer in "The Invasion", it's possible she was engineered as a weapon against advanced computers.
One of the goofier premises for a classic-series episode, that of "The Moonbase", makes a lot more sense in the wake of "Kill the Moon". Even allowing that a device like the Gravitron could influence Earth's weather by manipulating its tides as described, building it on the Moon of all places seems like blatant Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: it's so far away as to make servicing the thing or rotating staff extremely difficult, compared to what an orbital station or automatic satellite would require. So why put the thing on the Moon? Presumably, because after the gravitational disruptions, earthquakes and extreme tides brought about by the original Moon's hatching in 2047, humanity didn't dare let it happen again! So the Gravitron was built (maybe by Torchwood or UNIT) to stabilize any possible variations in the new Moon-egg's gravity; its later use to fiddle with Earth's weather was just a fringe benefit.
In "The Mind Robber", the white robots are reused props from a production of Reason by Isaac Asimov. In-Universe, that suggests that they're repurposed fictional characters just like Gulliver and the Karkus. Moreover, in both stories their allegiance is only to The Master.
"The War Games" contains a mix of both Fridge Brilliance and Fridge Horror at the tail end of the serial. During the Doctor's trial, he's presented a slideshow of pre-determined future incarnations. Except that said future incarnations are presented as hand-drawn sketches made by a dodgy sketch artist. One can chalk it up to Special Effect Failure on the behalf of Doctor Who not having the budget to hire better artists. But it works really well in-universe to describe Time Lord society. Despite creating time machines that are bigger on the inside as well as expanded longevity where physical features have no meaning due to the ability to cheat death via regeneration Time Lords lack social creativity, being content to live their lives within their glass domes but not doing anything worthwhile with it. This shows up later on in the show, where despite having advanced technology and elongated lives, the Time Lords can't create anything new and look down on renegades like The Doctor and The Master, individuals who want to explore the universe and have the opportunity to do so. The Time Lords are so socially stagnant that their artistic abilities are on par with the special effects of a 1960s Earth television science-fiction programme.
The two technicians working on the TARDIS seem like Red Shirt characters there to establish that the War Lord took his guards with him. But considering how many faulty circuits the TARDIS has, and the fact it was intended to returned to its former status, it’s likely they were repairing it to be placed in a museum.
- Another possibility: We know the Time Lords removed the dematerialization circuit before the Doctor's exile. They may have been doing that, and/or putting in some spyware for his service to the CIA (as per the Season 6b theory).

Third Doctor Era

The Third Doctor. When he's trapped on Earth he comes across as far more of an aristocrat than the grumpy, conniving old man or the genial hobo who preceded him. When the freedom of "Time" is taken away from him, what's left is the "Lord". He even fits the mould of the cash-poor, eccentric British aristocrat forced to work for a living.
In the famous 7-part epic "Inferno", the Doctor travels to an alternate world which he sees consumed by fire, returning to his own world just in time to prevent it from suffering the same terrible fate. This story works well enough on its own, but it got a little nod in the subsequent story "The Mind of Evil", where a computer can project your worst fear in front of you. For the Doctor, it's fire. At first it seems like a nice little reference, that the story "Inferno" was so traumatising for the Doctor he isn't able to forget about what happened... until you realise that being afraid of fire is a little too simple for someone like the Doctor, isn't it? By this point he had already encountered Autons, Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, Silurians, robot Yeti, and even THREE rogue Time Lords in the Monk, Master, and the War Chief and yet, out of all of those, the thing that scares him the most is FIRE. And why would that be? Because everything else is sentient to some degree. The Doctor is most famous for talking his way out of danger, no matter how difficult it may seem to do. In "Midnight", we saw what happened when this ability was removed from the Doctor entirely, and turned against him as a weapon. In "The Mind of Evil", we see that's what he's most afraid of, facing an enemy he can't talk to, can't reason with, can't argue with, can't manipulate. Fire is an unrelenting force of total destruction and chaos, it doesn't pick enemies, it just destroys everything. That's why the Doctor is afraid of fire, because it's more dangerous and unpredictable than any of his other foes.
- It's also not improbable that Time Lords, being as time-sensitive as they are, may have some kind of foresight/future sight, even if not conscious (In "The Fires of Pompeii," he tells Donna that he can see "everything that was, everything that could be, everything that must never be"). Maybe it's subconscious foreshadowing of Gallifrey burning?
Grun, in "The Curse of Peladon," does an awful lot of Flynning during his duel with the Doctor. The Doylist explanation is that the actor probably doesn't have a lot of staff training. However, the Watsonian reason may be that Peladon, being a technologically advanced society, probably doesn't have a lot of staff training for its warriors either! Most likely, the post of King's Champion is an old-fashioned one, and there aren't a lot of duels to the death nowadays, with him being kept on out of tradition. Indeed, it's implied that the trial by combat is an archaic practice.
Omega being a Large Ham actually makes a kind of sense when you realize the guy has had no one to talk to for millions of years. He's probably used to being melodramatic just as a way of keeping himself company.
The Third Doctor's distaste for his prior incarnation, especially in "The Three Doctors," makes a lot of sense when one realizes that due to the actions of his predecessor, he's been imprisoned on Earth and watched Jamie and Zoe lose almost all their memories of him. No wonder he's bitter! Notably, when they meet again in "The Five Doctors," their relationship has improved somewhat (they're still Vitriolic Best Buds, but without quite so much sting), since (as he recognizes Sarah Jane) this is a Third Doctor who's now free of his exile.
- Of course, it also reflects how Jon Pertwee warmed up to his Real Life predecessor.
In "The Time Warrior", the Third Doctor states that he has met Sontarans before. Given that this was the first time we viewers saw a Sontaran onscreen, we might naturally wonder when the Doctor met them. But watch "The Two Doctors", and you may have your answer — if you believe in the 'Season 6B theory', then the Second Doctor may have been the one who first encountered Sontarans. If not, it's easy to believe there's some other kind of Noodle Incident.
The Daleks from "Death to the Daleks" seem bound and determined to live out Contrived Stupidity Tropes, gliding obliviously into traps and falling prey to some really obvious trickery. In the wake of "Into the Dalek", where it's confirmed that Daleks' brains are interlinked with computers programmed to edit their memories and thoughts, it seems more plausible: while the City couldn't drain all of a Dalek's power, it may have drained enough to inhibit that linkage and cut the Daleks off from the computers they'd usually depend upon to make tactically-advantageous decisions. Not used to thinking without such enhancements, they started making mistakes they normally wouldn't have.

Fourth Doctor Era

Physiognomy is the belief that you can determine someone's personality by looking at their facial features. The Fourth Doctor in "Robot", when he looked in the mirror just after regenerating and said, "As for the physiognomy..." At first you think, "He used the wrong word! He should have said physiology!" But he didn't make a mistake. He said exactly what he meant to say. He was looking at his new facial features to try to figure out who he was.
- Or, perhaps, what other people who adhere to such a belief might think of him at first glance. Even if the Doctor doesn't judge by appearances, he knows that plenty of others do.
In "Pyramids of Mars", when Sarah sees the vision of Sutekh in the TARDIS it is assumed that this is of the imprisoned Sutekh. But consider that Sutekh is supposed to have lost his powers to influence the outside world while imprisoned. Then consider that in the vision, Sutekh is not wearing his mask, and the TARDIS is going back through time when it occurs: perhaps the vision is of Sutekh *after* he escaped.
The end of "The Hand of Fear", where the Fourth Doctor leaves Sarah back on Earth rather than taking her to Gallifrey, makes a lot more sense when you remember that the last time the Doctor introduced humans to his fellow Time Lords (albeit unwillingly), their response was to wipe their minds of all the adventures they'd had together after their first and dump them back home. Upon having to return to Gallifrey, the Doctor didn't want Sarah to suffer the same fate as Jamie and Zoë, and so decided to leave her behind. Which adds increased poignancy to their final conversation:
Sarah: Don't forget me.
The Doctor: Oh, Sarah. Don't you forget me.
In "The Deadly Assassin", we learn that the emaciated Master was found by Chancellor Goth on the planet Terserus, and then brought back to Gallifrey. In the parody episode 'The Curse of Fatal Death', the alternate Ninth Doctor (Rowan Atkinson) explains that the Terserans were a flatulent race who were wiped out when they discovered fire. Given his record for causing as much trouble as he can in the cosmos, it would be completely in character for the Master to have been the one who introduced the Terserans to fire, whereupon he was also engulfed in flames, leading him to the freakish burnt zombie state in which Goth found him.
"State of Decay" seems silly at first, with the vampires that look so much like something out of a Hammer Horror film. However, it makes perfect sense - they were originally astronauts from Earth, and had deliberately modeled themselves (and the whole set-up of the village and the tower) on their own perception of vampires.
The presence of the Watcher in "Logopolis" makes a lot more sense if you consider how, in "Planet of the Spiders", Cho-Je turned out to be a mental projection from the Doctor's onetime guru, the Time Lord hermit who'd inspired him as a boy. When the Hermit regenerated in the Third Doctor's final episode, his projected self Cho-Je merged with him to assist the process; by the time the next Doctor died, Four had advanced in his own mental skills to the point where he could use the same technique to facilitate a difficult regeneration, albeit with a lot less artistry (hence, the Watcher not looking much like Peter Davison).

Fifth Doctor Era

It's quite easy to notice that the Fifth Doctor's celery isn't a real piece of celery. But here's the interesting thing - it was never real! He got it in Castrovalva, which turned out to be entirely artificial. The stick of celery is the last little trace of the imaginary city of Castrovalva. And later he replaces it in "Enlightenment", in another place that's not quite real, or at least on his level of reality.

Sixth Doctor Era

It took me a while to understand why Trial of a Time Lord was initiated from a Watsonian point of view. While the Sixth Doctor was held on trial for the crime of genocide against the Vervoids even though the Sixth Doctor didn't commit said genocide at the moment of said trial. However, the Sixth Doctor did run into his past self as the Second Doctor during the events of The Two Doctors. The past two on-screen multi-Doctor stories "The Three Doctors" and "The Five Doctors" were exceptions to the first law of time, given that the Doctor was given explicit permission to cross into his own time stream. However, "The Two Doctors" was not a multi-Doctor event authorized by the Time Lords. So the Sixth Doctor is summoned to be on trial because he unofficially crossed over into his own time stream. But given that sentence alone wouldn't be good television drama, the charge was changed to genocide of the Vervoids. And given that the Time Lords are self-serving bastards, it would not be out of character for them to fix the trial against the Doctor.
- There's also the fact that the Sixth crossed his own timestream to rescue his younger self from the Sontarans (and if you go by the Season 6b theory, the latter was on an unofficial mission from the Time Lords, so it was to benefit them as well). Even the Time Lords would have a hard time arguing against that one. However, the genocide is much easier to blame him for.
- With that said, it would make sense why The Second Doctor was executed during the War Games, when one considers the events of Twice Upon a Time. The First Doctor crossed time-streams with the Twelfth Doctor. While the Twelfth Doctor was not bound by the laws of Gallifrey from his point of view, the First Doctor was. And as such, the Doctor was put on a brief trial and found guilty of interference and so was sentenced to exile on Earth throughout the 70s. If the First Doctor had not regenerated during the Tenth Planet, then there would have been a good chance he would have been forced to regenerate as an aftermath to The War Games.
- Supplementary material ("The Eight Doctors" by Terrance Dicks) shows that the Time Lords actually set up the whole charade to distract the Doctor from looking into what happened with Ravalox and the massive amounts of corruption going on amongst the Time Lord elite. As noted above, having an excuse to pick on the Doctor just makes it easier.

Seventh Doctor Era

In "Delta and the Bannermen", Goronwy is implied to have knowledge a normal human shouldn't, such as giving a smile and a wink when the TARDIS disappears right in front of his eyes, and in general his Dissonant Serenity throughout the story. But then "The Stolen Earth" has the Doctor reveal that some bees are actually alien, and very intelligent at that. Presumably, the bees have told Goronwy everything he needs to know! Indeed, he indicates this himself:
Goronwy: I shall ask my bees. They know everything, you see.
In "Battlefield", the Brigadier surviving what's set up as a Heroic Sacrifice is actually quite a clever subversion of the trope. The whole serial has been about a conflict between Warriors, but the Brig's not a Warrior, he's an Old Soldier. At the end of the serial, it's the Soldier who sets things right. The Brig doesn't want to be a capital-H Hero who makes a Heroic Sacrifice, he just wants to do the best he can, and go home to his flowerbeds. And he does.
"Remembrance of the Daleks":
- There are a crapload of blatant Internal Homage elements in the serial — the presence of the Coal Hill School and Foreman junkyard, Ace finding Susan's book on the French Revolution, and so forth — but there's a marvelously subtle one when Ace, talking to a new friend, expresses confusion over the monetary system because she's in 1963 so it's pre-decimalisation. Susan, in "An Unearthly Child", gives a wrong answer in class because she's forgotten decimalisation hasn't happened yet.
- At one point Mike Smith is right in the sights of a Dalek that has a direct shot aimed at him — and it misses. Obviously, we can chalk this up to simply a moment of extreme good luck on Mike's part or the Dalek being a very poor shot — except the story later reveals that Mike is a traitor informing on the military's actions to the neo-Nazi group affiliated with one of the Dalek factions. It's possible that the Dalek was under orders to 'make it look convincing' but that Mike, being a valuable source of intelligence, wasn't to be harmed — at least, not until he had outlived his usefulness.
- According to supplementary materials and Word of God, "Remembrance of the Daleks" is considered the first official shot in the Time War. Why, when the Time Lords and Daleks have been engaged in taking shots at each other as early as "Genesis of the Daleks"? Well, in this story, the Doctor identifies himself as "President-Elect of the High Council of Time Lords"^note before manipulating Davros into unleashing the Hand, and as such, this isn't just shadowy warfare any more: It's an official action by the leader of the Time Lords!
- Sylvester McCoy's Doctor playing an active role in the Time War explains his actions in other stories as well. Why is this Doctor, more than any other, taking an active role in defeating ancients enemies like Fenric and the Gods of Ragnarok? Because he's frantically trying to deal with any powerful enemies that could conceivably ally with The Daleks against Gallifrey. He's also responsible for sending the Hand of Omega and the Nemesis statue back to Gallifrey—defeating potential enemies and stocking their own armories at the same time.
In "The Happiness Patrol", the Doctor defeats a Cold Sniper by talking to him. At first, this seems like he used some kind of psychic powers. However, it was not, it was reverse psychology. The gunman was used to killing from a distance; to picking off abstract forms through his scope without ever thinking of them as people. He'd never had to look someone in the eye while he was killing them, and the Doctor knew it and used that against him. When he was confronted with the fact that he was killing people, he could no longer bring himself to do it, and thus stood down.
"Ghost Light". Really, the entire serial is a commentary upon evolution in general, as well as a massive tribute to the era that brought up the theory - the Victorian Era. And if this wasn't enough, the entire story is disguised as a freaking alien invasion told with the tropes of a Victorian-era horror story... and finally, we have a story that also has the companion Ace dealing with her past and moving on with her life, as the entire theme of the story is also about change in general! It's just such a shame that this serial almost doesn't make sense without multiple viewings or seeing the documentary and commentary attached to the DVD release...
It most definitely was coincidence, but the final serial "Survival" does have a solid Bookend for the Doctor and his journey since the beginning of the show. In his very first story, he was willing to bash a caveman's head in to survive, but was shamed by Ian into showing mercy. Here, he's about to bash the Master's head in the same way, but this time he stops himself and comes to his senses. If we fight like animals, we die like animals. One way or another, humans helped the Doctor find... well, his humanity, or rather his compassion for living things.
- Ace's arc also ties into the Doctor's as well. She felt such a thrill from the animal planet all she wanted to do is run, just like the Doctor did from Gallifrey. At the end, he tells her the best of the animal planet will never leave her. Thanks to his fondness for humans, the best of the Earth is always carried with the Doctor even when the planet is no more (see "The End of the World"). And in the end, they carry on as only they could: going back to the TARDIS for more adventure, just like we hoped.
- Additionally, Survival has some subtle themes with An Unearthly Child. Throughout the serial, there's this emphasis on survival of the fittest. In the first serial, the First Doctor was very much the character to kill another if they got in their way. And the entire planet is set on a dead and decaying planet, whose inhabitants are these Cheetah-Humans implied to be humans mutated by the planet's environment of hostility. And these Cheetah-Humans live about in rather vicious tribal like groups, with carcasses of the dead and skulls of their victims scattered about the environment. The very first serial was an adventure to the year 10,000 BC featuring tribal cavemen. The very first serial dealt with the nature of survival of the entire group. Both the very first serial and the very last serial of the classic series dealt with the basic human argument between people being more inclined to dominate another person when given the choice and freedom of choice and people are shaped by their experiences and are inclined to make decisions based on said expereinces, with many leaning towards the notion of good. The Master and the Cheetah-Humans follow the ideology of Hobbes, either killing others for the thrill of the chase or controlling others for the sake of holding dominant power. The many humans trapped on the planet of the Cheetah-Humans are found susceptible to the planet's influence but the majority who stayed with the Doctor were able to return safely. Ace was nearly turned into a Cheetah-Human, but her experiences with her Professor kept her human. And the Doctor himself, as mentioned, nearly fell to the planet's influence but his experiences prevented him from turning.

The TV Movie

In the TV movie, the Seventh Doctor is forced to land when the escaped Master sabotages his TARDIS. When he steps out of the TARDIS, he ends up in the middle of a gang war and is gunned down on the spot. Remember what was wrong with the TARDIS? The screen said "critical timing malfunction". In other words, bad timing. The reason the Doctor isn't killed every time he first sets his foot on a new planet is because his ship is programmed to have good timing.
Also from the McGann movie, when Grace and the Doctor walk into the TARDIS, within moments she understands the concept of the interior and the exterior being in separate dimensions. The Doctor seems surprised by this. But, just before Grace says this, she's rubbing her wrist where she was burned by the Master's... discharge. Conclusion: this was the first sign that the Master was controlling her. And, about a minute later, she's got black eyes and is bashing the Doctor with the neutron ram.

Fridge Horror

General Classic Doctor Who Fridge Horror