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Series 1 (Ninth Doctor / Rose) Fridge
Fridge Brilliance — Series 1
- Nine's TARDIS "desktop" is by far the most organic-looking for the entire series. How come? Because the Doctor's just spent so very long fighting Daleks — corrupted creatures sealed up alone inside robotic war machines — that he doesn't want to feel like he's surrounded by stark, hard-lined machinery.
- A rather small one. It's been implied that the Doctor was an outcast and lonely as a child on Gallifrey. He apparently performed poorly in numerous classes and didn't even have proper training to control the TARDIS. After the Time War, nearly every Time Lord he ever knew was dead. He likes going on about how he's so clever, with that cheeky grin of his. Of course he'd constantly being going on about how clever and intelligent he is. After all those years of being considered the lonely outcast idiot of Gallifrey, as one of the only ones left, he now finally feels intelligent in comparison to the rest of the universe's inhabitants. In the midst of all that tragedy and loss, he's finally not an inferior being any longer. Looking back on the Time War, it's the only good thing to come from the entire ordeal. In his more insistent and angry moments, it can be him gloating not just about himself, but the intelligence of the Time Lords as a race, him defending their honor and reputation as (so he believes) its last living representative.
- Or, you can see it as vengeful. They've forced a regeneration on him, exiled him, sent him on missions to change history while condemning him for doing it himself. After the Sixth Doctor's speech about corruption of the Time Lords, it makes you wonder if there's a small part of him, a part he hides and hates about himself, that takes a sick pleasure in them getting their comeuppance.
- To say nothing of Rassilon's Final Sanction, which gives him a much better reason than how they'd treated him to be conflicted about whether their fate was tragedy or karma.
- Or, you can see it as vengeful. They've forced a regeneration on him, exiled him, sent him on missions to change history while condemning him for doing it himself. After the Sixth Doctor's speech about corruption of the Time Lords, it makes you wonder if there's a small part of him, a part he hides and hates about himself, that takes a sick pleasure in them getting their comeuppance.
- In "Rose," it seems rather out of character that the Doctor brushes off Mickey potentially dying when the Consciousness was through with him. Usually, every life matters for the Doctor. However, we later learn that he suspected Mickey was alive all along ("they might have needed him to maintain a copy"), he's just impatient and doesn't feel like coddling Rose.
- The inclusion of the pop song "Toxic" by Britney Spears in "The End of the World" might just seem to be an amusing little scene, but if you listen to/read the lyrics, it actually perfectly describes what it's like to travel with and maybe fall in love with the Doctor; much like Rose did:A guy like you should wear a warning
It's dangerous
I'm falling
There's no escape
I can't wait
I need a hit
Baby, give me it
You're dangerous
I'm loving it
Too high
Can't come down
Losin' my head
Spinnin' 'round and 'round
Do you feel me now? - In "Father's Day", looking closely at the cars will inform a keen-eyed viewer that the license plates are all wrong, they're modern, as if the cars (which are meant to be in the 80s) were registered in the present day. Now the obvious reason is that it was a mistake in the production, but in the context of the episode, it totally makes sense. Rose changes history, 80s radios are playing modern music, phones are repeating Alexander Graham Bell's first transmission, etc... it makes sense that car license plates might also glitch out for ones that don't even exist yet.
- Charles Dickens was a noted skeptic who spent his free time exposing mediums as frauds. This is even alluded to in "The Unquiet Dead", where he flat-out states he refuses to believe in ghosts and magic. And what do we learn by the end of the episode? That the Gelth were lying with every word they said. They were never in danger, they were never few in number, they were just using the Doctor by playing on his sympathy and pity. So basically, Dickens had it right all along, it was all one big ruse, a giant sham, a massive trick being played on all of them, and only he picked up on it, except he was pointing the finger at Gwyneth, not the Gelth.
- When you look at the episodes involving Rose's stint as a time deity, it's clear the reason the Doctor lands where and when something bad is going to happen each episode is because the TARDIS knows he was there and then from information gathered from the Time Vortex. This is why it seems there are so many times in which the Doctor ends up off course from his intended destination.
- Confirmed as of "The Doctor's Wife". She says that she always takes the Doctor where he needs to go.
- While reading the article on Colin Baker, and specifically, what the Sixth Doctor was supposed to have been like, I realized that the Ninth Doctor is essentially the Sixth Doctor, but done well. Like Six, he outright insults and belittles some of his companions, and is generally Darker and Edgier. ("You would make a good Dalek.") However, Nine has a damn good reason to be a little angry at the world. Also, he gets better over time, and by the time he regenerates into Ten he's once again an All-Loving Hero ("What are you, a killer or a coward?" "Coward, any day")- just like the original plan for the Sixth Doctor. Heck, even Nine's clothing reflects this — if you take Six's infamously garish coat, Paint It Black and make it leather, you've essentially got Nine's signature U-Boat Captain jacket.
- Confirmed by pretty much as close to Word of God as you can get, Colin Baker himself said that the Ninth Doctor was what he wished his Doctor could have been like if not for Executive Meddling, even down to preferring Nine's black coat to his colorful one.
- Just a little one I noticed when Nine says he was on a ship that was called "unsinkable". In "Rose", we hear about Nine saving a family from the Titanic. At first I just brushed it off as plot-hole or discontinuity, but then I realized that he probably lived through the Titanic (maybe to see what it was like) and then went back to save this family from A) dying and B) seeing an earlier version of him (according to the expanded universe, a whole bunch of Doctors were on the ship at different times).
- It seems odd that in "The End of the World" the designers of Space Platform One would put an essential emergency override switch behind a giant fan over a long walkway; an obvious No OSHA Compliance Contrivance. But earlier, the Doctor notes that the people tend to talk of Space Platforms like they did with the Titanic — namely, words like "unsinkable" tend to be raised, with the Doctor archly mentioning that last time he was on a ship called that, he ended up "clinging to an iceberg". As well as an obvious "disaster" reference-point, one of the things that made the Titanic such a notorious tragedy was that, while oversupplied with lifeboats by comparison with relevant law, she didn't have enough boats on board for everyone on the ship and spare lifeboats that turned out to be essential were tucked away in awkward-to-reach places because it was assumed that, with all of her safety features, they would never be needed; even if the ship did founder, she'd stay afloat long enough for help to arrive. Far from just being another danger contrivance, the safety switch is intended as a reflection of that same arrogance; the designers have provided a safety feature, but they've dumped it in an inconvenient, awkward-to-reach place because, erroneously and arrogantly, they assume that no one will ever need to use it.
- Speaking of "Rose", it's been implied that the Doctor has had multiple adventures in his ninth incarnation before he met the title companion. However, he seemed surprised by his appearance when he used Rose's mirror. It's not an error. If you've recently caused the destruction of both races, would you look at yourself in the mirror? It explains why his outfit is rather plain for the Doctor; he wants to avoid being stylish to look in the mirror (like with the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors), preferring function over form. It also explains why his TARDIS console room is more organic with few shiny panels and equipment: no reflections.
- In the e-book The Beast of Babylon, it is claimed the Doctor has adventures between dematerializing at the end of "Rose" and returning to tell her the TARDIS travels in time.
- "The Day of the Doctor" reveals that the Ninth lasted for about a hundred years, so there's plenty of room for pre-Rose adventures.
- Or perhaps the adventure he'd been on just before meeting Rose had permanently altered his face without using up a regeneration. No shortage of disguise mechanisms or shape-changing in the Whoniverse, after all.
- My friends have commented how strange it is that Jack Harkness uses British words and slang when he's supposed to be an American. Well, he's an American from the 51st century, so by that time, American English and British English have probably mutated into completely separate languages. Therefore, the TARDIS is translating Jack's Future!American into Modern!British.
- In "Utopia" he states that he was stranded in England for several centuries, waiting to catch up with the 21st century the long way. He had a lot of time to adapt.
- Of course, he's not really American, he's Boeshane. Perhaps the Boeshane dialect sounds similar to American English but preserves British vernacular.
- It's also possible that he picked up on Rose's accent and clothing-style and placed her roughly early-to-mid 21st century England on Earth. As we see in "Boom Town", when he meets Mickey, he's struggling to handle English slang of the time ("But 'bad' means 'good', right?"). What could have happened is he just adapted to Rose's language, being a Time Agent he probably had access to something like an archive of languages and dialects in order to blend in. With Mickey, he didn't have his ship anymore and had to play catch-up on his own.
- In "The Parting of the Ways", when Rose absorbs the power of the Time Vortex, the TARDIS is shown flying into the future. When it does so, the TARDIS remains upright, stays reasonably centred relative to the screen, and has a fast lateral spin. While it certainly adds to the urgency of the scene, it also demonstrates Rose's temporary omnipotence in that she can fly the TARDIS much better than the Doctor can.
- In fairness, she was controlling the TARDIS directly, whereas the Doctor uses the console controls, which were never intended to be operated by only a single pair of hands.
- Also he leaves the hand brake on.
- He likes the sound.
- I've seen a lot of hate about this from Classic fans, as it would mean every other Time Lord from classic Who also left the hand brake on — which does seem a stretch. Until you consider that this information might have only been available in the manual. And who exactly reads that?
- Romana does. She lands the TARDIS with the manual open right in front of her eyes. And being the Hermione Granger/Twilight Sparkle kind of character she is, it's extremely unlikely that she wouldn't do anything perfectly by the book. AND IT DOES THE NOISE. Some think it isn't even the TARDIS but the Time Vortex itself that makes the noise when you take flight or land "on" it.
- People forget that River Song was taught by the TARDIS itself. Time Lords may have used them, but perhaps even they didn't know everything there is to know about TARDIS. Heck, considering it can rework all its rooms and its consoles to however it likes, it's not surprising that one would have trouble knowing all the ins and outs about a TARDIS.
- The TARDIS herself seems to like the sound; at least, it's how she self-identifies in "The Doctor's Wife". Perhaps Sexy used her ability to alter her own structure to edit the manual to ensure that everyone would leave the brakes on?
- Shouldn't we hear a similar sound in at least some of the instances where we see a vortex manipulator used? At least once ("The Sound of Drums"), we actually see an opening into the Time Vortex; if that's where the sound originates as well, presumably it'd be audible at that time. On the other hand, the Untempered Schism does seem to have a similar noise associated with it, so who knows?
- Perhaps River was just teasing her husband, as she so often does (Word of Moffat supports this). Those "little blue boring-ers" might merely have activated some sort of active or passive noise cancellation system.
- It is worth mentioning that almost every time we see a Time Lord away from Gallifrey, they're flying solo. As stated by the Doctor, a TARDIS requires six pilots to fly properly. According to the manuals available, a TARDIS with the brakes on is easier to pilot. Which makes sense, actually.
- On that note, the reason why in Classic Who the Doctor never gets where he's going, yet the TARDIS flies smoothly: In "Castrovalva", he turns the TARDIS onto manual mode, which makes it go more directly to its destination: the first flight after doing so, the TARDIS shakes around at Nu Who levels. This means that manual gets the TARDIS to its destination (albeit dangerously) while automatic gives a smoother, safer ride to somewhere, but almost never gets the TARDIS where it wants to go. The TARDIS is on manual for all of Nu Who!
- Which also makes perfect sense when you consider that the controls were designed for a crew of six. The automatic compensates for the missing five crewmen, and compensates really well regarding safety and stability, but is utter balls at navigation; manual mode with one pilot lets that one pilot do all the navigating himself and thus do it more reliably, but at the cost of not having anything to compensate for the safety and stability additional hands at the controls or an automated simulation thereof would bring.
- Or maybe the New Who TARDIS shakes around more because Gallifrey used to broadcast a signal into the Vortex that all TARDISes used to maintain their stability, similar to how air traffic control and GPS satellites maintain a constant orientation-signal for Earth's vehicles today. No more Gallifrey, no more guaranteed stabilization.
- Completely separate note, but honestly under the same topic. Am I the only one to notice (after going back and watching for fun) that Bad Wolf Rose's tone of voice and choice of wording seems to imply more than just having absorbed the Time Vortex's power...but linked to the Doctor's TARDIS itself (unless that was indeed the point of the later episode).
- In hindsight, Rose does a lot of things throughout the first season that seem contrived at best. She touches the disabled captive Dalek without being harmed (the episode established that the last person who tried that got burnt to a crisp) and this causes the Dalek to be restored. On Satellite 5, she is able to break free of her bonds when it takes the Doctor quite a bit more time to free himself even with Rose now helping him. Most likely this is some sort of temporal backwash from Bad Wolf messing with time and space so Rose can save the Doctor.
- For the Dalek episode, at least, we have something resembling an explanation. The Dalek is restored by Rose's touch because she's a time traveler, and is therefore soaked in the background radiation of the Time Vortex, which Daleks can use as fuel. It's possible that, because the last person who touched the Dalek was just an ordinary human, the Dalek killed him trying to take his energy to repair itself.
- In "The End of the World", as Cassandra dries up and explodes, the 9th Doctor speaks the line "Everything has its time and everything dies." As he walks off you can see the Face of Boe in the background, and you can see he's moving nervously in the jar, as if he tried to get the Doctor's attention. Foreshadowing?
- A possible explanation I came across for the Jack is the Face of Boe issue: The one big problem she saw with it (well the one big problem which can't be explained away by Who soft science anyway) was that Boe died, whereas Jack seemingly can't. Then she realised that Jack's immortality comes from his having a direct connection to the Vortex — the source of all of time. The Doctor is immediately repulsed by Jack's "wrongness", but think about it — the Doctor sees the Vortex in his head all the time, and it's seemingly endless. If he's looking at the Vortex via Jack, then Jack, equally, will seem endless. But even time itself has an end, and it's not impossible that Jack's immortality can be broken.
- A second possible explanation: Jack started out as a normal, albeit incredibly horny, human, but Bad Wolf, being something of a god, made it so that he would eventually change species (?) and become the Face of Boe — specifically so the Doctor can interact with him. Stable Time Loop ahoy!
- In "Gridlock", the cat guy mentions that someone once stood in the fumes for 20 minutes and grew a gigantic head. I always thought this referred to Captain Jack, and that the noxious fumes meant that not only did Jack become the Face of Boe, but it possibly reversed his immortality. After all, alien fumes... Why not?
- Related subject, but inspired by something completely different written on the site: Jack has to have died (has to die if he wasn't the Face of Boe). If he is to never have died, the universe would be completely full of him despite being infinite (unless of course he turned into some sort of energy being or the like that lived outside of time, restarted the universe when it collapsed, etc.). Since he can travel in time, and has an infinite amount of time to fill, then Jack would show up more than two or three times in the Doctor's personal timeline, he'd have enough time to not only spend it insulting (or shagging) every being in existence at least once, but enough time to spend their entire life with them, and still have eternity left over.
- As JET73L stated: If Jack COULD/DID turn into an energy based being at some point, or found that he could exist without physical form, and STILL can't die while in that form, then who's to say he couldn't possess a person and pass his immortality onto that person, or do the same to a person through physical contact, albeit temporarily? If that was the case, then it is entirely possible that the Alliance seen in "The Pandorica Opens" may have tracked Energy Jack down, somehow captured him, and used him to power the Pandorica, as, being the perfect prison, it KEEPS YOU FROM DYING. The Alliance devised the perfect trap for the Doctor based on Amy's memories; they could have used another one of the Doctor's companions to "bait" the trap. Also, as Scarab said, Jack's immortality could be powered by the Time Vortex itself. Once moving to the Energy Being stage of his life (he may be reborn as the Face of Boe later on), Jack may have gained the ability to "see" into the Time Vortex (without being driven mad as the Master was), seen that the Doctor would be captured a la the events of "The Pandorica Opens", was powerless to be captured by the Alliance, and, after both he and Doctor were placed within the Pandorica, took pity upon his former friend, and shared his immortality with him while he was in the Pandorica, at least until the future Doctor outside the Pandorica could formulate a plan. (Probably did the same for Amy after she was placed in the Pandorica also.)
- Jack Harkness mentioned that he can age, albeit very slowly. The cat nuns mentioned the Face of Boe is dying of the one thing they cannot cure-age. The one thing that can kill Harkness, even though it would take billions of years.
- Jack can die for good of old age. But why at that particular time, namely on New Earth shortly after the old Earth got fried. Then it struck me. Rose wanted Jack to live and never see him die within her own timespan. So Jack had to outlive her even when she travels through time. And when was the latest point in time Rose has been at? That day in the hospital on "New Earth".
- Maybe Rose didn't give him infinite life, just a ridiculously insane amount, but given that he's lived almost 5 billion years linearly, and God only knows how much what with time travel and Abaddon and all that, maybe he just wore himself out giving the last to the city?
- A second possible explanation: Jack started out as a normal, albeit incredibly horny, human, but Bad Wolf, being something of a god, made it so that he would eventually change species (?) and become the Face of Boe — specifically so the Doctor can interact with him. Stable Time Loop ahoy!
- Something that took forever for me to realise: Lady Cassandra is a cyborg, the skin graft and brain-in-a-jar being cybernetic components. Making her even more of a hypocrite.
- OK, it isn't much, but the Dalek in "Dalek" must have even more of a reason to destroy humanity due to its absorbing the the Internet. Why? It's simple — Rule 34.
- Gotta wonder...
- And the self-disgust may also be a result of realising what his casing and body resembles.
- Rule 34 applies to everything. Including Daleks. Imagine what it would be thinking if it found Dalek/human images.
- "Captured by the Daloids", anyone?
- And the self-disgust may also be a result of realising what his casing and body resembles.
- The shows picked during "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways" aren't just randomly picked (considering the sheer volume that Lynda mentions), they're specifically chosen to play AGAINST the strengths of each of the heroes:
- The Doctor, a brilliant intellect who, in his 9th incarnation, has struggled to show empathy at times... now part of Big Brother, a show about surviving other people through socialising.
- Rose, slightly ditzy even by 21st century standards with no knowledge at all of the future world they're in... thrown into a quiz show with questions she could never possibly answer,
- Captain Jack Harkness, a former time-agent and military man who's experienced with weapons and killing... starring in a fashion show where he has to strip naked every few minutes. Which ironically enough actually plays to his strengths, go figure.
- The paradox of Pete's survival in Father's Day isn't just what he himself would achieve, it's the influence he'd have as an ongoing living presence in Rose's life. Him living past the point he should have died could have had the probability Rose wouldn't end up in the Henrik's basement that fateful evening or going on to join the Doctor as a companion. In the episode the Doctor suggests she joined him upon learning the TARDIS could travel in time because it was a way to see Pete when he was alive, Rose not fully denying this.
- Without Rose, if nothing else, the Daleks would've carpet-bombed the Earth, and either gone on to destroy countless more lives, or else the Doctor would've activated the Delta Wave. Either way, the ripples would be massive. No wonder the timeline is invested in making sure she joins the Doctor!
- Pete dying was a Turn Left moment for Rose because it influenced when she was supposed to properly meet and join the Doctor except as it was the prime timeline being affected and not a parallel timeline as it was for Donna no Reapers there.
- Additionally, the Time Beetle may well have had some way of keeping the Reapers out of the timeline it created—since the Pantheon of Discord is all about creating chaos, the Reapers would be their antithesis.
- Rose's first trip into the TARDIS in The End Of The World may seem odd to those who had just started watching the Doctor Who reboot to see the Doctor bringing Rose to see the Earth die in a ball of flame, but it seems fitting for the 9th Doctor to take her to see her planet die, because he had just come back from seeing his own planet die in a ball of flame, so he brought Rose along to see the end of the Earth 5 billion years in her future, to make sure she felt the same feeling as he did when his home planet was destroyed in the Last Great Time War.
Fridge Horror — Series 1
- Some Fridge Horror from "Dalek" for you. Given that the Daleks were very intentionally created as Space Nazis in a world which still remembered World War II, the human equivalent to the Metaltron's predicament would essentially be a proud Nazi soldier who has a nervous breakdown and commits suicide after he finds out that the person who gave him a life-saving blood transfusion was a Jew. Not so sympathetic now, is it?
- Nancy from The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances is revealed to be four-year-old Jamie's biological mother, who had him around the age of 15. Given during what time she lives and that she never mentions a former boyfriend/fiancé in any way, it's heavily implied she was impregnated through rape.
Series 2 (Tenth Doctor / Rose) Fridge
Fridge Brilliance - Series 2
- You know how in "The Christmas Invasion", Prime Minister Harriet Jones says she's not supposed to know about Torchwood? She learned about it back in her first appearance in "Aliens of London", when she read the emergency invasion protocols the Slitheen left lying around.
- The Doctor's fumbling with a broadsword during "The Christmas Invasion" seems like a case of Strong as They Need to Be considering his other performances with a sword. But then you realize — he's only been in this body for a matter of hours, and spent most of that lying unconscious. He's not used to this body yet!
- When re-watching "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", I noticed that as the characters go into the ventilation system, the captain talks to them as if he is consoling children. Indeed, they are even being forced to crawl in the tunnels. The Bible emphasizes becoming like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Rose, Toby, and Danny were called a child, virgin, and boy respectively by the Beast. This opened my mind to more religious issues in these episodes, such as man being given dominion over the animals (the Ood's sole purpose is to serve and they are referred to as livestock) and much more. A legitimate analysis could be written on this story arc! -LapineQ
- In "School Reunion", Sarah Jane notes the Doctor's regenerated and he says half a dozen times since they last met. From Sarah Jane's perspective the last Doctor she met was the Fourth, so 4+6=10, makes sense. However, from the Doctor's perspective the last time he would have saw her was in "The Five Doctors", 5+6=11. I'm calling it, unintentional foreshadowing of the War Doctor.
- Moreover: it makes perfect sense that Ten would reference the War Doctor — she saw him step back from killing the Daleks once, in one of his most morally complicated moments. It only makes sense that he'd tell her about the time he seemingly went through with it.
- When Mickey unplugs the children from the computers, they jump up and run immediately, without any disorientation or argument. This seems odd, considering they have no clue who Mickey actually is. But because they're just coming out of the Krillitane-induced trance, it makes sense that they'd still be susceptible to suggestion.
- "The Girl in the Fireplace": Near the end, after the Doctor smashes all those time windows, he tells it that it's going to "die". Specifically, he uses the line "I'm not winding you up." You don't think much of "winding you up" because it registers as a way to keep such a mechanical device running, but "winding you up" is also British slang for "playing a joke on you".
- In "The Age of Steel", it always bugged me why the Cyber Controller was so emotional, but then it hit me: disclaimer Emotions are necessary to make decisions. Logic can give you what will lead to what, but in order to decide, you need programming for this exact event (all but impossible to make work consistently), generalized programming (which gives you a chance to react completely wrong — and gives your enemies something to manipulate), or, yep, one or more with emotions. In other words: the leader. This also makes sense of a later Cybermen episode with the Cyber King. Or shall we call her a queen? The King stays human-looking and overrides the emotional controls. An intentional failsafe, perhaps?
- Not to mention, Lumic wanted to be converted — for the most part, he was perfectly willing. For the rest, emotion needed to be removed to stop them going insane from the trauma, and what they'd become. Lumic would've had months to mentally prepare himself, so his emotions wouldn't need to be repressed. This would also go to explain why the Mondasian Cybermen still showed some emotion — they came about from a species willingly accepting the procedure, and thus the emotional trauma is lessened.
- The Doctor is using psychic paper and it shows him as Queen Victoria's protector when he hands it to her. He's surprised; I figured it was just some malfunction or he'd done it absently, just another title that he hadn't really thought through — because "Protector of the Queen" sounds really good, so it could be reflex. Then I saw Captain Jack and Rose have a conversation about how you can't let your mind wander when using psychic paper, or whatever you're thinking will pop up on the paper. After rewatching that previous episode, I realized that he thinks of himself as such a protector of humanity that, yes, that was just what popped up on the paper — and we never see it, so it could just have been "Protector" or something similarly vague. And her reacting oddly to that could be because he didn't mention it, or because it was vaguer than she was used to.
- It was pretty clear to this troper that, as it's been established the really smart people can do, Victoria simply saw through the psychic paper and, intrigued by this weirdo in a trenchcoat, thought up a quick lie to keep him around. For what kind of assassin would be running around on the Scottish moors with a "wee naked child".
- Really, Victoria might have recognized the Doctor right away. We know from Liz X that stories of the Doctor were passed down for generations, and we also know that there is a portrait of that very incarnation and Liz I floating around the palace. What are the odds that Victoria hasn't seen that?
- Personally I've always seen it another way: in "The Empty Child", Jack hands his psychic paper to Rose, she reads it, then hands it back to him, and he reads something different, which Rose put on the paper when she held it. She didn't mean to do it, she took the paper from Jack to read it, and then her thoughts were transcribed onto it, as is it's function. Notice when the Doctor meets Queen Victoria, he produces the psychic paper, then hands it to her, and it's only then that the Queen actually reads it. She mentions six attempts being made on her life, she carries a gun on her person, and the reason she's travelling by coach is that a tree fell on the railway line to Aberdeen. She could have been in such a panicked state by all that was happening, so panicked that she was carrying a gun on her person purely as a "just in case", that when she met a strange yet attractive man, she hoped he was there to help her, and sure enough, his "credentials" told her exactly what she wanted to see: that he was her protector.
- A minor but noticeable revelation for "New Earth", where the last scene had Cassandra cradling her future self's arms as she desperately pleaded for everybody else to help. But then you notice that a good chunk of the crowd just seems to be running off instead of doing anything, while everybody else just stands there, meaning the reason why no one called Cassandra beautiful any more, and her eventual fall from grace, was because she just happened to show mercy for the sickly. That turned her from a bit of a joke villain, to a rather tragic character to me.
- It also gives a reason why she was so obsessed with being the last "pure blooded" human. After being socially ousted for expressing compassion, a rather human emotion, it makes sense that she wanted to remain biologically human for as long as she did. She must have believed that she would lose her soul if she abandoned her human biology.
- In "New Earth", Cassandra mentions that she chose her favorite pattern for Chip. Why would a woman like Cassandra prefer that particular outlandish pattern? Well, because she preferred the appearance of the last man to call her beautiful...which happened to be herself in Chip's body.
- The Doctor and Rose's relationship never made much sense to me, and in fact downright pissed me off until I took the circumstances into account. The Doctor has just come off of a massive war, lost his entire race, and has every reason to be angsty and depressed, doubting his own judgment and feeling rather lonely. And then he returns to Earth, probably for the first time since the Time War, and God knows how long it lasted. He dashes about, acts all cool and cryptic, takes out the obvious bad guys, and meets a girl, whom he promptly whisks away on a series of adventures. It's just like old times! And since Rose is his first companion since the war — as I rather doubt the Doctor would be willing to pull others into such heated battle — she represents an escape from the hardship of the war and a return to his old adventuring ways, getting to play the hero and having little reason to be all that upset. And then fate takes her away from him simply because she loses her grip. He's back to square one — he's lonely, and has once again lost someone he cares about, and it was the person that to him represented things getting better. This doesn't quite explain his treatment of Martha, but thinking of everything she represented to him might easily lead him to hold her in such high regard.
- I'm also not much of a Rose fan, but I did eventually decide on an interpretation of his obsession that makes her feel like less of a
Relationship Sue to me. As mentioned, he just came out of the Time War. He's had to commit multiple genocides, including that of his own species, murdering all the Gallifreyan friends and family he ever had. As established later in Series Fnarg, most of the universe is absolutely terrified of him, regarding him as an incomprehensible and utterly alien monster who brings death, destruction and chaos in his wake. At this point? He's probably wondering if they're right. Even the ones who look up to him see him as this incredible god-like Memetic Badass. Then all of a sudden he stops by his pet planet for yet another round of his battle with everything ever and runs into this girl who has no idea who he is. To her, he's not the Lonely God or the Oncoming Storm or the Bringer of Darkness, he's just a mysterious weirdo with big ears and a leather jacket. And Rose practically makes reaching out and befriending random people into a superpower. Basically, he latched onto Rose because it's the first time in a long time—probably centuries—that someone's treated him like a person; she gave a lifeline back from total isolation. The fact that she dragged him back from the abyss and he knows it leads him to obsess over her, even though really anyone who had managed to connect to him at that time and that place in his life could have helped him much the same.- I personally believe that the Doctor's relationship with Rose was totally platonic on his end. Rose is literally the first human he encounters after the Time War and Nine seems to use her as a model from which to re-learn human behavior. When Rose flirts with the Doctor and indulges her crush on him, the Doctor sees this a just normal human behavior, how two close friends act, which leads him to accidentally sending Martha mixed messages during Season Three.
- I too agree that this is the case. However, Rose's end is definitely not. I don't just mean the crush she has on Ten either: I'm going right back to Nine. In "Rose", Rose meets a very strange older man who does amazing things and whisks her off for adventures, and has no trouble accepting the situation. But later on we hear how Jackie describes Rose's father to her. Rose didn't join up with Nine because of any crush — she joined up because he serves as a Replacement Goldfish for her dead father. It's only when he regenerates (and starts looking younger and sexier) that her feelings change.
- There's also a matter of who was the Doctor's first Companion — the person who helped him hot-wire the TARDIS for an extended joyride; his granddaughter. As far as he and we know, Susan didn't survive the Time War. Rose also has a few qualities in common with the last companion of the classic series — Ace — in that she's a working class young woman with few better prospects. Rose is hardly the only one rolling Replacement Goldfish here.
- The 11th Doctor says he forms an attachment with the first person this face sees. Rose was the first face Ten saw. Hence he loves Rose and overlooks her obvious flaws, treating her like the perfect companion.
- I'm also not much of a Rose fan, but I did eventually decide on an interpretation of his obsession that makes her feel like less of a
- The plot of "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel" seems to follow a pretty standard action movie-ish plot, and thanks to our heroes, everything works out in the end. But then you take a moment to think, and realise — this is probably what happened on Mondas to the original Cybermen, except there was nobody around to save the day, and no one ever thought to look back upon it.
- Because Cybus Industries is headquartered in the old Battersea Power Station, the episode fits nicely with Pink Floyd's "Sheep" from Animals.
What do you get for pretending the danger's not real
Meek and obedient, you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes
Now things are really what they seem
No, this is no bad dream - Additional brilliance for "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel". Earlier on in part 1, the Doctor throws away a rather quick explanation as to how they ended up in the parallel world by mistake. And in particular, he said that "When the Time Lords kept their eye on everything, you could hop between realities, home in time for tea. Then they died, and took it all with them. The walls of reality closed, the worlds were sealed." And that in itself explains all the 20 minutes into the future looks of the classic stories. Before the Time War, the Doctor could travel across parallel universes. Parallel universes with Earth that has slightly advanced technology compared to the technology from the viewer's home. It explains how in the classic series, Earth could have been under the constant threat of alien invasion with the human population constantly unaware of said invasions because for much of the series, that alien menace of the story could have been the first time aliens have invaded that particular Earth of that universe. It also explains the existence of companions such as Vicki and Zoe, both whom were from a futuristic time period envisioned by the 1960s but realistically wouldn't be possible especially as the real world progresses. Because for those characters and for certain events, those events happen on parallel Earths. All of the events during the revival series more or less revolve around a certain Earth that have been televised since the 1970s at the very earliest.
- Well, many of the invasions happened in small, isolated villages, so they wouldn't have been such as public as the revival series' "everyone invades London every other year." And then "The Invasion" happened while almost the entire human population was asleep. Plus, no Internet or cell phone cameras yet, so word doesn't spread as widely. It also wouldn't make sense for the Time Lords to strand the Doctor in a parallel universe, so we can safely assume all of the UNIT stories happened on "our" Earth. However, this could well explain some of the stories. As for the level of technology being unrealistic, it could easily be explained by time travel and/or the side effects of the Time War retconning things.
- In "Army of Ghosts", when the Doctor is triangulating the origin of the ghosts, and manages to trap one, it starts jerking around and we can hear what sounds like odd electrical sounds, possibly from the machinery the Doctor is using... unless you remember what the Cybermen in this era of the show sound like. Then you realise it's not random electrical sounds... it's a Cyberman grunting and groaning as it tries to free itself from the Doctor's tech.
- In "Doomsday", the Dalek and the Cyberman have their hilarious back and forth about who will identify first. The Dalek doesn't just accidentally identify first: in saying "Daleks do not take orders" in response to a demand for identification, he has effectively complied with an order.
- In "The Girl in the Fireplace", Rose can't understand how the King's wife and his mistress can be friends but by that point it was obvious she was in love with the Doctor and Reinette probably knew that and yet when they met they seemed to get along quite well.
- Which episode was this right after? The one with the love triangle.
- So why did Torchwood never go after the Doctor when he was stuck on Earth during the '70s (or was it the '80s?). Surely they must have some kind of connection with fellow The Men in Black UNIT. Well, three options. 1) Either they're so spectacularly incompetent they totally missed the Doctor running all around the place (doubtful, but possible), 2) Captain Jack, who was working with Torchwood at the time, made some records "disappear", or, probably the most likely, 3) they knew that trying to kidnap the Doctor meant messing with The Brigadier. And even Torchwood is probably smart enough to know not to pick that fight.
- Also, consider the real life situation. UNIT is a UN organization, Torchwood is a British organization. In the 70s and 80s, Great Britain rapidly lost pretty much the entirety of power that it had amassed via centuries of imperialism, America taking it for itself and essentially taking over the United Nations. Britain is a NATO nation, UN member state and this was the height of the Cold War. Even Torchwood doesn’t have the audacity to trigger an international incident by going after the UN’s top agent, thus enraging America, during the Cold War.
- OP here — Good point. Additionally, it's established multiple times that the Brig was absolutely willing to go over his immediate superiors' heads if the crisis was dire enough. Had Torchwood tried to pick a fight with him, he would have gone not just to the UN, but word might well have gotten up to Her Majesty, either directly, or indirectly. Who is a) quite appreciative of the Doctor, and b) directly controls Torchwood.
- Don't forget, for much of the Doctor's time at UNIT, the TARDIS was non-functional. Even if Torchwood initially did have the covert intention of stealing him out from under UNIT's control, they may have opted to wait and see if he could get his time machine working so they could abscond with it, too. But by the time his ride's functionality was restored following the events of "The Three Doctors", the Doctor had proven himself too invaluable for UNIT to give him up without a ferocious political fight.
- And on top of that, UNIT has always seemed to be Genre Savvy when it comes to fighting aliens, with specialized equipment, hiring the best scientific minds they can, etc. Torchwood, on the other hand, is seen taking on Daleks and Cybermen with seemingly regular bullets, let Mickey bluff or fake his way in, and seem to think they can actually control the Doctor. Other than the psychic training, they really show no particular competence at all in this story. Aside from all of the political considerations, it's highly doubtful they could win a straight fight with UNIT either.
- One of the Doctor's Catchphases "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." is first used by him in "Age of Steel". However it's first appearance comes in the previous episode, "Rise of the Cybermen", in which the President of Britain says it to the Cybermen while the Doctor is in the background. There's a very real possibility that, at least subconsciously, the Doctor chose to use the phase to honor the man, he still remembers those he can' save.
- In Doomsday, upon being told that Harriet Jones has been elected President in Pete's World, the Doctor immediately warns Pete about her, it is not entirely surprising that his dispute with his version of Harriet immediately comes to his mind, given that Yvonne took credit for the destruction of the Sycorax during the previous episode, a few hours earlier at most, dredging the incident up in his mind.
- The Doctor says "both sides had secrets" when talking about the Genesis Ark. Given how later stories portray the often negative relationship between the Doctor who fought in the War and the higher-ranked Time Lord politicians (as well as their often negative relationships from before the War), it's no surprise they kept secrets from him!
Fridge Horror — Series 2
- In "The Christmas Invasion", the Sycorax are able to control all humans on Earth with blood type A positive and they position them on the roofs of any tall structures they can find. All 2 billion of them. They showed this included men, women, children, the British royal family, but what about all the babies, handicapped people, patients on life support, prison inmates, the blind, the deaf, not to mention all the countless political leaders? Furthermore, what happened after the control was released?
- Moreover, how many people fell to their deaths while getting into position on those rooftops, because of clumsiness or bad footing?
- Accidents aside, it probably wasn't an issue. The climax reveals that blood control is technological hypnosis, not mind control per se. It can't make you do something too obviously dangerous, and such an order breaks the spell. That was why the Sycorax were trying to rush through a surrender so quickly; they needed to be done before anyone worked out they were bluffing.
- The Doctor says that blood hypnosis can't override the survival instinct, but is he taking into account mental illness? What about the A positive humans who were already suicidal? Could blood hypnosis be the straw that breaks the camel's back?
- Given that they were ordered to march to the edge of the rooftop then stop, and afterwards probably would've been a bit confused (and surrounded by others), hopefully this wasn't an issue. However, it's still possible...
- In "School Reunion", the Krillitane leader instructs his brotherhood to eat the Doctor if they must, but at least save his brain. It was quite firmly established that the Krillitanes have the ability to assimilate traits from the races they conquer. So... does that mean that the Krillitanes could have gained the ability to regenerate?
- Fridge Horror from "Love & Monsters", when you realize that given the thickness of the paving stone girlfriend and their love life, she either has a mouth like the inside of a TARDIS or the lead is such that it explains the whole episode in retrospect.
- The Abzorbaloff can absorb any other living creature and obtain their knowledge, which means he could have absorbed the Doctor and gained the Doctor's knowledge including how to use the TARDIS to travel throughout time and space.
- In "Army of Ghosts", the widespread assumption that the "ghosts" are peoples' deceased loved ones seems like ordinary wishful thinking at work, that's cruelly shattered when they're revealed to be Cybermen that merely look ghostly due to Torchwood's experiments. But there could be more cruelty at work than that: remember that the Cybermen in question are from an Alternate Universe, and one in which people from the show's universe usually have an identical counterpart. So it's entirely possible that many of the "ghosts" really were connected to whomever their "loved ones" thought they were ... but only as their Pete's World counterpart who'd been forcibly "upgraded", not as someone back from the dead. That could well have been Alt-Jackie's actual father whom Rose's mum mistook for her dad's ghost.
Fridge Logic - Series 2
- "The Age of Steel": If the whole point of Cyber conversion is to overcome physical weakness, why is Lumic still chairbound after he becomes the Cyber Leader? One would assume that his physical disabilities, especially his need for a wheelchair, were a major impetus to his invention of Cyber technology in the first place.
- He does get off the throne at the end to chase the Doctor and co. Presumably, he just stayed on it before for dramatic effect.
Series 3 (Tenth Doctor / Martha) Fridge
Fridge Brilliance — Series 3
- The Judoon not leaving enough oxygen in "Smith and Jones" seems incredibly callous—everyone almost died of oxygen starvation, and would have if they'd left it another couple minutes. However, remember that they seem to have a really poor understanding of human nature. Presumably, there would have been enough air for everyone if the patients hadn't been running around, screaming and panicking and using up lots of extra air, at the beginning.
- "Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad." The Doctor is describing himself and two old friends. The Doctor ran, he admits this. The Master went insane. The third? The Rani. She was inspired to do science.
- Alternately, all three refer to the Doctor, who ran away, was inspired to go and explore the universe, and, well...this is the Doctor we're talking about.
- Fridge Brilliance for why the Master had less trouble as Harold Saxon: While the Master always had rhythm, courtesy Rassilon, now he's also got music and his gal. Who could ask for anything more?
- RTD stated that he would have rewritten Adeola's part in "Army of Ghosts" to spare her so she could become the Doctor's next companion, had he seen Freema Agyeman's performance earlier. Now how would that have worked, given that she had been a Torchwood employee and Torchwood had had a hand (knowingly or not) in his previous companion Rose's forced separation from him, given his anger at Jack working for them in "The Sound of Drums"? That's where the Fridge Brilliance comes in, and why the Doctor treats Martha so badly at first; it's not just him grieving over Rose or missing her, it's the fact that Martha looks so much like her cousin at Torchwood. Looking at Martha everyday is a living reminder of Canary Wharf and what he lost there! Poor Martha. Poor Doctor.
- For some reason I've always had an un-explainable liking for Martha Jones, many friends and Whovians often disagree and say she is such a plain character but then it hit me, she really is. She is human, very human no special traits, who else would the 10th choose. Rose Tyler was a god that made herself (the companion of the 9th who was a lonely god) Donna Noble was "special" somehow the universe always noticed her (she attracted the TARDIS), Jack Harkness the man that could never die (created by Rose, became the responsibility of the 10th) and even in the next season Amy Pond the girl who remembered had a time crack leaking into her head for who knows how long before the Doctor got there. Martha was the only companion personally chosen by the Tenth, who was the most human Doctor (so he chose a human doctor... even more brilliant when you realize that she was a doctor in training, not quite a doctor yet), the 9th died wanting to be someone for Rose he wanted to be human so the 10th choose a human companion one that so very human, always in danger usually alone with no help from the Doctor yet always manages to survive somehow: Martha the martyr, the girl who walked alone.
- Indeed, Martha is, of all of the companions in the RTD (and almost all of the Moffat) era, the only one who seems capable of just walking out of the TARDIS and going on with life, rather than centering their life around trying to find the Doctor again. Mickey comes a close second, after a fair chunk of Character Development. Both times he leaves the TARDIS, it is in part because he knows he can't compete with the Doctor for Rose's attention. The first time he also has other people who need him (his grandmother and the Preachers), and the second time, he has nobody who needs him anymore, and sets out on his own. So of course he ends up as companion to a Doctor. Doctor Martha Jones.
- In "The Runaway Bride", there's a passing line of radio dialogue in which the occupant of the tank confirms that "by order of Mr. Saxon" they're approved to blast away at the Racnoss ship. Of course Harold Saxon/the Master would give that order: he recognized the Webstar's design from ancient Gallifreyan history, just as the Doctor recognized the Empress herself.
- More Brilliance implied by that line: The Master and the Doctor became not so different in one respect in that story, because they've both been responsible for finishing off the supreme leader of a race of giant predatory monsters that the Time Lords fought to near-extinction, eons ago. The Master destroyed the vessel of the Racnoss Empress in "The Runaway Bride", and the Doctor sent a rocket through the heart of the King Vampire in "State of Decay"!
- Even more brilliance: In the 70s and 80s, the Doctor and the Master often pulled an Enemy Mine to deal with the Monster of the Week. The Doctor drained the Empress' power and forced her up to her ship, which the Master had destroyed. They're pulling another Enemy Mine without either of them realizing!note
- More Brilliance implied by that line: The Master and the Doctor became not so different in one respect in that story, because they've both been responsible for finishing off the supreme leader of a race of giant predatory monsters that the Time Lords fought to near-extinction, eons ago. The Master destroyed the vessel of the Racnoss Empress in "The Runaway Bride", and the Doctor sent a rocket through the heart of the King Vampire in "State of Decay"!
- Fridge Brilliance for the Foreshadowing of Season 3's arc hinted in "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood". When the school is fighting the scarecrow army, you can hear the boys singing the Pilgrim's hymn (supposedly their school hymn being used as a rallying cry) in the background. Here's how it goes:He who would valiant be
'Gainst all disaster
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master... - In "Utopia", the Doctor is worried as soon as he hears that Professor Yana may be a Time Lord. It seems silly for him to be worried that early, as the chances of it being someone like the Master or the Rani should be miniscule against however many regular Time Lords there were (until "The End of Time" happens and we find out that they were all evil).
- If you consider that he's suddenly recalling the events of "Time Crash" from when he was the Fifth Doctor, where he learnt that he would be facing the Master again in his future incarnation... The look of horror on his face is his realisation that that moment is now.
- Makes sense, but equally the Master has a serious track record of escaping death. If millions of Time Lords are killed and only one survives, there's a 9 in 10 chance it'll be the Master...
- And the Time Lords weren't the most horrible things involved in the Last Great Time War — not by far. If a Time Lord could contrive to escape, why not something worse?
- True. Although there's also the fact that the Master's got Joker Immunity. If I had to put money on any Time Lord surviving the un-survivable, aside from the Doctor himself, it'd be on the Master.
- Another possibility: Yana told the Doctor that he heard drums in his head (I think? It's been a while since I've watched this.) The Master had had the drums since he was a child; when he and the Doctor were still friends, the Master may have told the Doctor about them, and he connected the dots with the knowledge that Yana was a Time Lord.
- In "Evolution of the Daleks", the Doctor is struck by gamma lightning and his DNA is transferred to the "human Daleks". At the time, all I could think was "that's not how DNA works!" Later, I was thinking about regeneration — in which energy changes DNA — and I realized, that is how Time Lord DNA works.
- Hmm, that sounds like foreshadowing to "Human Nature". One of the Visual Encyclopedias outlines the Chameleon Arch's properties, one of which is: "High-voltage electricity compresses two hearts into one."
- The Doctor beating the Master in Series 3 is a victory for humanism over nihilism, by the way.
- In "The Sound of Drums", the drumbeat the Master hears, is believed to be the heartbeat of a Time Lord. When the Doctor said that he "can stop it" he is offering to kill him!
- No. The Doctor's attitude toward the Master can be most succinctly summed up in the single Greek word philia; as can be seen every time the issue comes up throughout the new series, the Doctor never wanted to kill the Master; he wanted to save him. (Even in the classic series, the Doctor had many opportunities to kill the Master, whether permanently or otherwise, and never took advantage of any of them.)
- The four-counts-in-six Time Lord heartbeat is also the basis for every incarnation of the show's theme song.
- This in itself explains why the drumbeat is so instantly catchy, so easily memorable, so simple to replicate (you're doing it now, we all know you are), because we've been hearing it at the start of our favourite show, every single week for over 50 years. It's not just the Master who has that tune stuck in his head, it's all of us too.
- "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords" in season 3, had me seriously off-piste, with the Master saying: "That's your answer, prayer?" in an equally incredulous tone, until I watched it all for the 3rd time (on DVD), and realised that, yay, it really does make sense, with the Archangel Network, and the Doctor having had a year to insinuate himself into it, while being Gollum in a bird-cage... Plus which, there are Moments of Awesome everywhere, and some lines that are simply unforgettable : "If I told you who they really are Doctor, your hearts would break"!
- Add this to the fact that for all it's thrown about being overly messianic, it's not just an ass pull with the Doctor going all Crystal Dragon Jesus on us to save humanity — he was saved by humans first. I find it rather appealing that rather than just be expected to be ingratiated and humbled by this Messianic figure who saved our souls (which is an issue in some interpretations of religion that has always bugged me, and may have led to the some of the less than flattering interpretations of this episode), we actually had to save him before he could do anything. Essentially, humanity saved themselves.
- Now go back to the very beginning of the original series and see what a bastard the First Doctor was before his time with his human companions brought his goodness out. The Doctor's exile (and who knows what other circumstances) had made him a bitter misanthrope. Humans saved him from that and in doing so, created humanity's greatest protector.
- And now we know that it's not just his companions' example that did that, inspiring One to a more worthy stance through humanity's example. It was a Christmas truce, too. No wonder the Doctor had faith that humans' collective humanity would shine through in their darkest hour!
- I've always loved it for reasons already stated, but someone on Gallifrey Base pointed out the true symbolism of the Doctor floating above the Master. It's the latter's greatest fear as visualized by the Keller Machine in his second story "The Mind of Evil" — the Doctor mocking him as he cowers in impotent rage — made real.
- And considering the Doctor isn't mocking the Master, it gives the line "I guess you don't know me so well" a little extra punch.
- And of course, the foreshadowing from right at the start of the season. Martha and the Doctor meet Shakespeare, and discuss how "the right word, in the right place, at the right time" can do anything. What happens at the end of that season? Never let it be said that Davies couldn't foreshadow.
- What especially rubs salt in the wound? "I forgive you." For the Master, that is especially painful, because by forgiving someone, you refuse to let them have power over you any longer. The Doctor has, in the Master's mind, essentially one-upped the entire year's worth of humiliations in those three words.
- In "The Sound of Drums", the drumbeat the Master hears, is believed to be the heartbeat of a Time Lord. When the Doctor said that he "can stop it" he is offering to kill him!
- The obvious Rose parallels in "Smith and Jones", like the close-up shot of the Doctor grabbing Martha's hand for example. I thought they were out of place and that Martha should have her own beginning that doesn't just weirdly compare Martha to Rose. Then I realized that the parallels emphasize the way the Doctor feels about her — he does think of her as a Rose-replacement for at least the first half of season three, and it's likely that the parallels are supposed to make the audience uncomfortable, purposefully comparing apples and oranges.
- I had watched "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" probably 4 or 5 times (choking up at the war memorial scene every time) before I twigged that the allegory attacking the school was an army of straw men.
- This episode is one reason why the Doctor is afraid to regenerate in "The End of Time" — he remembers John Smith's death.
- People wonder why the Doctor is so harsh on the Family, when he isn't usually this harsh even to the Daleks or Cybermen. Well, one reason is that, as John Smith, he got to fall in love and be loved, for the first time in years, or centuries, or maybe ever. He got to see himself as a father and a grandfather again. He got to live a simple, normal, beautiful human life with no monsters or fate of the world decisions. And then the Family ripped it away (after he'd gone to the deliberate effort of running away and trying to be merciful, no less). No wonder he's furious!
- In "Last of the Time Lords", there was a line that bothered me so much that I rewound to make sure the Doctor had actually said that. When the Master is shot and says, "It's always the women," the Doctor says, "I didn't see her." This felt... weird, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I figured it was just because it seemed so much not a reaction to the previous statement; it felt like the Doctor was ignoring the other last Time Lord, who was dying in his arms, and that was rather out of character. Then I realized: The Doctor is trying to convince both himself and the Master that it wasn't his fault. And he's failing. The ending hurts more now.
- The Master's enjoyment of "I Can't Decide" in "Last of the Time Lords" says a fair amount about his state of mind. Aside from the obvious subtext of being unable to decide whether or not to just kill the Doctor, it also shows that he wouldn't trust the Doctor to stay dead (Oh, I could bury you alive/But you might crawl out with a knife/And kill me when I'm sleeping) and slightly implies that he's suffering from extreme emotional problems, to say the least (My heart feels dead inside/It's cold and hard and petrified). It's certainly made this troper view him slightly more sympathetically, even if he is still a raving psychopath. The Time Lords are bastards for what they did to him. - R. New
- Surely the most relevant line of all is "I won't deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone."
- Drafting the Master could have been a backup plan on the Time Lords' part: they brought in the Doctor because he is good at winning, and they brought in the Master because he is good at surviving losing.
- It seemed weird to me that the Simm!Master seemed a lot more psychopathic than previous incarnations, (that I know of, admittedly I haven't watched a great deal of Classic Who.) But the Doctor mentions a sort of species psychic link, in that a Time Lord can always hear another. The Master's mind used to be buffered by hearing all of them, but now there's only the Doctor and the Drums. This is why they feature predominantly in New Who; they sound much louder than they used to be.
- Why were the drums never mentioned in Classic Who? Simple, since Classic Who was before the Time War, there was no need for Rassilon to have planted the drumbeat in the Master.
- Alternatively, its a Stable Time Loop — the drums were there, but the Master didn't consciously notice because the Time Lords don't remember him consciously noting. The reason for why the Master is fully aware of the drums during and after the Time War was because it's the earliest point where they realised just what made him crazy — though they've still been brewing away subconsciously, because altering his history would change the Time War, which plain can't happen.
- Or maybe the Delgado-Master just happened to have regenerated with a personality that was capable of ignoring the drums, a la living people not hearing their own heartbeat. Later, the signal temporarily lost track of him when he hijacked non-Time Lord bodies, so the Ainley- and movie-Masters never heard the drums in the first place.
- Perhaps the drums grew stronger/louder over time, so that they weren't as bad for Delgado? Since the drums were implanted as a means of saving the Time Lords, they might have grown stronger as he came closer to "The End of Time".
- Why were the drums never mentioned in Classic Who? Simple, since Classic Who was before the Time War, there was no need for Rassilon to have planted the drumbeat in the Master.
- The Master being assailed by the sound of drums his entire life makes some of the less... sane... schemes of his previous incarnations make a lot more sense. "Time-Flight"? The Drums were especially loud that day.
- The drums would also explain why he keeps coming back: the drums are compelling him to be a survivor, and with a Time Lord lifespan he's got plenty time to ensure he'll survive.
- Indeed, as of "The End of Time", the drums effectively guaranteed he'd survive the Classic Era and Time War, because they effectively made him into a Stable Time Loop. Had he not lived through both, Rassilon and his Council would never have projected the drum-sounds into his head, in the first place!
- Fridge Brilliance AND Horror — In "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", the Doctor disguises himself as the human John Smith. In the end though, he changes back to himself, but offers Joan to come along with him, saying that everything John Smith is and was - he's capable of that too. So, what did John Smith do? He fell in love with a human, misunderstood and judged, cared and taught, despaired and cried and briefly contemplated to sacrifice the rest of the world to keep on living himself, but decided not to and killed himself. John Smith was basically both Foreshadowing and one big Lampshade hanging on Ten's life.
- The Weeping Angels are like a total inversion of many monsters in mythology. Just think about it — there are a lot of creatures (e.g. basilisks, Medusa, cockatrices, etc.) where you can't look at them or look them in the eyes, or you will turn to stone. With the Weeping Angels, you always have to be watching them. Also, when you look at a Weeping Angel, they are the ones who turn to stone, not you.
- Sort of played straight in "Flesh and Stone", where you learn that you can't look into their eyes anyway.
- So if you want to imagine what life is like for an Angel, the analogy is: a few humans are trapped in a world that is absolutely teeming with basilisks? And the only time a human can move is if a basilisk isn't looking directly at them. Brrrr. No wonder they're so aggressive! We would be too, in that situation. We'd do everything the Angels do. Try to kill basilisks (for food, sure, why not, they're convenient and we'd certainly be starving if we can't move long enough to get other sustenance), try to multiply and take over, etc. In fact the Doctor would undoubtedly be trying to help us escape (if not murder the basilisks) in that instance. Hmmm.
- In "Blink", Larry's seemingly arbitrary fear during the Doctor's timey-wimey conversation with Sally makes sense when you realize that he already knows everything the Doctor is going to say, but has never had the context for any of it. Whereas Sally is more curious than anything, as soon as the Doctor starts describing the Angels, Larry's expression turns to terror because he suddenly realizes that this is the context for the conversation, and the monster that the Doctor is describing is standing just a few feet away.
- We also learn in "Blink" that Sally is the one who gave the Doctor the file to save himself. But we later learn in "The Time of Angels" that "the image of an Angel is, itself, an Angel." Well what's in that folder back in "Blink"? A picture of an Angel. So not only did she give the Doctor what was needed to save himself, she's also the reason he needed saving!"
- I always wondered why Jack overshot his destination with the Vortex Manipulator. Then it hit me: he's worried and confused as to why the Doctor left him there, so he does what any person with a time-travelling device would do: aim for the early twenty-first century. Which is all very well and good; except he forgot that the Vortex Manipulator does not work as a teleport. It only did that from "Utopia" onwards. Seeing as there was no Satellite Five in the early 21st century, he probably ended up in 1869 as a failsafe on the Manipulator's part — take him to a time period where the Earth was in that position.
- Depending on your frame of reference, the Earth is either not moving at all, in which case he should still end up in space where Satellite Five used to be (Which actually oughtn't be a problem for Jack), or it is orbiting the Sun at 30 km/s (108,000 km/h), itself orbiting the centre of the galaxy at 251 km/s (903,600 km/h), itself moving at some 600 km/s (2,160,000 km/h): in which case he'll end up trillions of kilometres away from Earth. Either way, the failsafe wouldn't help.
- What was happening in Cardiff in 1869? That's right. Quite possibly, he aimed for the Doctor and/or a surge in Rift activity, and it worked, but he missed Rose and the earlier Doctor!
- I was re-reading a Doctor Who wiki a bit, and I noticed that the Toclafane (from "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords") were originally conceived
as an alternate to the Daleks in case they couldn't be used in episode 6 of Eccleston's series. And then it hit me: future humanity had basically become Daleks. Granted, they were Daleks on medication, but still just as deadly and cruel. No wonder the revelation broke the Doctor's heart. Also consider the Daleks made from humans and the human/Dalek hybrid seen in previous episodes — it's almost like a sort of subtle foreshadowing.- Almost a subtle reference to this bit of trivia, when they open the Toclafane casing to see what's inside, am I the only one that thinks it looks a bit like Davros?
- Both Brilliance and Horror—what's with the random pig slave sitting in the chair during "Daleks In Manhattan"? Given that they have very short life spans, it's possible that this one was dying and crawled away to spend the end of his life in the tunnels, cold, alone, and unmourned.
- Much was made of how unlike the Master of Series 3 was compared to previous Masters, and it later came to light that John Simm wanted to play the character like a classic Master, but RTD told him to play the character as he appeared: a sick, shoddy travesty of the Doctor, like a sketch-comedy impersonator might play...except he's the villain in a straight Doctor Who episode. The things which seem funny in comedy are suddenly embarrassing and horrifying when performed in a different context. Consider that Professor Yana had only known the Doctor for an hour or so, only long enough to get a rough first impression, but not long enough to come to understand the loss and pain which surround him. As Harold Saxon, the Master compiled notes on the Doctor—Lucy is almost certainly an answer to Rose Tyler—but didn't get the full story, that the Doctor loved Rose and is still grieving for her.
- The entirety of Series 3 is a massive Fridge Brilliance for the entire Harold Saxon arc, the study of The Master as a character, and everything with it:
- First of all, we don't really see Harold Saxon or the Master until the last three episodes of Series 3. But there were always hints that the Master was around, as we know. "The Runaway Bride" established that the Master ordered the military to fire on the Webstar, "Smith and Jones" established that the Master was publically advocating to the public about the existance of alien life, "The Lazarus Experiment" and "42" established that the Master had government agents working directly with the Jones family, telling Francine Jones that the Doctor was a dangerous man and ensured a peaceful cooperation with her as they wiretapped her conversations with her daughter during Martha's travels with the Doctor. All of these actions are in direct contrast as to what the Doctor would do. The Doctor is the type of person who would be in the field, working alongside their companions to solve the mystery and save the day. The Master is very much the person who would work behind the scenes, never getting their hands dirty until all other options were exhausted. The Doctor is also the type of person to not really care what other people think about them, while the Master is the type of person to influence other people to have a better perception of them.
- There's also Professor Lazarus himself. He was financially backed by Harold Saxon for one reason or another. But it's interesting to note that during "The Lazarus Experiment" Professor Lazarus said "I am reborn" while holding his hands out in a bit of a T-pose, similar to how Time Lords regenerate. The Master would later say the words "The Master reborn!" during the end of "Utopia". Furthermore, Mark Gatiss would later play an incarnation of the Master for Big Finish. Is it possible that Harold Saxon backed Professor Lazarus, seeing a lot of his earlier incarnation in him, and would inspire to take his form in the future?
- Then there's all the episodes that don't exactly feature the Master, but they do have elements related to The Master. "Gridlock" established the entire You Are Not Alone, or Yana meme that would later appear in "Utopia". The events of "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood" established the Chameleon Arc, which later again appeared in "Utopia". But what about the other episodes, "The Shakespeare Code", "Daleks in Manhattan", "Evolution of the Daleks", and "Blink"? Well....
- "The Shakespeare Code" was villains that used word-based science. Shakespearen villains in nature. But they established the idea of the "right words being said at the right time" is sort of like magic. That's how Martha was able to undo the Doctor's advanced aging, through telling a story about the Doctor and having everybody speak his name at the right time as a means of empowerment. Bit silly I know, but it provides some answers.
- "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" are harder to establish what connectivity they have to the Master. But consider what happens to the humans in these two episodes and what happens to the humans from "Utopia" in "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords". In Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks, humans were being taken against their will to be experimented upon the Daleks as a means of creating Dalek-Human hybrids. In The Sound of Drums and Last of the Time Lords we see that the Toclafane are basically Dalek-Human hybrids, massacering humans for fun rather than for genetic impurity, but the imagery still stands. Additionally, the Toclafane were intended to be replacements for the Daleks should RTD have been unable to gain the rights to show Daleks on TV from the Terry Nation estate.
- "Blink" introduces the Weeping Angels, the statues that send you back in time after they touch you and let you live your life in the past. This is more of an Actor Allusion than anything but remember what happened to [1] in [2]? The entire premise of the show is about a man from 2000s England ending up in 1970s England due to a deadly touch... albeit probably not from a Weeping Angel.
- Alternatively, the plot of “Blink” being a stable ontological paradox brings to mind a parallel with the previous story in its connection with Saxon - in the “Human Nature” two-parter, a Chameleon Arch was used by the Doctor, before the master is revealed to have used it to hide at the end of the universe in the first part of the finale, “Utopia”. And, as it turns out, a stable paradox, more specifically the creation of one by the Master, is a key plot point in the next part of the finale.
- First of all, we don't really see Harold Saxon or the Master until the last three episodes of Series 3. But there were always hints that the Master was around, as we know. "The Runaway Bride" established that the Master ordered the military to fire on the Webstar, "Smith and Jones" established that the Master was publically advocating to the public about the existance of alien life, "The Lazarus Experiment" and "42" established that the Master had government agents working directly with the Jones family, telling Francine Jones that the Doctor was a dangerous man and ensured a peaceful cooperation with her as they wiretapped her conversations with her daughter during Martha's travels with the Doctor. All of these actions are in direct contrast as to what the Doctor would do. The Doctor is the type of person who would be in the field, working alongside their companions to solve the mystery and save the day. The Master is very much the person who would work behind the scenes, never getting their hands dirty until all other options were exhausted. The Doctor is also the type of person to not really care what other people think about them, while the Master is the type of person to influence other people to have a better perception of them.
- In the Human Nature 2-parer, several characters note the Doctor failing to consider the possibility of falling in love as John Smith, with John in particular being aghast that it wouldn't occur to him. However it is not the case that the Doctor didn't consider love; the very reason he never notices Martha's feelings for him is that he's still mourning Rose, it never occurred to him that, with his memory suppressed, that trauma would vanish, leaving him free to love again.
- For those who don't ship Doctor/Rose, the other explanation is that the Doctor would never fall in love with a human. John Smith, on the other hand...
- Plus, they were only in 1913 for about three months total. It is fairly unlikely that he'd have the chance to form a real attachment to someone that quickly; he was just (un)lucky that Joan was around.
- The Doctor promised that "everything John Smith is and was, I'm capable of that too." Which means that everything Yana was—kind and gentle and self-sacrificing—the Master is capable of, too. And this is actually proven true, as the Simm incarnation does in the finale of "The End of Time, Part 2" and the following incarnation does throughout the latter half of Season 10, culminating in a genuine (but unfortunately brief) Heel–Face Turn.
Fridge Horror — Series 3
- Arguably Fridge Horror. In "Blink", the Weeping Angels are attacking the TARDIS while Sally Sparrow is inside, and nobody is looking at them. Yet, they still turn to stone whenever the lights turn on. Why? Well, someone is looking at them. YOU are.
- This isn't just a throwaway joke either. When Sally gets the TARDIS key from the statue at Wester Drumlins, watch the angel directly behind her in the shot. It's got it's hands held down, revealing it's face, when Sally is crouching to get the key. She stands up, blocking the angel from sight, then when she walks away, we see the angel's hands are now covering it's face. The angel moved when we couldn't see it.
- The two people we see become victims of the Weeping Angels are probably the best case scenario for that situation: Billy Shipton and Kathy Nightingale both manage to live long, happy lives after being sent to the past. Realistically, this is not the most likely thing that would happen when someone with no connections appears out of nowhere raving about being from the future. Either the Angels "kill you nicely" to the point of making sure you'll be sent back to an exact point in time where things will work out relatively in your favor, or Billy and Kathy were incredibly lucky and most other people who encounter the Angels end up, say, homeless or in a psych ward if they live for too long at all.
- I'm re-watching "Blink" and a line stood out for the first time. "Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels. The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death. The rest of your life used up and blown away in the blink of an eye. You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had. All your stolen moments. They're creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy. " All your stolen moments, days you might have had. Something bugged me and then heard something click. From The End of Time Part 2: "You weren't there in the final days of the War. You never saw what was born. But if the Timelock's broken, then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres." The Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres. All the days you might have had. All your stolen moments. I think Weeping Angels were in the Time War!
- Or maybe Gallifrey's arms designers found a way to weaponize the Angels' abilities.
- It looks like Rassilon did. When he marches out to declare the Final Sanction "The End of Time" there are a couple Gallifreyans standing behind him with their eyes covered Angel-style. Punishment perhaps?
- Or maybe Gallifrey's arms designers found a way to weaponize the Angels' abilities.
- "Last of the Time Lords" is generally pretty horrific what with Earth being decimated, and all the awful things that happen to the cast... but it was in retrospect that Jack's fate became easily one of the most Fridge Horrific: for a start his entire team gets sent on a "Wild Goose Chase" to the Himalayas where they no doubt all died of exposure while losing their limbs to frostbite, and then I realized that the Master now has on hand a test subject whom he can't possibly finish off completely. He gets to kill him again. And again. And again. And has probably done so in every horrible, disturbing and painful way he can possibly come up with for the last 365 days. That Jack can still joke about it is a bloody miracle.
- In "Gridlock", Thomas Kincade Brannigan talks to two old ladies, Alice Cassini and May Cassini over the radio and her refers to them as sisters, to which they to tell him to stop as he knows they've been married for a very long time. Brannigan asks them not to mention this around him as he is a "Old-fashioned cat". While this exchange is light-hearted and Brannigan doesn't come across as the type to harbor prejudices it, the "Old-fashioned" comment shows that in the year 5,000,000,053 the humans who are OUR ancestors still have some level of homophobia in their society.
- More likely, the pendulum's swung back and forth many thousands of times, and that particular era's Umpty-New New York just happens to be swinging back from the less-tolerant extreme. Also: might the existence of cat-people in that era be a stealth Continuity Nod to "Survival", the last Classic Who episode?
- Who says it was the fact that it was a same-sex couple that Thomas was objecting to? It could have been the whole concept of marriage, or a marriage with only two people involved, or a long-term marriage instead of a short-term contract, or a marriage with two humans (rather than human and cat) or any number of other factors we'd never even think of.
- That line is probably a reference to the fact that Ardal O'Hanlon's most famous role is as a Catholic priest (though at the same time, Dougal wouldn't have the mental capacity to be homophobic).
- Season 3, episode 3, "Gridlock" has a nice bit of Fridge Horror. At the beginning of the episode, we see a woman who buys Forget because her parents went to the motorway. The way she clearly doesn't care about that, or, presumably, them, is disturbing enough right there, but what about after the episode? The Doctor saves everyone, leads all the cars back up to the surface. How many people who bought Forget are now going to find these people they've forgotten coming back, still caring for them? How many people who left are going to come back to find that their loved ones don't remember them or care about them now?
- Never mind that. What I wanna know is — what happens to the bodies of the people who die in the motorway? Do they get thrown out of the cars?
- None of the people seem old enough to just drop dead, they have unlimited food and fuel so the only causes of death seem to be the giant crabs or choking on the fumes, so anyone dying isn't going to be in a working car to get thrown out of.
- Believe it or not, sometimes people die for reasons other than old age. Those in the Motorway obviously have traditions, such as the singalong with the TV newsreader; presumably some funereal tradition exists as well.
- Plus, speaking realistically, it's noted that people live longer and longer with each passing generation, hence the movements of things like increasing the minimum retirement age. It's possible that in this future world, in terms of dying of old age, you could live to 200, or 300, maybe even older. Nowadays living to 90 is no big deal, but in the medieval era that was an impossible concept. The motorway has been closed for only so many years, it's possible NOBODY died of old age yet
- Never mind that. What I wanna know is — what happens to the bodies of the people who die in the motorway? Do they get thrown out of the cars?
- Also "Gridlock" Fridge Horror: The highway's own rules of the road were inadvertently causing more deaths by directing any cars that had three or more people on board down into the Macra's clutches. The most likely candidates to get shifted down into the deadly "fast lanes", after all this time? Families traveling with kids, whose oldest child just hit the legal age of majority.
- More Fridge Horror for "Gridlock". Pretty horrifying in and of itself, but for this troper, the really scary part was how many people must have lived their entire life on the motorway. It's stated that the motorway's been locked for 24 years. Let's say the motorway considers 21 years an adult. Someone born on the motorway within the first three years would reach adulthood, and assuming they share the car with their parents, would make the car eligible for the fast lane. They'd be eaten by the Macra shortly after. They would live their entire life on the motorway. How many people did Mrs. Cassini say entered from Pharmacytown in the past half-hour? 53? One entrance in half an hour generates 53 cars. Three years is a lot of half-hours from a lot of entrances. Even if that's an unusually large number from one entrance, and even if not too many people give birth on the motorway, it's can't be too uncommon for someone to live their entire life on the motorway.
- A mix of Fridge Horror and Fridge Brilliance: In "Blink", we know that the Doctor and Martha ended up getting sent back in time due to a Weeping Angel. However, it's never explained how this exactly happened. We learn in "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone" that anything that holds the image of an Angel becomes an Angel. The Doctor and Martha haven't met Sally yet at the end of the episode, where she ends up giving them a picture of a Weeping Angel. Makes sense?
- It could be that (but had Moffatt thought that far ahead with what the Angels could do?). It seems more likely that the Doctor, being the Doctor, went straight to Wester Drumlins as soon as he read Sally Sparrow's notes. Because in reading them, it made his and Martha's meeting with the Angels, and subsequent trip to 1969, a fixed point in time (which is the same reason that a time traveller should never visit their own grave).
- Fridge Horror for "The Family of Blood" — it's creepy enough when the Doctor gives the Family a Fate Worse than Death. When you remember that the Family had performed a Grand Theft Me on humans, who likely had friends and family who will forever be wondering what happened to them, it becomes horrifying.
- The school had been attacked by the Family. Presumably the four members would just be considered MIA among a whole host of corpses.
- The house they end up hiding in after the attack on the school is mentioned to be the Cartwrights'. Daughter Of Mine is in the body of Lucy Cartwright. Joan Redford suggested hiding in that house because she guessed (apparently correctly) that the rest of the girl's family would have killed when she went home. If Mr. Clark, the farmer Father of Mine possesses, had any family, presumably the same would have happened to them. So really it's just any relations of Baines (presumably his parents, but they could probably convince themselves their son died in the attacks either on the school or on the village) and the maid (if she had any). Still sad for them, but just imagine your young daughter returning home from a walk and casually killing you...
- In "Human Nature", the Doctor is implied to have spent the entirety of his time in the Chameleon Arch screaming in agony, the process of changing every cell in his body proving quite painful. But that's more or less what regeneration is, with Capaldi's line about his new kidneys showing that even if the basic anatomy is the same, the organs are still remade and so every cell in the Doctor's body is still changing. So just how painful a process is regeneration?
- If it helps, probably not nearly so much... regeneration is a natural process that happens with its own cadence, as opposed to the artificially-induced Chameleon Arch's version. It'd be like the difference between dead skin peeling off and someone taking a skin graft.
- In the Human Nature/Family of Blood two-parter, the Family of Blood are specifically after The Doctor to steal his regenerations. There's four of them, but as the Tenth Doctor, he'd have three regenerations left Actually two, as we'd find out in Day of the Doctor. Even if The Family succeeded, they'd probably end up in an Enemy Civil War over who gets The Doctor's remaining lives.
- It's stated that the Weeping Angels evolved the turning into stone as a defense mechanism. Now, if it's a defense mechanism, that implies that it's either to protect them from natural disasters, or predators. Which might mean that there is something out there badass enough to prey on Weeping Angels.
- Bonus fridge brilliance: based on their complementary gimmicks, it’s probably the Silence.
- In "Time Crash", there's a quick throw-away conversation between Ten and Five about the Master. "Oh, he's turned up again!" "Really? Does he still have that rubbish beard?" "No, no beard this time... well, a wife!" A light-hearted exchange, until you remember the timing: "Time Crash" happens immediately after "Last of the Time Lords", where the Master died in the Doctor's arms, apparently for real this time. When watched in sequence, Ten's flippancy gives a severe case of Mood Whiplash.
Series 4 (Tenth Doctor / Donna) Fridge
Fridge Brilliance — Series 4
- Donna is pretty much a grown-up Lauren from The Catherine Tate Show, with more depth, a different accent, not as smart, and exactly the same attitude. That is, always making little jabs at people to create an emotional distance from her, though Donna does it because she doesn't like to get hurt. Also, Donna is a lot more capable of making proper friends, being nice to people, and empathizing than Lauren.
- Something I keep having to correct every time I see it: in "The Fires of Pompeii", the TARDIS doesn't translate the Doctor's and Donna's Latin into contemporary Celtic. It translates it into modern Welsh.
- In A.D. 79, Chiswick wouldn't be inhabited by Normans or Anglo-Saxons, so what would people be speaking there? Celtic.
- If speaking English sounds like Latin, and speaking Latin sounds like the closest thing to English around, then it would sound like Celtic to the Romans, who probably don't speak anything but Latin or maybe Greek. In fact, it's entirely possible that if the Romans heard real modern English, they might say it sounded like Celtic or another barbarian language.
- The Romans didn't speak Latin. At least, not the Latin we know and get taught. They spoke a more slang version. Just a point.
- Another possible explanation is that while Donna speaking her native language caused the TARDIS to translate it into whatever the Romans spoke at the time, Donna's very English accent when she was trying to speak "real" Latin made the Romans hear exactly what she was saying, which would have sounded very... un-Latin.
- Alternately, the TARDIS is just trolling Donna. That's always a possibility.
- Meta-example. Who better to cast as "the Doctor's Daughter" than the Doctor's Daughter?
- This troper was perplexed with Jenny's survival at the end of "The Doctor's Daughter". She'd thought Jenny regenerated when that time essence came out of her mouth. Naturally, this troper is a NuWho fan, but it finally dawned on her after discussing the Doctor's apparent disabled regeneration in "Let's Kill Hitler" via poison. Jenny survived because she was, technically, within the first 15 hours of regeneration. The progenation machine, built to give birth to fully grown humans taken from a sample, may have not known how to handle Time Lord DNA, especially the Doctor's (which was made to regenerate instead of rejuvenating as a punishment from the Time Lords). Since regenerating changes the cells in the Time Lord's body, Jenny would not only be considered the Doctor's daughter but as another one of his regenerations. Hence, her surviving was not regenerating without change as this troper originally thought but actually her body healing because Jenny was still within her first 15 hours of birth/regeneration.
- Alternatively, it may not have been time essence we saw coming out of her but some residual part of The Source which activated earlier in the episode (when The Doctor smashed it in the same room Jenny was in). We know that The Source was made specifically to seed life and create an environment where Earth based lifeforms can easily survive. It may have been The Source's chemicals or a mixture of Source stuff and Time Lord DNA which brought her back to life.
- Fridge Brilliance regarding "The Doctor's Daughter". When the Doctor is telling General Cobb that genocide and peace are not the same thing, he says (roughly) "When you get a new dictionary, look up genocide. There'll be a picture of me there, and under it it'll say 'Over My Dead Body'!" While the point he was making was that they shouldn't do it, there's another reason the definition of "genocide" might have a picture of the Doctor next to it...
- "The Unicorn and the Wasp": The villain is programmed to believe that the world operates like an Agatha Christie novel thanks to an incident involving a psychic recorder being worn by his mother, who was wearing it as a necklace while reading her favourite Christie novel. The villain specifically acts like an over-the-top version of one of Christie's villains. The novel Lady Eddison was reading at the time? The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, famous for its twist where the narrator turns out to be the murderer. And as Lady Eddison says the book is her favourite, this likely wasn't the first time she'd read it... so the knowledge of the twist would be in her head, explaining why the villain would be influenced to act like one of Christie's murderers.
- The reason River Song didn't seem to notice that the Tenth Doctor wasn't a Doctor that knew her at first — he knew that she was going to die every time he met her after this. When they compare notes he simply never mentions the Library because he knows she won't have done it yet. So, when she goes to the Library and meets him there, she assumes that it's new to both of them. She only asks if they've done the Byzantium and the Pandorica to verify that.
- Well of course the Library would be new to both of them. If the Doctor had done it before then he wouldn't be back there doing it again. Every single adventure that River and the Doctor has is new to both of them regardless of when in their respective time streams it falls.
- Okay, so new wasn't the right word. She assumes that no version of the Doctor that she has met has done it before and that he hasn't met a version of her that has done it before, happy? In other words, that she is the oldest he has met her and he, at the same time, is the oldest that she has met.
- If that were true, how would she have his picture, as she said? She'd never met that Doctor before and, if it was the first time she'd met that iteration, how would a past iteration be able to give her a picture of that version when he doesn't know anything about what he'll regenerate into? Obviously, the answer is "he's the youngest iteration to meet her" so this isn't a problem, but since this question is related to her perspective, surely these are things that would run through her mind, as well?
- There's another with this meeting that just now struck me, and part of why the Doctor cares for her despite her violent ways: she's the only companion he's had that can truly know him as he's known the rest. She's the only one that not only deeply cares for him, but who effectively can experience the pain of loss of their time together by simply outliving it while knowing it's inevitable and preordained.
- She is also a Time Lord in her own right, albeit of human rather than Gallifreyan extraction. (No, I'm not going to spoiler that; if you didn't know it, you're years behind. Catch up!) Who else for the Doctor? And it's interesting, isn't it, to consider what it means for the vaunted Gallifreyan sense of jaded superiority, that the essential characteristics of the Time Lords have nothing to do with one's species, but rather with having been exposed in early life to the time vortex? For Gallifreyans, it's the Untempered Schism; for River Song, it's having been conceived aboard a TARDIS in flight. Either way, it means the Gallifreyan Time Lords aren't nearly so special as they fondly imagine themselves to be.
- Well of course the Library would be new to both of them. If the Doctor had done it before then he wouldn't be back there doing it again. Every single adventure that River and the Doctor has is new to both of them regardless of when in their respective time streams it falls.
- River's first theme is "The Greatest Story Never Told", described by the composer thus:
- This piece was used through the second half of the season and is structured around a melody that keeps returning to represent the Doctor's past love hinted at in "Silence in the Library". Or, to put it another way... the music is structured around a Melody that keeps returning to represent the Doctor's past love. How long did Murray Gold and Steven Moffatt have that one planned?
- Why does the Doctor never tell a dying Anita his name? It's not because, or at least not just because, of how busy they are and the significance of the secret. If he were to tell her, he would be admitting that there's no way to save her, that she's as good as dead. And that's something the Doctor never, ever does. As River notes:"Everybody knows that everybody dies, and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepted it."
- From "Forest of the Dead": At the end, when the Doctor turns off the gravity platform and leaps into space, I kept wondering why he didn't splatter all over the ground at the bottom. Just today I realized why it works: He's falling all the way to the center of the planet! And at the center of the planet, there is no gravity. (Presumably there's artificial gravity in the data core chamber itself.) The Doctor would hit terminal velocity, and then as gravity diminished on the way down, air resistance would gradually decelerate him. Bloody brilliant. (On the other hand, this creates some Fridge Logic issues of its own — specifically, even at a generous calculation of terminal velocity, it would take over twenty-four hours to fall that far.)
- I thought that was the point of the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver as he entered the gravity platform, to increase the gravity to pull himself down the tunnel even faster than normal terminal velocity. He then exits the tunnel, not using the screwdriver, implying that the lack of gravity closer to the core was sufficient to slow him down.
- In the Third Doctor serial "The Ambassadors of Death", he mentions that he can handle much more G-Force than the average human, so he's also probably accelerating much quicker than he would if he were human, allowing him to reach a much faster speed quicker and slow to a stop much quicker as well.
- I thought that was the point of the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver as he entered the gravity platform, to increase the gravity to pull himself down the tunnel even faster than normal terminal velocity. He then exits the tunnel, not using the screwdriver, implying that the lack of gravity closer to the core was sufficient to slow him down.
- The significance of "Midnight" hit me some time after I watched it: The Monster of the Week is a nameless creature. It learns to simulate an identity. Those with identities, names to be precise except for Dee Dee are subverted by it in its quest to kill the Doctor. In the end, it's the nameless Hostess who sees through its deception. I found this subversion of Nominal Importance powerfully symbolic.
- Oh, man, that's brilliant. Remember also that nobody believes the Doctor when he tells them his usual fake name (people are always going on about what his actual name is, but here none of the names he could give are accepted.
- In fact, that almost refers back to "Forest of the Dead". Miss Evangelista said that the two things you must be to see absolute truth are to be brilliant and unloved. In a sense, the Hostess was unloved (no one even knew her name) and she was the one who saw the truth.
- Also in "Midnight", the closing line, "No, don't do that. Really... Don't" initially seems like just another use of one of Ten's many recurring lines. Then you realize the real emotional weight behind it.The Doctor: Molto bene.
Donna: Molto bene. - After a friend of mine who was in the middle of a DW binge posted a status update on Facebook to the effect that "Midnight" scared her more than anything the Moff had ever written, ever, I spent a while severely overthinking it, and why it messes with both us and the Doctor as bad as it does. A lot of what I decided would be better filed under an analysis of the deconstruction aspect (which I don't really want to detail right now), but one particular thing I noticed is how devoted the episode is to turning the Doctor's own weapons against him. He likes to break rules and regulations just for the hell of it, and often catches out Man Behind the Man-style villains this way. So, because he's interested in what's going on, he talks the drivers into opening the viewport against regulations. He doesn't learn a thing, and the front of the bus gets ripped off shortly afterward. Your basic Doctor Who Monster of the Week winds up losing because the Doctor works out its plan or weaknesses and uses those to defeat it. So, because he knows a lot about aliens, he tries to figure out what this one is, and this display of incredible knowledge, inhuman intelligence, and comfortable familiarity with the weird alienates him from the other passengers. And, most significantly of all: His voice. He's highly charismatic and good at taking charge of a situation: just by sheer force of personality, he can convince people to cooperate with him and do what he wants. So, naturally, he tries to talk to the alien, and when it starts copying him keeps testing to figure out what it's doing and trying to convince it that he can help it if it just lets him know what it needs. The consequence of his pleas and rapidfire babbling? It steals his voice. He knows what's happening to him, but not why, and he has no way of warning others, instead being forced to condemn himself by mimicking the monster's words as it convinces the rest of the passengers to kill him. It would be bad enough for anyone else, but for the Doctor? For someone whose entire life consists of using his knowledge and people skills to best advantage? To him, that's probably one of the single most horrifying feelings he could ever experience.
- Inspired by the original comment while re-watching: The creature is looking for isolated people. The entire episode revolves around that. First scene? The Doctor and Donna parting — she wants to sunbathe. Then, the hostess kicks off the annoying stuff, and the Doctor stops it. Skye and he smile at each other about it. The Doctor talks to people, but he doesn't really know anyone. Mechanic and driver die off-screen, no one knew them. Who does the monster go after? The woman whom no one knows — in fact, the first question after she's caught is, "What's her name?" The hostess answers. The Doctor comes over and tries to help her, and she repeats everyone. Then the hostess suggests that she should be thrown outnote The Doctor asks if they could really kill someone, and the hostess is the first to say, "Yes." When the Doctor finally gets caught, the creature gets everyone to kill him. Then the hostess is the one who saves the day. Now read that back over. Footnotes aside, I have just given an in-depth summary without mentioning anyone who was both on the ship and knew someone else on the ship.
- I'm wondering if the Midnight monster isn't somehow related to the re-imagined Great Intelligence from series 7. The Midnight monster is a disembodied intelligence, one which copies and mimics its prey, like a mirror. This is how the G.I. was described by the Doctor in "The Snowmen", and grew stronger as it isolated Dr. Simeon over many years, until it no longer needed to merely copy him, but was able to act independently.
- I had been wondering why exactly things went so wrong for the Doctor. What went different this time, and then I realized, he did not have a companion. Had Donna been there, there would have been someone able for the passenger to better relate to than the Doctor was, and the Doctor would have had someone who would always be on his side. Had Donna being there, with her strong personality, she would have been able to keep everyone in check without rousing as much suspicion as the Doctor did.
- A big theme from the Tenth Doctor's run was what happened when the Doctor wasn't there to do his job. Now look back on the episode "Midnight", and think of how much easier things would have been for the Doctor if he had someone who knew him, or some sort of friend on that bus. It's showing what happens when the companions aren't there to do their job, a nice contrast to what's been shown and what's to come.
- Not certain if this is actually Fridge or just obvious to everyone except me, but in "Turn Left" (I don't think) the Master's take-over/invasion ever happened — this would be because the Doctor never went to the end of the Universe, and the Master died as Professor Yana. Which means that that alterniverse (not calling it a Universe; there's more than one of them) has a completely different ending for the fate of humans, and also an empty TARDIS sitting around at the end of the Alterniverse. Actually, that seems really obvious now I've thought of it and it's probably mentioned in the episode... Ah well.
- Amid all the grim events of "Turn Left", that story did slip one rather charming moment into it: Donna finally getting the obligatory-for-companions "Bigger on the Inside!" moment with the TARDIS. In her original timeline, she first saw the TARDIS when she appeared inside it, so never got the full impact of walking into a police box and being astounded by the interior.
- On the topic of "Turn Left", during the scene where the Italian family is taken to the "work camps", it's not sad music that's playing. It's the Cybermen theme.
- The idea that Donna's world is on the brink of a Cyber uprising makes a scary amount of sense; south england is flooded with radiation, rendering it uninhabitable, Cybermen could easily survive that sort of thing.
- Not sure if this belongs in the Fridge, but: On the subject of the Reality Bomb, where else do we see a weapon that operates in that fashion? The RB is a "compression field" which can "cancel out the electrical energy of atoms". That is exactly the mechanism behind the most deadly weapon in Ender's Game, and that weapon is called the Doctor Device. It's a delicious bit of irony, that the Daleks would destroy the universe with a weapon that shares the name of their greatest enemy.
- On a more humorous note, it's essentially the same concept as the Karkus' "Anti-Molecular Disintegrator Ray" from "The Mind Robber", only functional rather than fictional.
- This Troper was always a little miffed at the end of "Journey's End", when the Doctor didn't try to save Dalek Caan, considering Caan was trying to defeat the Daleks from the inside all along. But after "The End of Time", the reason why becomes clear: Caan had figured out how to break the lock on the Time War, and had retrieved Davros; knowing what else was lurking in the Time War, the Doctor felt that Caan was too dangerous to be let loose. That knowledge would have been catastrophic if it fell into the wrong hands.
- Seeing as if the Time War was unlocked, it would destroy all of time. Caan being all-knowing wouldn't be stupid enough to tell anyone (not even the Doctor) how to unlock the Time War.
- Ah, but insanity overcomes good sense at times, so the Doctor could never be assured that Caan would never let the secret out, no matter Caan's good intentions.
- Given that Caan had come to realize how evil the Daleks were he would probably refuse any attempt at rescue.
- As of "The Magician's Apprentice", it's been confirmed that Davros survived the events of "Journey's End". Perhaps Dalek Caan did as well?
- Seeing as if the Time War was unlocked, it would destroy all of time. Caan being all-knowing wouldn't be stupid enough to tell anyone (not even the Doctor) how to unlock the Time War.
- Breaking into the Last Great Time War was considered impossible by everyone, and yet Caan succeeded where emperors and Time Lords had failed. Considering that he was a member of the Cult of Skaro, who had escaped the Time War with a ship even the Time Lords considered impossible, it's not like he didn't have experience in doing what nobody thought could be done.
- I am hardly the only person to have noticed that the nature of the multiverse means that there is a reality out there where the Reality Bomb went off and that therefore we're all screwed anyway. But wait — everything that's happening here, from the return of the Daleks to their destruction, is happening because Dalek Caan, who bent time and space to bring about this scenario, willed it so. In each individual timeline, Caan would have known exactly what to do to ensure the Reality Bomb did not go off, and prepared accordingly. There is no universe in which the Reality Bomb went off because Caan would never have allowed it.
- But what about a universe where Davros managed to make the Reality Bomb before the Time War.
- Why would he?
- ...why WOULDN'T he? Davros' total goal, at the end of everything, is complete subjugation and extermination of anything that's different. The Reality Bomb is just the best method possible, earlier in time that was creating the Daleks to eliminate the Thals, now it's the Reality Bomb to eliminate EVERYTHING.
- Perhaps he didn't have the technology and resources? He died right at the beginning of the Time War, and before that, the Daleks were only slowly advancing towards the level they are at in the revival series. Plus having Skaro destroyed would've been a setback.
- But what about a universe where Davros managed to make the Reality Bomb before the Time War.
- When Davros calls the Doctor "the destroyer of worlds" in "Journey's End", he wasn't necessarily being a hypocrite. He was trying to induce the already present guilt upon the Doctor about being a genocidal maniac like him.
- Davros's Breaking Speech to the Doctor in "Journey's End" was already something that directly and perfectly called out the Doctor and all his incarnations on his tendency to inspire his companions, allies, or even complete strangers into acts of heroism that also cause them and countless others to suffer and die fighting the Doctor's enemies. Since then however this point has only been further vindicated long into the Eleventh Doctor's run, not just with it continuing to happen but with Rory and Amy both repeatedly calling him out on exactly this point and themselves through hell because of this. In Amy's case, her desperation to protect the Doctor almost leads to her unknowingly killing her young daughter.
- Worse yet, the Melody Pond arc and it's consequences show the eventual result of this as Davros's direct quote of him "taking ordinary people and fashioning them into weapons" is horribly borne out in two ways. Firstly the fear of the Doctor due to the carnage he leaves in his wake has caused ordinary people to become a ruthless army opposing him and willing to do terrible things to fight him, and secondly it has caused these same people to abduct his companions' baby daughter and directly turn her into a weapon against him. One almost wonders whether Davros got a glance of the Doctor's future when being dragged out of the Time War.
- If you go back over the previous episodes of newWho after seeing "Journey's End", you can really see a lot of seemingly disparate details come together for RTD's out-with-a-bang. That's not the key point I want to raise, though. Remember how Nine couldn't go through with using the Delta Wave to kill the people on Earth and the Daleks? Then Remember how it was not Ten but the half-human "10.5" who wiped out the Daleks in "Journey's End". Some fans hold the theory that "half-human" Eight regenerated into Nine when he wiped out the Daleks and Time Lords in the final battle of the Time War. Maybe I am overthinking this and/or giving Rusty too much credit, but there is a clear common thread: A Dalek empire, at the supposed height of its power, taken out by a half-human, half-Time Lord because of the human having enough bastardry/pragmatism to Shoot the Dog where the Time Lord shies from doing so. A subtle Discontinuity Nod? I think so!
- The Master being pulled to the resurrection because of the heartbeat of a Time Lord. Now, what did Donna hear after the Tenth Doctor siphoned his regeneration energy into his hand? A heartbeat of a Time Lord metacrisis; calling to her from the future and converging all timelines on her.
- When watching "Journey's End", I was one of many frustrated by Donna's fate — not only because she was a lovely character and we didn't want to lose her, but also because of the WAY she went out. Everyone I know would rather Donna have died with her memories intact than continue living without them, as the shrill, self-hating person she once was. At first, I thought it was just RTD chickening out on killing a companion for yet another occasion. Fridge Brilliance set in once I realised that, not only was losing Donna to amnesia much more depressing, it was THE WHOLE POINT! Not only has Donna lost all that experience which deepened her as a person — she is now living a new life, day in and out, without any real meaning to it (at least until the events of "The End of Time"). It becomes even deeper however, once you realise WHY the Doctor's companions rarely die — it's for the SAME reason as that! Think about it — what would hurt the Doctor more, seeing a person he cares about die, or them leaving him/being torn away from him? The latter, because it also lends credit to why he never visits his companions — it's far too painful. He is content to know that they are alive, but he never tries to see them because the pain of parting is even more unbearable. Look at Jamie and Zoë — both of them were enriched by their experiences, but the Time Lords wiped their memories, essentially doing the same to them that the Doctor would later do to Donna. Then look at Rose — she is alive, and she is well, but as of "Doomsday" she and the Doctor will have to live every day of their lives, knowing they can never see the other again. The companions who DID die in the series (Adric, Sara Kingdom and Katarina) were all around for a shorter length of time, but still have gut-wrenching deaths. The ones who have the deepest impact on the Doctor — and he on them — are wrenched from him in the most heart-breaking ways imaginable. RTD, SM and the other writers are bastards who love to deliberately tear our hearts apart as much as they can — and I bloody well LOVE them for it!
- When looking at the Cybermen's info-stamp on the Doctor in "The Next Doctor", why does the War Doctor not appear in the list of regenerations? Obviously, it's because he hasn't been created yet, but in-universe? Because it's the Cybus Industries Cybermen's info about the Doctor, the War Doctor (who spent his entire life fighting the Daleks in the Time War) wouldn't have encountered them, and therefore never made it onto the infostamp.
- Sure, the Doctor theorizes that they stole it from the Daleks in the Void, but even he's wrong sometimes.
- The Cybermen could have stolen the info from the Daleks in the Void, however the Daleks in the Void were ones who had been locked away from the universe for a long time, possibly by Time Lords other than The Doctor. Given the size of the Time War and the point that in war no soldier is likely to meet every one of the enemy soldiers, it's possible that the Void Daleks never encountered The War Doctor, especially if they were locked away during one of the early parts of the Time War.
- Sure, the Doctor theorizes that they stole it from the Daleks in the Void, but even he's wrong sometimes.
- Obviously, one of the major themes of S4 is the metacrisis. It’s foreshadowed most strongly perhaps in "Planet of the Ood", when the Ood call the Doctor and Donna “The DoctorDonna”, but it comes up in other ways, too, especially with the constant camera shots of the hand bubbling away. But looking closely, birth in general, and especially unusual births, are a major theme in the series.
- "Partners in Crime" — seeding the planet to grow Adipose from fat
- "The Fires of Pompeii" — seers becoming Pyroviles as they breath in the rock dust
- "Planet of the Ood" — Mr. Halpen becoming an Ood after drinking the Ood graft.
- The Sontaran two-parter — the Sontarans tried to turn Earth into a clone planet so they could create more warriors. Oh, and the Martha clone.
- "The Doctor’s Daughter" — Jenny is created by progeneration when the humans forcibly take a sample of the Doctor’s tissue.
- "The Unicorn and the Wasp" — Reverend Golightly is a hybrid child, which is unusual in itself. The way the genetic lock broke and he realised his full identity is also unusual, as is his connection with his mother’s necklace.
- The Library two-parter — The Vashta Nerada hatched from eggs that were laid in the trees that became the books that were sent to the Library.
- "Midnight" — The whole concept of the entity is shrouded in mystery. How can it exist when the planet is irradiated with lethal radiation? And why did it select Sky? It has no origin story.
- "Turn Left" — a new life is created for Donna when she is convinced to turn right.
- "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey’s End" — finally, the metacrisis.
- The result is that by the time we watch the Metacrisis Doctor form out of that hand, we’ve seen so many bizarre births that this seems almost normal. Take comfort in the fact it’s not little blobs of fat crawling out of your shirt.
- Season 4 ran in 2008, which marks the 45th anniversary of the show. However, there isn't an official multi-Doctor crossover given that the year ended in an 8 instead of a 3 like "The Three Doctors" or "The Five Doctors". But the years that ended with an 8 brought something new to the series. In 1968, we were introduced to UNIT in "The Invasion" which would be a major focus in the next Doctor's tenure. In 1978, The Fourth Doctor embarked on a quest to find the Key to Time, accompanied by a Time Lady who was more or less his equal, at the time. In 1988, the Seventh Doctor faced off against the Daleks accompanied by Davros and created the start of the Time War in "Remembrance of the Daleks". That said, although many of these episodes may not look like they have much in common with the Classic series, there are enough references that make the transition easier for fans who were introduced to the Revival series into the earlier series. Overall, the execution makes this series worthy of being the 45th anniversary special as it brings a lot of homages to the Classic Series in celebration of the show's 45th anniversary while bringing more to the show's mythos.
- "Partners in Crime" - The first time the show has introduced a long-term companion after her debut episode, not counting Sarah Jane Smith's appearance in "School Reunion".
- "The Fires of Pompeii" - A callback to "The Empty Child" with the Doctor calling this day Volcano Day and a small reference to the First Doctor's adventures in Rome during "The Romans". Also somewhat Hilarious in Hindsight given that a future Doctor and future companion appear in this episode.
- "Planet of the Ood" - The Ood themselves are a homage to "The Sensorites" and bear resemblance to said aliens due to their planets being in a close enough approximation to each other.
- "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky" which brings back the Sontarans who last appeared in the Sixth Doctor serial "The Two Doctors". Perhaps by coincidence the Sontarans appear in a serial featuring two Doctors, The Tenth Doctor and Doctor Martha Jones. Also the Doctor's fears of two companions bickering is a nice call back to "School Reunion". These two episodes also features UNIT extensively, who were most associated with the Third Doctor.
- "The Doctor's Daughter" features the Doctor's daughter. A recursive enough statement in a recursive enough episode which wouldn't be too out of place of the Fifth Doctor era given how dark the episode ends up. Despite a low body count, the Tenth Doctor is still emotionally impacted by the loss of Jenny, similar to how the Fifth Doctor was impacted by Adric's death in "Earthshock". Perhaps a coincidence, or perhaps not given that just a year ago the Tenth Doctor met the Fifth Doctor briefly and that the Doctor's Daughter is portrayed by the Fifth Doctor's daughter.
- "The Unicorn And The Wasp" is an episode that has loose homages to "The Mind Robber" in which both the real world and the Land of Fiction are heavily impacted by the works of fiction.
- "Silence In The Library" and "Forest of the Dead" features River Song, who is the Doctor's equal in many ways similar to how Romana was portrayed as the Doctor's equal. And nice foreshadowing is given from this episode onward during Steven Moffat's tenure as show runner given how important River would be in the Doctor's life.
- "Midnight" deconstructs the Doctor's methods and has his powers being used against him by an alien menace that he doesn't fully understand by once, and is an idea that has never been created before nor replicated since. Also, celebrity bonus, Patrick Troughton's son David Troughton, who has appeared in Doctor Who three times before, plays Professor Hobbes.
- "Turn Left" has the bug on Donna's backside which behave similar enough to the spiders in "Planet of the Spiders".
- "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End are notable for bringing three concurrent shows together in the same episode, reintroducing Davros after his last onscreen appearance 20 years ago from Remembrance of the Daleks, reintroducing Davros and Sarah Jane since their first meeting in "Genesis of the Daleks", and having three Doctors meet in the same time, although not the Doctors you were expecting. Painfully, Donna's fate near the end is painfully similar to the fate that Zoe and Jamie faced in "The War Games" in that all three companions had their memory of the Doctor erased against their will.
- A key theme to season 4 is the importance of the companions; throughout the season, several episodes make this point;
- Partners in Crime: If Donna had not been investigating as well then The Doctor wouldn't have had the second Pendant and thus wouldn't have been able to save the day. Despite how it seems, the Doctor isn't all knowing, and doesn't always have all the answers, sometimes it is the companion that finds the key to saving the day.
- Fires Of Pompeii: Donna's desperate begging convinces the doctor to save one family; the companions some times have to hold the Doctor to the mark, making sure he keeps his promise (Never give up, never give in)
- Sontaran Stratagem/Poison Sky: Martha's a member of UNIT. The point here is that the companion's story doesn't end when they leave the TARDIS and many of them serve as the defenders of earth in the Doctor's stead when he isn't on earth, something both Series/Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures put in more focus, and of course comes to the forefront later.
- Midnight: as has been discussed above, a key part of what goes wrong is Donna failing perhaps the most important responsibility of the companion; serving as a relatable buffer between frightened civillians and the alien, and at time unrelatable Doctor.
- Turn Left: We see here how some times the duty of the companion is to save the Doctor from himself, Donna's absence costs the Doctor his life, and we see the above point; in his absence Sarah Jane and Jack worked in his stead to stop the Plasmavore and the Sontarans, albeit at the cost of their lives.
- Stolen Earth/Journey's End: Again, until they realize it's the Daleks, we see Jack, Sarah Jane and Martha working to protect the earth before the Doctor's arrival, and even working on their own plots to stop the Daleks after his capture.
Fridge Horror - Series 4
- "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead": River closes out the episode with the voiceover:River: Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call... everybody lives.
- Yeah, for some value of "lives" that encompasses having all the flesh stripped from their skeletons and then has their brains uploaded into a computer on a planet infested with flesh-scavenging shadows which no human will ever come to visit again. Where they then get to stay, just the half-dozen or so of them... forever. That's a real happy ending, that is.
- Life is what you make of it, regardless of the circumstances.
- That's a lovely thought but not very realistic. If you're in a horrible situation, like being stuck in a dull and manipulative computer program for all eternity, there's really only so much you can make of it and trying to look on the bright side won't change how horrible your fate is.
- DULL??? They are "trapped" as it were inside the greatest library ever. Millenia of history; the literature of millions of worlds; the latest in science and technology all theirs to explore. A Universe of knowledge and dreams... they'll never come to the end of it. Sounds pretty darn wonderful to me.
- They're not whole people like the others who were "saved" in the library, they're all data ghosts. Miss Evangelista was improperly uploaded and the obvious changes were to her face and her intelligence — it's the intelligence which is important here. Her entire personality changes — how do we know this is still Miss Evangelista and not some aspect of the computer using her memories and distorted appearance to communicate with Donna? Something is left of the whole team, sure, the data ghosts were saved, but they're not really the same people anymore. They're like programs — like Doctor Moon or the non-CAL children.
- Her "intelligence" is intact insofar as her personality is concerned, and as much as that sort of thing can be preserved via computer. What has changed is that her "intelligence" as an expression of her cognitive processing power has been increased significantly.
- Gaining more processing power doesn't necessarily change the fundamental architecture of a personality, it just expands what that personality is capable of. Psi from "Time Heist" didn't cease to exist when he first augmented his brainpower, did he?
- "Forest of the Dead": All those people who lived lives in the hard drive (just because Donna's was choppy, doesn't mean everyone else's was — they had a lot more time) are suddenly yanked out and separated from everyone they've known and loved and thrown back into a world they may or may not remember. Families broken up, children no longer exist to them...
- Oh, and it's a hundred years of real time since they were "saved", so everyone they knew before the Library was overrun is probably very old or dead by the time they're brought back.
- Nullifying this somewhat is a bit of Fridge Brilliance—with the advances in medicine and healthcare that must have happened in the next three thousand years, hopefully people will be living longer and it won't be quite so bad.
- Fridge Horror: "Turn Left" revealed that without Donna's interference in "The Runaway Bride", the Doctor would have drowned at the end of the episode. If one considers that the Doctor had just lost Rose, and that Time Lords can refuse regeneration, it looks like the Doctor committed suicide.
- Could be that he drowned, regenerated, and drowned again, same as how Eleven could have died for keeps from being shot to death twice in quick succession.
- Alternatively, it's possible that the Doctor was trapped underground with the water and drowned, only to regenerate... and down again, and regenerate again, and again and again and again until he was ultimately, finally dead. Note how we don't see the Doctor's body (from the hand it's clear that it's Tennant but that can be put down to production laziness), it's possible that he regenerated repeatedly until his lives were all used up.
- More from "Turn Left": when London was vaporized by the Titanic, that means every companion — Classic and NuWho — who lived in London (and its suburbs) died. Ian and Barbara? Dead. Ben and Polly? Dead. Dodo? Dead. Teagan? Possibly, if she was still working at Heathrow. Ace? Depending on where she went back to found "A Charitable Earth" like Sarah Jane said in The Sarah Jane Adventures? Dead. And we know about Sarah Jane (and Luke, Maria and Clyde) and Martha in that episode...
- Worse yet: Ian and Barbara are confirmed to have somehow become unaging in "School Reunion" by Sarah Jane. There’s only one human in Doctor Who who exists in that state we’re aware of, and he would be fine. Did Ian and Barbara get made immortal?
- Even more from "Turn Left": Assuming that all things constant apart from Donna Noble not being a temp at HC Clemmens, there's a good chance that Lance drugged another temp with Huon Particles. After all, the Racnoss Queen needed Huon Particles to awaken her children under the Earth's core. After all, how and why else would the Doctor be found at Torchwood London's secret Thames laboratory? Based on what we know about the leader of the Trickster's Brigade and that there is no mention of Lance or anyone or anything else besides the bodies of the Doctor and the Racnoss Queen. Also given what happened to Lance in the original timeline, the same fate could have happened to the Turn Right Temp...
- This may very well be the worst bit of Fridge Horror ever: In "Journey's End", the Daleks or, more accurately, Davros create a device known as the Reality Bomb, which has one simple purpose: Disintegrate all matter in the universe into sub-atomic nothingness, including, by way of the Medusa Cascade, all alternate realities. Now, considering how the concept of alternate realities works, wouldn't that mean that there's a reality where the Reality Bomb went off? Sweet dreams, Whovian.
- Nope, because then the Doctor's universe would've seen it. As noted above, Caan would've countered the Reality Bomb in every possible universe. Phew!
- Fridge Horror about Rose from "Journey's End". She comes back to the Doctor by creating a dimension cannon, which worked because the barriers between worlds collapsed. Yet her dialogue clearly shows she was working on the dimension cannon before this so she could come back, despite the fact the Doctor told her coming back would destroy both worlds, at which her reaction was "So?". So Rose was willing to risk the destruction of two worlds to get back to the Doctor. What would she have done to get back?
- Few things wrong with this: A) the technology was already made. In "Doomsday", they had universe hoppers. The dimension cannon was just a bigger scaled replication of this technology. In fact, Jackie and Mickey are seen using a version of the old "Doomsday" tech (which means Rose's was just to be more permanent then the dimension hoppers). B) While yes, she probably did start working on the dimension cannon immediately after being trapped because she didn't want to be in that universe. She stated very clearly her choice was the Doctor. His image didn't come through the universe until three months after the events of Canary Wharf. Which leads into C) Rose also very clearly states it didn't work until the universe was already collapsing. Which by this point, Rose also realized that the stars going out was probably collapsing the walls. Which she was able to prove by making the dimension cannon work.
- Except that if the Reality Bomb had gone off, it would've destroyed every universe. The only thing that could've only begun to break down the walls of the universe would be them working on getting the dimension cannon set up, doubtless testing it over and over again. It doesn't matter that she wanted to be with the Doctor; he warned her it was too dangerous, then she ignored him.
- Some more Fridge Horror from "Journey's End". The thought of Davros and the Daleks almost winning is scary enough, what with how close they came to actually accomplishing their goals. But what would've happened if they had won? Okay, so the multiverse gets destroyed, the Doctor and his friends are killed and Davros and the Daleks are the only things left in the entirety of existence... But what then? What would've happened to the Daleks had they won? My guess is that with them no longer having a purpose, they'd turn on Davros, then each other, until finally, there is only one Dalek left... Until it eventually dies somehow. Leaving the ENTIRE MULTIVERSE completely empty... Just a void of nothingness...
- The Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor is a trigger-happy offshoot of the Doctor, comprised of his darker impulses and inhibitions, taken from between the incarnations that some could call "the twelfth and thirteenth" incarnations. Who else do we know that fits this description? The Valeyard, from the "Trial of a Time Lord" arc back in the classic series.
- Rose and UNIT playing around with the TARDIS in "Turn Left." This is a ship infinitely more advanced than anything on early 21st-century Earth, which even the Doctor doesn't fully understand, powered by a black hole...honestly, Donna is lucky that she landed within the right city and pretty close to the correct time! For that mattter, they were lucky they didn't rip a hole in the fabric of reality!
- In hindsight it's hard not to notice how much the Stolen Earth Arc parallels the Time War;
- The obvious part, with the enemy being an army of Daleks
- The Doctor being ordered to fight in a war.
- The companions becoming the children of time, and the whole fashioning them into weapons thing could be taken as an example of how the Time Lords got a lot darker in the war.
- The metacrisis Doctor, who was effectively the Doctor being remade as soldier, and then commiting genocide.
- Dalek Cann, a member of the Daleks who is considered mad by his peers and conspires to destroy his own race because of how evil they are, outright declaring "no more", he is essentially the War Doctor as a dalek.
- With all this considered it is not surprising that the Doctor begins down the slippery slope towards the Time Lord Victorious; he's had those old wounds ripped open.
- I read on the YMMV page for Journey's End about Captain Jack Harkness not doing his expected gasp of life after his death. The gasp of life everytime he's died on the show and on Torchwood. But in Torchwood's Series 2 finale, Jack was buried underground for a good 1900 years or so. There's a good chance he's learned not to breathe during those 1900 or so years.
2009 Specials (Tenth Doctor) Fridge
Fridge Brilliance — 2009 Specials
- "The End of Time" seems to contradict the audio drama "Master", where it is claimed the Master is evil because the memories of the Doctor killing someone were transferred to him, making him Death's Champion. However, maybe Death realized he would be better as her Champion due to the drumming in his head. Thus these origin stories can co-exist.
- Ten's sacrifice to save Wilf in "The End of Time" is thematically quite appropriate. The Doctor has, for better or for worse, killed or caused the deaths of many many beings (in particular, his part in the Time War, which he seems none too proud of). In contrast, Wilf is a kind old man who served as a soldier but never killed anyone. All he wants to do is help the Doctor because of what the Doctor did for his grand daughter. And of course, compared to the Doctor, Wilf is but a youngling. What is the life of one old killer worth in exchange for the life of a young innocent?
- The Tenth Doctor's regeneration angst makes a lot more sense when you realize he's the only Doctor in NuWho to regenerate alone, or at least without a long-term companion by his side. This means that a. he's a lot more scared and depressed about dying because, hey, he's dying alone, and b. it's quite possible Nine and Eleven were just as scared and upset about regenerating but pretended otherwise to avoid upsetting Rose and Clara.
- There's another reason why Ten might be a bit more upset about dying than any other incarnation: He's only lived for a few years. RTD has confirmed that all of his series take place in real time, as opposed to the time-skips used by other writers. Ten was by far the shortest-lived incarnation of the Doctor, and probably felt very cheated when he was forced to regenerate after only five years. "I don't want to go," indeed.
- And taking "The Time of the Doctor" into account, he knew his next regeneration would be his last.
- Worse: he knew it wouldn’t be his last. Remember, the Master spoiled his future back in his 6th incarnation, and so he knows the clock is ticking towards turning evil. Between his 12th and final regeneration is The Valeyard, meaning he already knows he will one day get extra regenerations, but eventually be so terrified of death that he would end up trying to sabotage the timeline with a plan that’s paradoxically doomed to failure to steal his own past self’s regenerations. Based on his reaction to regenerating, he already knows he’s approaching that mindset, and now he’s one life closer to his own destined Face–Heel Turn. He burned through the previous one in a century. He burned through this one in only five years. He’s noticing the trend, the changing mindset and knows now that the Valeyard had to breach the Time Lock to enter into his history for "Trial of a Time Lord", meaning he’s also scared of what that version of him will unleash. For all he knows, his next regeneration is his last one as a hero.
- Pay close attention to the end of "The Waters of Mars". The Doctor sees Ood Sigma standing in the snow, and believes that it's his time to die. The next we see him is in the TARDIS. Listen closely: just barely audible above the music, the cloister bell is ringing! Was the Doctor about to take a page out of Adelaide's playbook and kill himself for what he may have thought to be the greater good? At the very last moment in the episode, he says No, flips a switch, the bell stops, and the screen cuts to black. May double as Fridge Brilliance.
- "The Waters of Mars" contains all kinds of Fridge Horror. Watch the climactic sequence. The robot drives through a torrent of Martian water on its way to the TARDIS. When the TARDIS materializes back on Earth, that same robot rolls out of it... into a snowstorm. And that's not even the worst part. Suppose a drop of Martian water rolled off the robot while it was in the TARDIS? The TARDIS that goes flying hither and yon across the universe? Water is patient. Is the Doctor unwittingly sowing the seeds of death on every world he visits?
- There's no need to fear, physics is here! Liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to the lack of air pressure — it evaporates immediately. As the robot was exposed to the Martian surface for an extended period of time, any water on the robot evaporated long before it got to the TARDIS.
- Keep in mind that if this was the case, a version of the Reality Bomb would've detonated shortly after all 27 planets came into being aka billions of years ago — yet the main Doctor Who universe(and if there really is a multiverse, our universe) should no longer exist.
- No, it would destroy all reality except for a tiny place for the Daleks to live and dominate in. But exactly how tiny is this place in universe standards? To humans just the distance between Earth and Moon is incredible and fricking huge, but for the universe it's the equivalent of a ionic system, something that works on atom size, or even some subatomic link. If the Reality Bomb would have exploded in one of the multiverses, how much is exactly the residual "tiny"? Maybe a couple of universe of more? Maybe the Reality Bomb did explode in one of the multiverses and a few universes, which in multiverse system may as well work as "tiny", survived. It's very frail as a theory, but it might work. There's a chance the Reality Bomb exploded and the Whoniverse and the alternate in which now Rose lives are still around because they were "tiny".
- "The Waters of Mars" contains all kinds of Fridge Horror. Watch the climactic sequence. The robot drives through a torrent of Martian water on its way to the TARDIS. When the TARDIS materializes back on Earth, that same robot rolls out of it... into a snowstorm. And that's not even the worst part. Suppose a drop of Martian water rolled off the robot while it was in the TARDIS? The TARDIS that goes flying hither and yon across the universe? Water is patient. Is the Doctor unwittingly sowing the seeds of death on every world he visits?
- In "The End of Time", Rassilon's plan is completely ridiculous and destructive even by the standards of what he intends to accomplish. But then I realised that this is the whole point — the other Time Lords are too scared of that magic mitten of his to suggest anything saner.
- This makes sense, as of "The Day of the Doctor" and "The Time of the Doctor". The Time Lords seem much more benevolent. Rassilon is also nowhere to be seen. The general who allows the Doctors to create the Time Lock talks about the events in "The End of Time", having happened just hours earlier. And seeing as he's making that decision (And not Rassilon) implies that either... when the Time Portal closed up, Rassilon was somehow flung into another dimension entirely, or went into a depression and was thus out of commission for making decision.
- In "The End of Time", Part Two, the newly regenerated Eleventh Doctor's frantic checking of body parts and waving of fingers seems ridiculous and silly at first (especially after Tennant's rather emotional exit). But think about it. The cause of Ten's death was severe radiation poisoning. What is one of the results of radiation poisoning in humans (if not to the parent, then almost certainly to any children born after exposure)? Malformation and mutation. Eleven has technically just been born, so it's possible that his fears about having regenerated without the necessary parts are quite well founded...
- Some Fridge Horror for the Tenth Doctor's radiation poisoning: It is a slow death. He was able to heal his face immediately because the skin is the first organ to start to break down from radiation exposure (like sunburn from UV radiation), and seemed to be the first to regenerate. Where a human takes a few days to a few weeks to die (depending on level of exposure to lethal radiation), a Time Lord could take much longer to reach the dying/full regeneration tipping point. The Doctor was exposed to 500,000 rads, but who knows what a minimum lethal exposure is for a Time Lord? It seems that 500,000 rads is above that threshold, and the Doctor knew it. To add to the horror, the Central Nervous System is largely unaffected so you are fully conscious and aware of what is going on, and can even be mobile since muscle tissue is not as quickly affected. This is why he was so terrified of going into the box to let Wilf out; he knew he would suffer a slow death, while Wilf would have died nearly instantly from that much radiation. Also, since the Doctor was simultaneously slowly dying and partially regenerating, that is why he was staying closer to the TARDIS as the radiation sickness progressed while he tied up loose ends with his former companions — he didn't know exactly when he would fully regenerate. Note the only time he moved quickly was when he saved Luke from being hit by a car. The rest of the time he walks slowly, like he's in severe physical pain, which is another symptom of radiation sickness.
- Some Fridge Brilliance mixed with Harsher in Hindsight. In the climax of "The End of Time", Part Two, The Doctor is on the verge of tears when he says "I don't want to go!" for a good reason: when you take into account the things we know now, with John Hurt's War Doctor and wasting a regeneration by directing it into his severed hand, resulting in Doctor 10.5, we realize that this isn't his third-to-last regeneration; it's his FINAL regeneration!
- A bit in "The End of Time" that gets a fair amount of criticism is when the Doctor starts ranting at Wilf, angry that he has to sacrifice himself to save someone "not remotely important". Then it hit me — Russell T Davies has spent five seasons writing the Doctor as Messianic Archetype. It's only natural that he'd have his moment of weakness and fear (and oh yes, Ten is not just angry in that scene, he is flat fucking terrified) before his Heroic Sacrifice.
- Alternatively, the Doctor is briefly angry at his own predictable, heroic nature. As soon as he realises that Wilf is stuck in the booth and will require a Heroic Sacrifice to be save, the Doctor knows that he's going to do it. He doesn't need to think about it or even make a decision. That rant is the Doctor being angry at himself, wishing that on this occasion he wasn't the hero, wasn't the kind of person who'd sacrifice himself for someone else, and that just for once he could do as the villains do and simply walk away. Then is angry at himself for condemning himself to death without a second thought.
- If you look at that scene from another point of view: What is Ten? An old man in a magic box. What killed him? An old man in a nuclear box. Perhaps it wasn't constructed that way but it seemed like after everything he did he ended up taking himself too seriously. So he faces the Master and Rassilon and gets rid of them both, but then he has to face himself; and he can't win.
- The four-beat rhythm that's been driving The Master mad since childhood and is part of the Time Lords' escape plan not only matches the heartbeat of a Time Lord, but the Doctor Who theme song as well.
- "He will knock four times."
- Even more fridge brilliance — Where does the title/intro take place? In the time vortex. which is where the Master got the rhythm from. That is some serious foreshadowing.
- Depends on which intro. Sometimes it's three beats, sometimes it's five, sometimes it's four with a different rhythm.
- Basing it on the intro from those episodes, the above troper is correct. Freema Agyeman said in an interview that she had been practicing the tapping on her own whilst learning her script, and was corrected by RTD at the first table read (she'd been doing more of a onetwo-one-one beat or something, not the onetwothreefour). She asked why it mattered, because it was still four beats, and he patiently explained that yes, it was four beats, but it wasn't the theme tune. She then laughingly went on to explain how much trouble she had filming the scene where Martha is tapping on the couch arm, because as soon as she stopped concentrating on the tapping and concentrated on delivering her lines instead, she started automatically tapping the beat she'd originally learnt the lines with. You'll notice most of that scene cuts between her face and her fingers — she wasn't able to do a whole take doing the tapping and speaking at the same time. - suzloua
- Upon re-watching the entire series on a DW binge, something hit me on Rassilon's "The Madman and his Saviour" speech in "The End of Time Part 1", referring to future events regarding the Doctor and the Master. I realised that ''everything he said was interchangeable between the two the characters, Rassilon said "The Madman sat in his empire of dust and ash, little knowing of the glory he would achieve". The Doctor has an "empire of dust and ash", in the sense that he has lost almost everything, and what does the Doctor become known as throughout Series 5 and 6: the Madman with a Box. The "glory he would achieve" refers to the fact that the Doctor finally gets to be happy once more during the following seasons. Rassilon continues with "While his savior looked upon the wilderness in the hope of changing his inevitable fate". Due his messed up resurrection, the Master's life force was slowly dissipating, meaning that he too would soon regenerate, hence the "inevitable fate". As for the "saviour" part, what does the Master do in his final scene in the episode? That's right He saves the Doctor.
- Everyone expected the Tenth Doctor to meet his end against Rassilon, or the Master, or another big enemy, even the Doctor himself. But it just emphasises RTD's theme, running throughout the series (e.g. "Father's Day", "Last of the Time Lords", "Journey's End") is that the big flashy alien enemies who seem significant are just window dressing for the normal human characters who are really the most important things in the universe.
- The Master had been plagued with the four beat rhythm in his head driving him mad for most of his life. Except, this was never brought up in the classic series. Lazy retcon? Well, if you realize that The Time War took place after the classic series, and The Time Lords put that in his head to escape the Time War, and the fact that the highest of Time Lords can rewrite history without paradox repercussions. The Time Lords purposely retconned The Master (And in turn the classic series) for their own gain.
- Listen to the musical score entitled "Gallifrey at War", which plays during "The End of Time Part 2" as we see the ruins of Gallifrey on the final day of the Time War and the Time Lord High Council convening. Obviously, the song is a more somber rendition of "This Is Gallifrey, Our Childhood Our Home". But consider this: the original "This is Gallifrey", which plays every time the Doctor reminisces about the planet and its people (and during the Master's death and funeral, when he becomes "the last one left"), reflects how the Doctor chooses to remember things; it's beautiful, grandiose and sad — because that's how the Doctor wants to remember Gallifrey (which is what any shell-shocked survivor in his situation would do when they recalled their lost home). "At War", on the other hand, is dark, desolate, and angry — because that's how things actually were on Gallifrey towards the end.
- Also notice this: unlike "Our Childhood, Our Home", the orchestration for "At War" has no real end. Makes you wonder about the Time War, doesn't it...?
- I've heard arguments that Ten's ranting at Wilf in "The End of Time" and his last words were a less than heroic way to go out. But Ten had been fairly well defined as honestly wanting to stay in that incarnation by that point — this is the same incarnation who kept his severed hand in the control room of the TARDIS and siphoned off the regeneration energy into it when he nearly died. Ten had been doing everything he could to avoid his actual death, because he wanted to stay Ten as long as he could. Even if it's not necessarily "heroic", it's true to the character.
- And, going to the above comments about how the previous incarnation influences the next one, Nine's last words are about how he wanted to do all these things and didn't get the chance. So his next incarnation is one who wants to stick around as long as he can and do them.
- Also, the Tenth Doctor had only been around for 7 years. Even giving in the Doctor's risky life, that's got to be the shortest incarnation he's had (with the possible exception of Nine, but Nine would've wanted to regenerate). Add to the fact that 10 not only came into being to relieve the stress of the Time War but just dealt with all the loose ends...yeah, I can see why he didn't want to go.
- So a lot of people harp on Ten for being really arrogant and especially devolving into his A God Am I/Time Lord Victorious persona from the 2009 Specials. I usually think people over exaggerate his arrogance (he's not that way all the time) but there is a subtle reason why he does act that way at times (where previous Doctors may have behaved less so). In "Utopia", Ten tells Jack about Rose/Bad Wolf resurrecting him. He says that no one was ever meant to have the power of the Time Vortex in them. "If a Time Lord did he'd become a god. A vengeful god." Nine takes the power of the Vortex into him to save Rose, which causes his regeneration. Ten was formed from the power of the Vortex, so perhaps some of that remains in him, making the Time Lord Victorious side of himself come out more and more.
- Martha and Mickey getting together. I never really thought about it that much — but then it hit me. Martha and Mickey were the two main people who were negatively affected by Rose and indirectly the Doctor — Mickey suffered constant rejection and harsh treatment by Rose; Martha suffered the same from the Doctor and indirectly by Rose. I think it's a beautiful and fitting ending for the two people who had their lives screwed up by the same person ended up happy and together. (It seems like I'm being a bit harsh on Rose here, but it still makes sense.)
- Or to put it in a less positive light: Martha and Mickey were the ones not good enough for Ten and Rose and their blissful love so they eventually turned to the other reject from that couple.
- Or to put it in a way which is less judgmental either way; Mickey and Martha could share the experience of having loved someone who, ultimately for whatever reason, was unable to love them back.
- Hey kids, remember what Martha's first episode was called? "Smith and Jones"? That Smith may have been the Doctor's "John Smith" back then, but even in her very last appearance Martha's battling alien crime, this time with her husband Mickey Smith. Don't known if it was intentional or not, but this troper was surprised by this connection. Martha may have moved on from the Doctor, and Mickey with Rose, but the Smith and Jones team still lives on.
- It's long been established that Omega and Rassilon laid the foundation for all of Time Lord Society. When Omega fell into the antimatter universe he ended up becoming a being of pure consciousness and living as a god in his own empty universe. Skip ahead a billion years, and what was Rassilon's ultimate plan to end the Time War? To destroy all reality and in the process turn the Time Lords into beings of pure consciousness living as gods in their own empty universe. How fitting. "The Final Sanction" would be more appropriately named "The Omega Sanction". - JCAll
- And what's the last letter in the Greek alphabet? Gotcha.
- The Doctor's Time Lord Victorious breakdown in "The Waters of Mars" is a reaction to the end of "Planet of the Dead", where he is told that his song is ending soon. The entire point of saving Adelaide was to prove to himself that he could change fixed points and therefore save himself. Hence his horrified reaction when he discovers that he can't — he's not just horrified at his arrogance, it has sunk in he will die soon.
- One of the most haunting Tenth era novels, The Eyeless, has a brutal and brilliant bit of Fridge Brilliance. The Doctor crashes on a planet After the End where the few hundred remaining survivors have set up a system for exactly how many children each citizen must have in order for the society to survive long term. While this is required for their species to avoid extinction, many are unhappy with it; particularly Alsa, an angry thirteen year old girl who understandably doesn't want to spend her life as a birthing factory. Alsa later goes on to make a deal with the "villains" of the book: an alien race who are ruthlessly logical and comprehend everything in terms of statistical odds. For example, they figure a way out of a situation where sacrificing several of them would statistically lead to success: they're guaranteed to succeed if they're willing to sacrifice several of them. They're quite willing to go along with it, treating everything as a statistic, but Alsa can't bring herself to risk not being one of those who survive: she's obviously comparing the brutal logic of the aliens to her society's demand of her to have children, and a comparison can' be drawn (though the race struggling to survive is much less brutal about it). The whole book is a deconstruction and examination of free will, what you should do when sacrificing your will leads to a greater good, what happens when logic is devoid of compassion. Where exactly should the lines be drawn? The book gives no clear answer.
- It's also quite easy to imagine this book taking place just before or after Ten's "Time Lord Victorious" phase, as he deliberately breaks the rules and moves Alsa further on in her own world's timeline — so she doesn't have to bare children for her species' survival. This has disturbing implications, and is the first time we see him cheating time.
- The Master spreading his medical template across all humanity... it's the same principle as the Chula nanogenes in "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances", but on a grander scale and with radiation.
- The Time Lords' "Ultimate Sanction" takes on another layer of significance when you consider that it's essentially the same path that Davros took that resulted in the creation of the Daleks. Davros wanted the Kaleds to give up their corporeal bodies and become organic machine hybrids in order to outlast the Thals; Rassilon wanted the Time Lords to give up their corporeal bodies and become beings of pure consciousness in order to outlast the Daleks. Not so different, indeed.
Fridge Horror — 2009 Specials
- "Planet of the Dead": Lady Christina is listed as a Designated Hero because she steals artifacts from museums just for kicks, yet is considered a perfect match for the Doctor. Where did he acquire the TARDIS and why?
- Nice parallel in the thefts, but "Heaven Sent" Jossed the similar motive: the Doctor truthfully confesses that he left Gallifrey because he was scared, not "for kicks".
- "The End of Time" has its own moment of Fridge Horror at the end of Part One, when the Master turns every human on Earth into himself. Now, granted, that particular scene came across as pure Narm, but just think for a second about Sarah Jane, Luke, Rani, and Clyde, not to mention Gwen & Rhys, plus Martha & Mickey, and... well, you get the idea. And what happened to all the pregnant women and their unborn babies? And lessened a bit, but if Obama was also affected, who's there to say a version of YOU in that world wasn't also?
- Gwen was pregnant at the time. Fortunately, Miracle Day revealed that her baby survived the incident just fine. (Or at least, it was fine after Rassilon undid the damage the Master had caused. It still doesn't explain what might have happened the first time around, though...)
- Not to mention that the Doctor implies that all the dead humans in their graves are also turned into copies of the Master, think for a moment, given that the machine is meant to heal things, what if it brought the copies back to life underground, even worse if they are still alive after the Time Lords turned them back into humans.
- Or what if the experience of (temporarily) awakening in billions of graves all over the planet is what later gave Missy the idea of exploiting Earth's dead (again!) as raw materials for Cybermen?
- Also, what happened to the people knocked out by Donna when she was having her memory flashes? Did they survive? Did Donna unwillingly kill some of her own neighbors?
- How about little kids who were inside confined spaces when they transformed, like if they were playing hide and seek and hid in a cabinet too small for an adult? Did they get crushed to death in there? Also, if all the other Masters were starving just like the original, how many people recovered to find that they'd eaten their beloved house pets?
- "The Day of the Doctor" adds some retroactive Fridge Horror to the Tenth Doctor's regeneration into the Eleventh. Somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he knew that his next regeneration would go to Trenzalore, the location of his tomb. Even if he didn't remember, he subconsciously knew that he would experience something he considered to be almost as horrible as the act (he believed) the War Doctor committed. "I don't want to go" indeed.
- He, also, would have known that that he was approaching the end of his regeneration cycle so he knew his eleventh incarnation would be his last life.
