Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways
So. We seem to have skipped actual BW/PotW discussion and gone straight to S1 overviews, but I don't like leaving them out, so I'm doing them anyway. XP
So here we go into Nine's goodbye... hold on tight, boys and girls, this one's gonna be a bumpy ride and not everyone's coming out alive...
Vague refs for Torchwood and Last of the Time Lords.
( 'BUT YOU HAVE NO WEA-PONS. NO DE-FEN-SES. NO PLAN.' 'Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death.' )
So here we go into Nine's goodbye... hold on tight, boys and girls, this one's gonna be a bumpy ride and not everyone's coming out alive...
Vague refs for Torchwood and Last of the Time Lords.
( 'BUT YOU HAVE NO WEA-PONS. NO DE-FEN-SES. NO PLAN.' 'Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death.' )
Rose in the head-to-head and she's doomed. Oh, the "Face of Boe" question, he keeps being associated wih Bad Wolf too, which makes sense because she did, after all, create him...
I'm still not sure if I buy the Face of Boe as ancient!Jack. There are ways that it makes sense, but it still kind breaks my brain in others. Jack wouldn't be a above a bit of leg-pulling.
ROOOOOOOOOOSE! And Jack's yelling and screaming while the Doctor just shuts down, I don't think he even hears what the security bloke's saying to him.
Poor Doctor. I just want to hug him pretty much all the way through.
Storming the castle, and I love how he just throws the gun at Davitch. And Davitch just puts it down! And asks for permission to put it down!
Which just goes to show what a powerful presence the Doctor has at times. And show up, too, how the office drones aren't used to facing any danger personally for all that they're surrounded by contestant deaths all the time.
Oh, I love the Controller. "You can kill me, for I have brought your destruction." At ( ... )
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I don't really get how so many people don't believe it... I mean, there are a few things you have to work around, but, um... the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside. What makes sense isn't so simple in this show. And, okay, I'd come down on the side of it being true anyway because of how it affects my reaction to Gridlock. The same incarnation of the Doctor who rejected Jack and called him "wrong" is there to comfort him when he dies and is so tender with him... And it explains why the Face would call him in NE, when the only time they'd met before, they barely even had a chance to acknowledge each other.
Poor Doctor. I just want to hug him pretty much all the way through.
Don't we all?
Which just goes to show what a powerful presence the Doctor has at times. And show up, too, how the office drones aren't used to facing any ( ... )
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I don't really get how so many people don't believe it... I mean, there are a few things you have to work around, but, um... the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside. What makes sense isn't so simple in this show.
It's less a bad science/logic issue than it is that the Face of Boe and Jack don't feel like the same being to me. It's more of a character thing.
The same incarnation of the Doctor who rejected Jack and called him "wrong" is there to comfort him when he dies and is so tender with him... And it explains why the Face would call him in NE, when the only time they'd met before, they barely even had a chance to acknowledge each other.
And there's something else, why doesn't Boe 'feel wrong'? If he's Jack, he should have.
Don't we all?
The Doctor should have felt a measure of comfort with all us fangirls(and some boys) all over the world mentally glomping him throughout.
( ... )
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I've got a theory that Jack, as he gets older, starts to become sort of... plugged back into the flow of spacetime again. Because otherwise, how could he physically get older, which he is? The passage of time shouldn't touch him at all...
But since he is getting older and his body is changing, he can't be 100% fixed, no matter what it feels like right now to the Doctor and the Master. He's not completely disconnected from that flow, and he reconnects with it more as he goes on. Happens very slowly and gradually, but eventually his timeline looks normal enough again that the Doctor doesn't even notice... and that's also how he can die.
Plus, the other option is ending up with Jack sitting on a rock in a dead universe forever, going insane because there's never ever going to be any other life for him to interact with ever again, unless the Doctor happens to show up by accident. And that's not good.
The Doctor should have felt a measure of ( ... )
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I've got a theory that Jack, as he gets older, starts to become sort of... plugged back into the flow of spacetime again. Because otherwise, how could he physically get older, which he is? The passage of time shouldn't touch him at all...
Doesn't really explain why he turns into a giant face, but I get your gist and it does make sense.
Plus, the other option is ending up with Jack sitting on a rock in a dead universe forever, going insane because there's never ever going to be any other life for him to interact with ever again, unless the Doctor happens to show up by accident. And that's not good.
Not the only other option, but I'm sure the Bad Wolf wouldn't have been cruel enough to leave him without a way to rest when he's lived as much as he can stand.
Yeah... Though he's also scared of the fangirls, so...
Well, there is that. I'm sure all that goodwill wasn't entirely chaste...
Yeah, but I don't even remember what he did to her that time. O_OI don't know. Just being a smart-ass, really. Though it could have been something ( ... )
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Cos RTD likes to screw with us?
...yeah, that's the only bit I can't figure out.
Not the only other option,
What others would you suggest? Cos there are only a limited number of times he could go back to the beginning of life in the universe and start over.
but I'm sure the Bad Wolf wouldn't have been cruel enough to leave him without a way to rest when he's lived as much as he can stand.
Not deliberately. But unless the Doctor's lying about her not being able to control it, then she very well could have done that without meaning to...
But obviously I'd rather assume she didn't. It's a very depressing thought.
Well, there is that. I'm sure all that goodwill wasn't entirely chaste...
Not only that - do you read comments on doctorwhy? Cos all those fangirls going "Oh I love emo!Doc, he's so cute!" And he is, but it's still kinda scary... he'd definitely get the impression, if he saw that, that his fans don't want him to be happy ( ... )
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Cos RTD likes to screw with us?
...yeah, that's the only bit I can't figure out.
That's really the only thing that makes any sense.
What others would you suggest? Cos there are only a limited number of times he could go back to the beginning of life in the universe and start over.I meant other than him becoming the Face of Boe, actually, but there are other options. He could find his way into other universes/dimensions (not necessarily parallels). Maybe the physics would work differently enough outside of our universe that he wouldn't be immortal there. There was a fic I read once where he tried to kill himself by falling into a black hole and it spit him out into Pete's World, on the theory that black holes are gateways ( ... )
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I meant other than both options...
He could find his way into other universes/dimensions (not necessarily parallels). Maybe the physics would work differently enough outside of our universe that he wouldn't be immortal there.
Depends how "fixed" his fixedness is. In the parallels we've actually seen, it seems like spacetime itself is similar enough that he'd still have the same relationship to it... if he does, though, it could still be an option, long as he can keep moving, there's an infinite number of parallels. Maybe he could even find a Rose still BadWolfy enough to undo it.
But that depends on him actually finding a way through, with the universe being so much less kind and all.
It's been awhile since I've seen the Torchwood ep with the Abaddon, but I remember how Jack killed it with an excess of life. What if that life/vortex energy that keeps him going slowly builds rather than fades? At the end, it builds up and explodes out of him ( ... )
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Depends how "fixed" his fixedness is. In the parallels we've actually seen, it seems like spacetime itself is similar enough that he'd still have the same relationship to it... if he does, though, it could still be an option, long as he can keep moving, there's an infinite number of parallels. Maybe he could even find a Rose still BadWolfy enough to undo it.I wasn't thinking just parallels. There's also places like the antimatter universe, places where the natural laws are likely to be significantly different. Parallels would probably, like you say, be similar enough not to interfere with his immortality. Although, the TARDIS lost power when she crossed over to Pete's World and needed a bit of energy from our universe from the Doctor to get her charged back up again. Maybe there would be a similar effect on Jack since it was vortex/TARDIS energy that made him a fixed point? If his body accesses that energy to reanimate and heal him, then it might not be able to do it, or at least have to work harder to get the right type in a parallel ( ... )
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Er, fixed point + antimatter universe sounds catastrophic to me... And then variation in stuff like the strength of the basic forces very quickly makes humanlike life impossible, he'd have to be really lucky to find a universe where the laws differed enough to make him normal again while not differing so much that he couldn't exist, or find any kind of life he could communicate with.
Although, the TARDIS lost power when she crossed over to Pete's World and needed a bit of energy from our universe from the Doctor to get her charged back up again. Maybe there would be a similar effect on Jack since it was vortex/TARDIS energy that made him a fixed point?That's possible - but I think of his transformation is an all-at-once sort of thing, rather than something than something continuously sustained by the vortex. He comes back to life because it's written into the universe that he has to, so it would depend on how ( ... )
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Er, fixed point + antimatter universe sounds catastrophic to me... And then variation in stuff like the strength of the basic forces very quickly makes humanlike life impossible, he'd have to be really lucky to find a universe where the laws differed enough to make him normal again while not differing so much that he couldn't exist, or find any kind of life he could communicate with.
Well, maybe the antimatter universe wasn't the best example, though, I'm sure it would be a relief to know that there was someplace he could go that could kill him. We do know there are other universes out there that aren't parallels (or they are, but with such extreme and fundamental differences that we don't recognize them as such) and there may be possibilities in that, though it is undeniably a very long shot that living in or visiting one would be helpful to him.
That's possible - but I think of his transformation is an all-at-once sort of thing, rather than something than something continuously sustained by the vortex.I'd been thinking of it that ( ... )
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Of course, he'd have to pick the right black hole... and risk getting ripped apart by the gravity differentials and still coming back to life if he got the wrong one.
We do know there are other universes out there that aren't parallels (or they are, but with such extreme and fundamental differences that we don't recognize them as such)
There are still only a relatively small crop of universes that would fit what he's looking for, though, so, as you say, it's a very long shot.
What the Abaddon thing makes me think is, Abaddon is drawing out people's life energy, and everyone has it, it's just that Jack's is eternally self-renewing.
It's equally possible that he's not drawing on anything, it's more that he just exists outside of time in some fundamental way, moving through it but not really touching it or being influenced.
Which is exactly what I think.
He knows Jack ( ... )
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Of course, he'd have to pick the right black hole... and risk getting ripped apart by the gravity differentials and still coming back to life if he got the wrong one.
The antimatter universe doesn't require a black hole. I forget the name of the serial, but it was during Four's time while he was traveling with Sarah Jane that they encountered it and there was just a deep hole in the ground in a mostly deserted planet.
Except that Jack told him he's the Face of Boe, so he already knows it's going to work out... oh, dammit. *fends off plotbunny about Ten going off to make the Face of Boe eventually mortal again while avoiding EoT*
If that's true, which I'm still not sure of.
Mm... and you're thinking of that school of thought that if Jack was unfixed, he'd immediately die, yeah? It's an interesting idea, but I don't really follow it.It's most likely that he would just pick up where he left off on aging, but there's always a risk that he might not. So far as we know, he's the first and only being in the universe that this has ever ( ... )
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Well, he could just jump into random holes in the ground, I suppose, but it's a bit desperate... cos the Doctor's not likely to tell him where it is!
If
that's true, which I'm still not sure of.
It's pretty much axiomatic for me, is the thing... we've just come full circle, haven't we?
It's most likely that he would just pick up where he left off on aging,
That would have been my assumption, yeah. Because he did come back undamaged to begin with, it's not as though he got shot in the gut and is walking around with a bloody great wound...
but there's always a risk that he might not. So far as we know, he's the first and only being in the universe that this has ever happened to, so there's an inherent level of uncertainty.
Yeah, but that's what makes it fun. XD
Interesting theory. I'd never considered that before.I've seen it around fandom, and immediately pounced on it, cos the vortex did, after all, kill him, even though he said he got rid of it - and ( ... )
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Well, he could just jump into random holes in the ground, I suppose, but it's a bit desperate... cos the Doctor's not likely to tell him where it is!
Well, the Doctor's not the only source of information in the universe.
Yeah, but that's what makes it fun. XD
Oh yes!
Unless - oh, didn't think of this before - unless he healed her just before giving it back.
That I have considered and it does make sense. I also kind of like the idea that there's still a tiny little bit of Bad Wolf left in Rose (though it works better for fanfic than cannon, overall), as long as it doesn't turn her into a comic book hero.
Which means either they sat down and talked about it at some point, or she does remember at least some of it.
Yeah, "I sang a song and the Daleks went away" doesn't really wash long term, so I suspect they talked about it.
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Yeah, but with Gallifrey gone, isn't he gonna be fairly short of sources of info about the antimatter universe?
I also kind of like the idea that there's still a tiny little bit of Bad Wolf left in Rose (though it works better for fanfic than cannon, overall), as long as it doesn't turn her into a comic book hero.
Timeline Girl! Able to leap dimensional walls in a single bound! Faster than a speeding staser-blast! More powerful than a big yellow truck!
I think there is, though, cos the werewolf picked it up - and because of the nonlinearity of time, there now always has been, perhaps.
Yeah, "I sang a song and the Daleks went away" doesn't really wash long term, so I suspect they talked about it.Yup. But she still never asked about Jack, did she? Cos if she'd known the Doctor abandoned him, she'd have made him go back for him. I've been assuming, actually, that she thinks he's dead, cos the Doctor's lie about him rebuilding the Earth would be so ( ... )
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