FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON

[upupa_epops]

Old news: lj is dead. Everyone is crazy busy, or they have other reasons not to be here. No one has time to read those huge meta posts we used to write once upon a time. But maybe we can all find ten minutes to do this:

FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON!

Comments

[anonymous]

Two of the big theories I've seen floating around, are that he's either the version of the Doctor who ended the Time War, wiping out the Daleks and sacrificing the other Time Lords, or that he's the Valeyard.

If he was the former, that would make him either 8 or 9, depending exactly when the rejeneration happened. But I don't think that's it, when 11 spoke to Hurt!Doctor he specifically said that whatever terrible thing Hurt had done was not done in the name of the Doctor. And while the end of the time War did mess with the Doctor a lot, it's something he owns. He's talked about it as something he did, and so that doesn't really fit.

The Valeyard's harder, because it depends on how many of the stories featuring him you count as canon. (Just the tv appearances, or the books and audio too.) He's generally supposed to be the Doctor's penultimate rejeneration (between 12 & 13) and made up of the Doctor's dark side. That's a big part of why I don't think it's him, because we're getting so close to that rejeneration it would box the writer's in, and I don't believe they'll go there.

Moffat has a thing for the power of stories, and the names people choose, or are given. And I think that'll play a part in this reveal, how the Doctor is seen by people and how he wants to present himself. If you think of some of the names he's been called (particularly going back to A Good Man Goes To War) it is something that's important to him. In the conversation with Hurt, he talks about how he chose to be the Doctor, and so I think that perhaps Hurt!Doctor is going to predate 1. That whatever terrible thing he did was the catalyst for the Doctor to take Susan, steal a TARDIS and leave Gallifrey, and that he then chose the name the Doctor to signify the change in his behaviour, and reject the things his previous self had done.

[anonymous]

What do you think of the idea that the Doctor now has infinite regenerations as stated by 11 in an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures? Are we meant to take that statement as a change in canon or an offhand remark that doesn't actually change anything?

[anonymous]

Well the Doctor is a lying liar who lies (or is very good at keeping secrets) so I don't think he was necessarily telling the truth. And if I remember right even RTD said it was a throwaway line, as the whole 13 regenerations myth was too entrenched to be overturned by a single line. But we are coming up to that bright line of the original number of regenerations, and as the BBC are unlikely to want to let the show go, somewhere there must be a handwave, or fix coming in.

I have seen a few conversations where it was thought the Doctor could have been telling the truth about the infinite regenerations. It came from the knowledge that Time Lords could take and/or give regenerations from one Time Lord to another, and there was a theory going around for a while that all the Time Lords left on Gallifrey transferred their remaining regenerations to the Doctor to give him enough power to end the Time War. And there's always the idea that he might have gotten hold of Rassilon’s secret (immortality as timeless perpetual bodily regeneration.)

Who canon has always been a bit malleable, and some people don't take anything not in the main show as canon, and others include all the spin offs and alternate media. But between the continuity issues, and the Doctor's propensity for stretching the truth getting a fix on any definitive answer is tricky. I mean depending on which canons you include, and when the Doctor tells the truth his age wanders all over the place too. At one point 2 says he's several thousand years old, but then 9 talks about 900 years in time and space. Occasionally they tried to handwave it by saying different planets had years of different lengths, so he was using different measurements, but Who canon's only real rule seems to be that it changes to fit each new writer's whims.

[shobogan]

We know the Time Lords are capable of giving people more regenerations - they made that offer to the Master in The Five Doctors. I think it's definitely possible that they did this during the Time War, so they wouldn't have as many permanent casualties.

So I think the Valeyard could still be a manifestation between Eleven and Twelve, which were meant to be the Doctor's last lives. Maybe giving him more fucked things up worse. Time Lords do that a lot.