Happy 50th Doctor Who 211
beaverdownunder writes "To commemorate 50 years of the Tardis, today the BBC is airing a 75 minute special finally revealing the secrets of the Time War. What did you think of the special? And what's your fondest memory of Who? And what about that Capaldi guy?"
Okian Warrior pointed out today's Google doodle too.
This is cool, and I'm not even a fan of the show! (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUBxHd3bMhg
Didn't like it (Score:2, Interesting)
I seem to be massively in the minority here, but I wasn't impressed with the 50th anniversary Dr Who episode.
Aside from the randomness of running around with Queen Elizabeth I, I don't understand why writers feel it is necessary for them to retcon an established story's past. We've always known that the Doctor did something awful that resulted in the destruction of Gallifrey and the Daleks, and although it ended the Time War and saved the galaxy, it is something the Doctor has always felt very guilty about.
However, the writers of the show decided that they could fix this problem by "freezing" Gallifrey in a fixed point in time, rather than burning it. This, they reasoned, would result in the planet and the Time Lords being saved, but the Daleks being destroyed. How? Simple - they would destroy one another in the crossfire.
No. No, they wouldn't. There are millions and millions of Dalek ships surrounding the planet. They wouldn't just keep firing once the planet popped out of existence, wiping all their forces out. They would stop as soon as Gallifrey vanished, leaving the galaxy to attempt to face (and lose to) a huge army of rampaging Daleks. And even if they did something kill each other in the crossfire, the Daleks on the surface of the planet are just as frozen in time as the citizens of the world.
Why change what the Doctor did? Why remove that flaw, in an attempt to make him whiter-than-white?! The destruction of his homeworld was the Doctor's burden to shoulder. Taking that away makes him less human (I'm aware of the irony there, as he's actually an alien).
Re:Favorite moments (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly Baker's Doctor could have averted the while Time War and having to murder his entire race. He travelled back to when the Daleks were first created and has the opportunity to put a stop to them then and there, but decided not to on the grounds that he would be wiping out an entire race.
Re:Watched (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing I hate about this episode is that Doctor Who is turning into a miracle worker that can fix anything, anywhere, any time. Where's all that anguish between doing something bad and letting something horrible happen going to go? No more the burden of having killed billions of children to save the universe on your conscience. Time paradoxes, crossing your own time stream, going to your own grave, time locked has ceased to mean anything. Now it was just "the time streams are out of sync, we just won't remember". At the end of every episode, he could essentially go back to the beginning and make it null and void, no more you made a decision and you're stuck with it. Hell, they more than hinted in this episode that they're going to rewrite Trenselor, no more of this future:
Dr. Simeon: It was a minor skirmish by the Doctor's blood-soaked standards. Not exactly the Time War, but enough to finish him. In the end it was too much for the old man.
Jenny: Blood soaked?
Vastra: The Doctor has been many things, but never blood-soaked.
Dr. Simeon: Tell that to the leader of the Sycorax. Or Solomon the Trader. Or the Cybermen, or the Daleks. The Doctor lives his life in darker hues, day upon day. And he will have other names before the end. Storm. The Beast. The Valeyard.
The doctor needs a setback, some kind of limitations, something he can't fix. But I think you have pretty much thrown that out the window by fixing the Time War.