Ringthane

Well, if "Let's Kill Hitler" was really the first meeting, then what a waste of a potentially great story.

I meant the first meeting between River and the Doctor, period. When he would know everything about her and she would know nothing about him. Wasn't the original idea for her to meet the Doctor in the reverse order of when he meets her? At some point there has to be that first time she encounters him, and it would make sense to have an older actor playing him when that happens. I mean, it's possible that she could know several incarnations of him, but at some point she just becomes another Clara - having seen and been part of the lives of/influential in the lives of a whole slew of them. Plus, Alex Kingston's not getting any younger. Not that she doesn't look good, but at some point it would be weird to see a story like that if she looks older in that story than she did in the story River dies in. It would be interesting if being so close to the Doctor and time travel for so long maybe made her timeline more fluid and less linear than a regular person's, but I don't trust Moffatt to be able to write something like that without resorting to the old "wibbly wobbly, timey wimey" chestnut again.

When River met Tennant's Doctor, she did say how young he looked. Maybe we'll finally get to see the first meeting between River and the Doctor. Although, if it is River from somewhere during the time we've already seen, imagine how agitated she'll get when she tries to get all touchy-feely with Capaldi and finds out how much he hates hugging... I also wonder if River will know that Capaldi is the first of a new cycle of Doctors, or if she knew Matt Smith's Doctor was the 13th incarnation. Obviously she knows he has multiple regenerations, but will she be able to tell what happened? Wasn't it CALRiver who showed up at Trenzalore? Lots of questions.

Man, Moffett's got more crutches than the physical rehab department at my local hospital. I suppose Vastra and the gang will pop in as well. Maybe the stars will go out again or something.

I always thought it would be funny if, in the middle of some random story, Twelve would just suddenly run into the TARDIS, grab that lever, furrow his brow, and pull it dramatically to do whatever he was doing in that episode, and then just casually go right back to whatever he was doing.

Even the Doctor could have talked to the Time Lords once he knew what the crack and the message were, as I'm sure not even the Time Lords wanted the Time War to start up again. But, it's the story we got, so it's the story we have to go with.

Every Dalek story since "Dalek" has featured lots of Daleks. What about "Asylum of the Daleks"? Not only were both versions of the new series Daleks in there, but also a bunch of the different models from the classic series. So much for being wiped out in the Time War (which, when you think about it, means that no matter what the Time War Doctor did, all he really accomplished was the loss of Gallifrey and his people. I wish someone would examine that in more detail on the show).

I would have shown "Midnight" and "Father's Day" before a few of those... "Turn Left" too.

But even if he did evacuate the planet, once the Time Lords came back, the Daleks would have started the Time War again. Once Handles deciphered the message, everyone knew it was them. That's what he was really trying to stop, even if Moffatt couldn't articulate it beyond a couple of throwaway lines. And imagine what that must have done to him - right there in front of him was everything he wanted for centuries: a restored TIme Lord society, not to be alone in the universe, maybe a new regeneration cycle and a way out of the final death that was in his future on one side, and the Daleks waiting to destroy everything on the other.

I don't think they did (at least at that point) - if the Master could regenerate, why would he stick around in Tremas's old body? Unless he regenerated and kept the same body/face, just like Tennant's Doctor did. The last I remember, the Doctors told the Time Lords that came in the Tomb to do what they wanted with him. But that was during the whole JNT/Saward era, so who knows what was really supposed to happen.

See, the last two posts illustrate what I was trying to say. Twelve is probably still amazed he's around at all. As far as he's concerned, Eleven was it. He'd come to terms with it, he'd adapted to it. I mean, the same guy who couldn't sit still for a few months with Amy and Rory during that heart attack box episode decided to live out the remainder of his life (which turned out to be centuries) on one little planet, just so the Daleks couldn't start up the Time War again. And then all of a sudden, bam! Now he's got a whole new set of lives (and who knows if it's another 13-life set, or if, as someone else said, if the Time Lords gave him the ability to be able to regenerate forever, without limit. Here's an intriguing idea - we all know what the Master did when he ran out of regenerations. We also know that somewhere, the Valeyard was formed between the Doctor's last two lives (or what they thought would be the last two), and he wanted the Doctor's regenerations as well. What if the Doctor - just for a brief moment - considered what he would do at that point, and if he would be able to find a way to go on as well, and what that would entail? It's an interesting thought... Maybe Twelve is so down on himself because he knows something like that happened, and he's not sure what that means. (We do know that the person the Doctor hates the most in the entire universe is himself, as the Dream Lord showed us.) Also, we've never seen a Time Lord on the show that got a new cycle - I don't remember it being stated that the Master ever did, or if the ones we saw in the new series were just before the Delgado and Ainley ones. So maybe in the Doctor's eyes, he's thinking that the real him died with Eleven, and he's not sure if he's the same guy or if he's something different. We have no idea what the mental toll of spending an entire life preparing to die finally, fully, and then getting a whole new batch of regenerations might be. So I'm OK with Capaldi's Doctor as played. Perhaps this year Moffatt will finally be able to get over the Clara-love and do Twelve right.

I guess I don't understand how, in a show where twelve different actors have played the lead part, the current incarnation's personality being jerky is bad characterization. Was Five being weaker and quieter bad characterization? No, that's how he was played. Was Three's affinity for class and affluence bad characterization? Was Eleven's "old man in a young man's body" bad characterization? This version of the Doctor is what he is. Just like Donald Trump is what he is. Trump could act like a saint from this moment on, but at some point his true self will show through. And as for how Clara and Twelve treat each other - I've been friends with people that we could mock each other and insult each other all day long, but at the core we knew we'd be there for each other the moment we needed each other. That's just the type of friendship we had, just like that's the type of friendship the Doctor and Clara seem to have. Now, if you're looking at writing, yeah - being rude to each other like that in lieu of actual conflict is lazy writing. It's very easy to just write characters being mean to each other. And that's what Moffatt seems to want from his characters. But there are people who act like that with their friends, but it's just the way they are. Below that is a real connection (or should be, anyway).

Four used to rag on Harry all the time. Six tried to strangle Peri - yes, he was still screwed up from regeneration, but he still did it. Seven told Fenric to go ahead and kill Ace so that Ace's faith would break and he would be able to trick Fenric. Nine called humans apes (stupid apes? I don't remember if he said that or not). Ten told Martha in "Smith and Jones" to leave another doctor behind because she would slow them down. And what is Twelve bitter about? What right does he have to be a jerk? Well, that's who he is. That's his personality. Have you never seen anyone who had everything they wanted and was still a jerk? And Twelve spent his entire first series trying to figure out who he was - if he was a good man, or not. Remember, this is a Doctor who wouldn't exist if not for the Time Lords giving him a new regeneration cycle. That has to have an effect on a Time Lord (in fact, if Moffatt weren't such a hack, that would have been a neat story to tell - the story of a Doctor who didn't think he'd exist, as Smith's Doctor was supposed to be the final Doctor.) And Twelve still doesn't know where Gallifrey is. It's not like he can just pop back there whenever he wants. So that's why I don't have a problem with his personality. He is who he is. And if there are no consequences, who's really to blame for that? The scriptwriters are the ones who give them the words to say and write the stories that don't have the consequences in them. And Moffatt's the one in charge of all of them. Maybe this season, things will be different.

I think, and this is just my opinion, one thing you're missing or forgetting about the Doctor is that he's an alien. He's not human, no matter how much he likes us/tries to fit in with us. He's just not going to respond in the same way that someone like you or I would. Sometimes he's a jerk to people - the first Doctor almost bashed a caveman's skull in in "An Unearthly Child", until Ian stopped him, and then almost got them all killed in "The Daleks", because he wanted to explore the Dalek city so badly he pretended to sabotage the TARDIS. Four refused to help save someone in "The Seeds of Doom". Seven used and manipulated everyone around him, including Ace, to get what he wanted. For every "do I have the right" scene the Doctor has, there's a scene that shows his darker side. Some of his incarnations are better at hiding it than others, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. As far as Clara goes, though - yeah. She's just a horrible person.

As ditzy as Jo Grant was, though, she was one of the few people who was able to resist the Master's hypnosis. So she must have had more going on then she let on.

Four liked Jelly Babies, although Troughton said he was the first one to have them (I think he had them in one story, but I don't remember which. Three was a food and wine connisseur, as seen in Day of the Daleks. Six had to fight off Mel's offers of carrot juice, Eleven loved fish fingers and custard, and Ten hated pears. The last thing he wanted to do after being John Smith for three months is to wake up and find he'd eaten a pear.

It didn't help that Eric Saward and JNT didn't get along toward the end of Colin Baker's run, or that the budget was about $40 a year. Luckily, Andrew Cartmel came along with the Cartmel Masterplan.

You know, one thing about Capaldi is that he can wear things you'd normally think were weird for someone his age, and they look good. LIke the hoodie and the shirt with holes last year (but not the black shirt with the big white dots). It's like Matt Smith's Doctor was an old man in a young man's body (something they wanted to do with Peter Davison, but never got to, if I remember right), and Capaldi's Doctor is kind of like a young man in an old man's body.

It was transponster. I wonder if they ever figured out what he did.

I couldn't even figure out what it said until I saw somebody talking about it on the internet. I spent the entire episode trying to figure it out.

Apparently, maroon coats are a popular theme in the Doctor's wardrobe - Pertwee had one or two, Tom Baker had the short one when he first started, and the long one when he left, and now Peter Capaldi's found the middle ground one.

The reason Kamelion didn't appear beyond his first and last stories was that the man who invented the robot and did all the programming died after Kamelion's first appearance, and nobody else knew how to work the thing. Kamelion was supposed to make an appearance in the first part of "The Awakening", but they cut the scene. I found this on Wikipedia: Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamelion Of course, with today's CGI, anything's possible.

Well, that would be the third kind of relationship for them - first the Impossibe Girl thing, then last season's snoozefest, and then this. They do say the third time's the charm...

Well, look at how often he saw Ben in the last few years of the show. Definitely Father of the Year material there...

One thing I thought about while re-reading this thread: isn't it something, that in this day and age, when they'll CGI the streets in regular shows so that the buildings and stuff look different, two of the most popular and fondly remembered shows of the past twenty years have consisted of people acting with puppets (Farscape and MST3K). And the puppets are just as real and just as much a character as any of the humans.