Doctor Who Question -- Caution may contain spoiler-like substance

Yes, I also prefer this take on the Doctor’s life, that it has a backstage. My (poorly elaborated) point was that the current incarnation of the show, by overemphasizing the idea that death and misery follow the Doctor wherever he goes, clashes with that. And I think it takes away something essential from the Doctor’s character. He works better as a quixotic wanderer than as fate’s bitch, which is what RTD has turned him into.

I think as long as the TARDIS is around, you don’t even need to look for gaps. Any time he has a minute or two to himself and access to the TARDIS, he’s got all the time he needs and nobody will ever know he was gone if he doesn’t tell them.

Well, there’s the fact that in Mawdryn Undead, in order to release Mawdryn and his pals from their unwanted immortality, the Doctor has to give up all his remaining regenerations. Mawdryn and his pals number eight, and the Doctor points out that if he helps them, he’ll have to use up a regeneration on each of them, leaving him no more for himself. Since Time Lords get twelve regenerations, and as of Mawdryn Undead he’s used four, we can deduce that what we saw in the Brain of Morbius were previous incarnations of Morbius, not the Doctor.

Of course, nobody spends any time thinking about such things : )

I don’t really think that’s true at all. I’m only familiar with the new series and I’ve always gotten the impression that we are only seeing the adventures where something interesting/dangerous/worldly happens, and that he & his companions go to many more places where they just explore and have a good time. But that really doesn’t make for a very interesting episode to watch.

The 8th Doctor also spent years in radio shows, audio books, novels, and a BBC comic strip in between the movie and the restart of the television show. Whether you buy all of the events and comments in the movie or not (and I’m not buying any part of half-human), the 8th Doctor, himself, is canon. Since he operated for nine years, between 1996 and 2005, he has a claim to being the longest running Doctor.

I must say, that’s not quite my take on the way the new series sees the Doctor. The way I see it, the Doctor as “Oncoming Storm” is more legend than reality – it’s how others see him, not how he is. Anyone who looks up the Doctor in a library (as he tells the Vashta Norada to in Forest of the Dead) is going to find him cross-referenced to entries like “Autons – destruction of; Axons – destruction of; Cybermen – destruction of; Daleks – destruction of” etc.

The Doctor can have as much down time as he likes, but the things he does that get noticed and recorded by other peoples are the big adventures.

I think the seventh Doctor was actually written more as “Time’s Champion”: the current incarnation is more a guy with a rep – one that he’s willing to play into if it gives him a psychological advantage in getting the job done.

TWDuke said:

I vaguely recall an episode where they end up in the wrong time and are all confused. The dialogue blames it on the Tardis.

Well, you know the Tardis isn’t supposed to be piloted by just one person.

The heart of the Tardis contains it’s soul and links to the Eye of Harmony. The Tardis is said to have a soul a few times. The Eye of Harmony contains the black hole harnessed by Rassilon to power time travel for the Time Lords.

The Eye of Harmony was back on Gallifrey- what happened to it? Was Gallifrey just devastated down to an airless rock, or was the planet completely destroyed?

I can’t help you with that since the Time Wars were not covered as broadcast video.

It’s implied that it was taken out of time all together. Not only destroyed but it never existed in our continuity. (The Time Lords and the Daleks exist only in the memories of the more advanced, time-travelling races. Jack mentions that the Daleks disappeared from the universe, throughout all of time, all at once, something which doesn’t even really make sense to my poor little linear brain, but there you go.)

Well, you have to understand that time is a bunch of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

It’s always been implied that the Doctor visited other worlds both before the first adventure and in between them. In The Five Doctors, he’s shown visiting the Eye of Orion when he’s called back to Gallifrey.

In addition, the Doctor’s age is not given in strict linearity. It was first given as “400-450 years” by the Second Doctor, while the Fourth Doctor said it was around 750 years. The current Doctor is around 900 years old. Since the Doctor aged several hundred years in each gap – an amount of time not covered in the chronology of the episodes – there is plenty of time for the Doctor to travel, with or without a companion (nothing precludes them from going along, though obviously not for a hundred year trip).

Which is especially prickly, since the 7th doctor stated he was 953 years old. The 9th Doctor is a big vain fibber.

Complete list of First’s through Seventh’s known untelevised adventures, courtesy the BBC’s Episode Guide:

[ul][li]The Doctor and Susan have probably been in France at the time of the Revolution (1789-1799) and in England after the introduction of decimal coinage (1971). [However, Susan, interested in Earth, might have learnt these details while on Gallifrey.][/li]
[li]The Doctor and Susan have visited the planet Quinnis in the ‘fourth universe’ (‘where we nearly lost the TARDIS four or five journeys ago,’ notes Susan). [Since the Doctor seems not to learn about parallel universes until Inferno, Susan must mean ‘galaxy’ (cf Galaxy 4).] The coat the Doctor loans Ian is said to have been given to him by Gilbert and Sullivan. [/li]
[li]Susan says she has heard the noise made by the ‘screaming jungle’ before [see The Sensorites]. The Doctor has met Pyrrho, the founder of scepticism.[/li]
[li]Susan and the Doctor were present during a Zeppelin air raid [in World War I].[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to Dido before [the events of “The Rescue”].[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to Rome before [the events of “The Romans”]. He once taught the Mountain Mauler of Montana. He also gave Hans Anderson the idea for “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.[/li]
[li]The Doctor claims he was with James Watt when he discovered steam power.[/li]
[li]The Doctor’s first meeting with the Toymaker.[/li]
[li]The Doctor gives Jamie a little lecture on the Crimean war, and states that he watched the Charge of the Light Brigade (‘magnificent folly’). [/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to Det Sen before [the events of “The Abominable Snowman”] (‘Every time I visit Det Sen the monastery seems to be in some kind of trouble’), including a visit in 1630 when he took the holy ghanta into safekeeping. (Padmasambhava recognises the second Doctor, but Jamie hasn’t been there before, so (at least one of) the visits must have taken place between The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders, indicating an extended series of adventures for Ben and Polly.) [/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to Dulkis before [the events of “The Dominators”]. He remembers the Dulcians as a very advanced, gentle people, and was reluctant to leave. [/li]
[li]The Cyber Director tells Vaughn that the Doctor and Jamie have been recognised ‘from Planet 14’ [an untelevised adventure, as all of the second Doctor’s other meetings with the Cybermen take place, chronologically, after this date, and the Cybermen as yet show no time travel ability][/li]
[li]The Doctor met [the future?] King Edward VII in Paris and states he was at Krakatoa during the eruption of 1883.[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to a circus [before the events of “Terror of the Autons”]. At some point, he angered the Master enough to make him want to kill his ‘old acquaintance’. The Master’s hypnotic skills were evident then, although he was not nearly as learned as he is now. [Their time together at the Academy wasn’t very important to them (the first Doctor doesn’t recognise him in The Five Doctors) so the antagonism must have arisen during unscreened later meetings.][/li]
[li]The Doctor says he once shared a cell in the tower of London with Sir Walter Raleigh (‘a very strange chap… Kept going on about this new vegetable he’d discovered’). [/li]
[li]The Doctor has possibly met Hitler and/or Genghis Khan [whom he hadn’t when he met Kublai Khan].[/li]
[li]The Doctor has met Napoleon: ‘‘Boney’, I said, ‘an army marches on its stomach’’. [/li]
[li]The Doctor’s been to the coronation of Elizabeth I, or perhaps Victoria. He can’t remember which, (but isn’t worried about attending twice). [/li]
[li]The Doctor is a friend of [Horatio] Nelson’s.[/li]
[li]The Doctor says he took boxing lessons from John Sullivan (American heavyweight champion, 1892). [/li]
[li]The Doctor was once captured by the Medusoids, hairy one-legged jellyfish, who used a mind probe on him, and discovered that he was on his way to meet a giant rabbit, a pink elephant and a purple horse with yellow spots, all delegates at the 3rd inter galactic peace conference. He’s a noble of Draconia, having aided the 15th Emperor 500 years ago [therefore the Draconian Empire dates back to at least the 21st century] in dealing with a plague from space.[/li]
[li]The Doctor says that the Vandals were ‘quite decent chaps’.[/li]
[li]The Doctor is a good friend of Harry Houdini’s.[/li]
[li]The Doctor met Shakespeare once [before the events of “The Planet of Evil”] (cf. City of Death), and describes him as a ‘charming fellow… Dreadful actor.’[/li]
[li]The Doctor was given his picklock by Marie Antoinette.[/li]
[li]The Doctor once met the Duke of Marlborough.[/li]
[li]The Doctor learnt fencing from a Captain in Cleopatra’s bodyguard, and met Florence Nightingale (see The Evil of the Daleks, The Sea Devils). Between [“The Masque of Mandragora”] and City of Death he meets Leonardo Da Vinci again.[/li]
[li]The Doctor’s first visit [to the Mordee]. He used Sidelian memory transfer to reprogram the Mordee computer with his own brain patterns. He claims to have been taught the crossbow by William Tell.[/li]
[li]The Doctor claims to have seen similar ‘moving mines’ on Korlano Beta.[/li]
[li]The Doctor was ‘with the Filipino army at the final advance on Reykjavik’ in the 51st Century. The Doctor says he once fished the river Fleet and caught a salmon which he shared with the Venerable Bede, who adored fish [unlikely since the Fleet was septic by 1260 and Bede never came that far south].[/li]
[li]The Doctor says the Droge of Gabrielides offered a whole star system for his head. The Company holds records on the Doctor’s activities: he has a long history of ‘violence and economic subversion’.[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to Aberdeen and Blackpool.[/li]
[li]The Doctor says he was trained in sleight of hand by Mescalin.[/li]
[li]The Doctor told Sir Isaac Newton the idea for gravity at dinner after sitting in his tree dropping apples on his head.[/li]
[li]The Doctor has met Einstein.[/li]
[li]The Doctor saw Capablanca play Alekhine at chess in 1927 [in Buenos Aires]. He also met Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler.[/li]
[li]The Doctor implies that he has met opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931).[/li]
[li]The Doctor, rescuing K9 from the furnaces, says that he picked up the trick from fire walkers in Bali.[/li]
[li]The Doctor’s first encounter with the Big Bang (he reads Origins of the Universe by Oolon Caluphid and comments ‘He got it wrong on the first line! Why didn’t he ask someone who saw it happen?’). [/li]
[li]Some time after The Masque of Mandragora, the Doctor met Leonardo Da Vinci and the model for the Mona Lisa, who ‘wouldn’t sit still’. [/li]
[li]The Doctor in the Minotaur’s maze and the adventure where the tractor beam was [first] used. [/li]
[li]The Doctor knew Tryst’s mentor, the late Professor Stein.[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to ‘charming’ Aneth, ‘but not yet’. He was also involved in the original Minotaur story, forgetting to remind Theseus to paint his ship white (see The Creature from the Pit).[/li]
[li]The Doctor received an honorary degree from St. Cedd’s College, Cambridge, in 1960. He visited Professor Chronotis in 1955, 1960 and 1964, and also in 1958 in a different incarnation. In order to defeat Skagra, the Doctor goes ‘vortex walking’ (a trick he says he learnt from a space/time mystic in the Quantocks [K’Anpo?]). [/li]
[li]The Doctor, in his fourth incarnation, visited Tigella 50 years [before the events of “Meglos”], meeting Zastor.[/li]
[li]Returning the kidnapped human from “Meglos” to Earth.[/li]
[li]The Doctor isn’t sure if he’s been to Traken before.[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to Logopolis before [the events of “Logopolis”], when the Logopolitans offered to do the chameleon conversion for him. He is a friend of Thomas Huxley’s.[/li]
[li]The Doctor was a friend of Francis Drake, was at Heathrow when they were rebuilding Terminal 3, and once took five wickets for New South Wales (He used to bowl a good Chinaman.) [This almost certainly refers to the fourth incarnation, as he carried a ball in The Ark in Space and practised his bowling in The Hand of Fear. As a Chinaman is a left handed googly, ambidexterity is implied: see The Curse of Fenric.[/li]
[li]The return of the freighter crew (Earthshock) to their own time.[/li]
[li]The Doctor tells the Brigadier about ‘the terrible Zodin’ (see Attack of the Cybermen).[/li]
[li]‘Twice we offered the hand of friendship’, says Icthar, which doesn’t accurately describe the events of The Sea Devils. As the Doctor knows of the Myrka and ‘Silurian’ battle cruisers, having seen neither on screen, and knows Icthar by name, though he ‘thought him dead’, it seems clear that the third or fourth Doctors had an unscreened second adventure with the ‘Silurians’.[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been ‘this way before’ and says that Androzani Minor ‘hasn’t changed’.[/li]
[li]Azmael last met the Doctor in the Doctor’s fourth incarnation, and was the best teacher the Doctor ever had. On that occasion, Azmael got drunk.[/li]
[li]The Doctor has been to Seville before [the events of “The Two Doctors”].[/li]
[li]Timelash is the sequel to an untelevised third Doctor/Jo Grant story. On that occasion, the Doctor visited Karfel where he saved the planet from some unspecified disaster and reported the scientist Magellan to the presidium for unethical experiments on the Morlox creatures. (There is also a suggestion that he may have had more than one companion, Tekker saying ‘Just the two of you this time?’ [Was he taking Yates or Benton for a spin?].)[/li]
[li]The Grand Order of Oberon is a group of religious knights which the Doctor can recognise a member of at a glance. Perhaps he’s met them before. Arthur Stengos, the agronomist, was an old friend of the Doctor’s.[/li]
[li]Immediately prior to [the second set of “Trial of a Time Lord”], the Doctor and Peri were on Thordon, where the warlords were being supplied phasers by Thoros Beta.[/li]
[li]There are generalised references to other adventures with Mel. The Doctor met Commodore (then Captain) ‘Tonker’ Travers, and the Captain nearly lost his ship, caught up in ‘a web of mayhem and intrigue’ with fatalities. The Doctor also knew Hallet, and admired him. He’s also been to Mogar.[/li]
[li]Mel’s very scared of the Bannermen without being told who they are [She’s met them before?]. [/li]
[li]The Doctor has visited Earth soon after [the events of “Remembrance of the Daleks”, as he knows the outcome of Harry’s wife’s pregnancy.[/li]
[li]The Doctor met a Stigorax (like Fifi) in Birmingham in the 25th century.[/li]
[li]The whole story [of “Silver Nemesis”] is a sequel to an adventure (which Ace knows nothing about, although presumably it involved the second Doctor, as Lady Peinforte refers to the doctor still being little) involving validium, set in 1638. The evil Lady Peinforte fashioned a statue Nemesis from the metal. [/li]
The Doctor, thanks in part to the timely intervention of a number of Roundheads (?!?) [and hoping to use Nemesis as a destructive lure against the Cybermen in the future] was able to launch the majority of the deadly statue into space. The Doctor says that the last time he was at Windsor the castle was being built. In the extended video version, there is also a portrait of Ace in Victorian clothes, which hints at another untelevised adventure.

[li]The Doctor says that he knows a nice little Indian restaurant near the Khyber Pass. [/li]
[*]Fenric met the Doctor in third century Constantinople and, defeated at chess, was banished to ‘a shadow dimension’ while its earthly essence was imprisoned in a flask for 17 centuries. The Doctor met the Ancient One in the far future. [/ul]

Um - wow.

Huh. Well, I guess that sort of answers my question. Sort of.

:stuck_out_tongue:

The Doctor tells the Master that Gallifrey burned and the Time Lords are dead. The very human Sarah Jane Smith remembered the Daleks quite well (and was able to recognize Davros from a few spoken words).

To be exact, the 9th Doctor said that he had been traveling in a phone box for 900 years, not that he’s 900 years old. Maybe he was already 400 years old when The TARDIS got stuck as a police box.

In Voyage of the Damned, he explicitly gives his age: ““I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I’m 903 years old and I’m the man who is gonna save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?” However, I don’t think the Doctor is necessarily a reliable source of information about himself. In the seventh version’s first adventure, he gave his age as 953.