So there’s an alien warship attacking the city you live in, taking captive all the people therein, and bake y’all into meat pies. You manage to elude the first wave of murderous epicures, but there’s no telling how long it’ll be before the second wave arrives. Your friends and family are already captive and awaiting the Lovett treatment.
But all is not lost! You still have the hypertime iPad you acquired at the last Dopefest, so you call Rhymer Enterprises for help–only to be laughed at bythis young woman, who is supplementing her waitressing income by working the RhE switchboard. Taking a moment to put her blouse back on since you’ve got her on videophone, Max says:
“Sorry, dude. You seem to have mistaken us for champions of liberty and niceness. We charge up front for military ops. If you’re on the Short List the boss will come along to rescue you personally, but your loved ones are still shit outta luck. Tell you what, though. You’re a Doper, and we like Dopers, so I can forward your SOS either to the TARDIS or Asgard, and we’ll provide whichever do-gooder answers with your coordinates so they can come help. You gotta pick one, though; I’m about to go on break.”
Whom do you ask for help: the last Time Lord, or the Son of Odin?
Marvel Thor by a longshot. Aside from his own powerful abilities he’s also got a lot more firepower backing him up. A host of Asgardians willing to ride into battle with him, the entirety of the Avengers (literally hundreds of different heroes many of which have extreme powers) should he decide to call them, and if everything really goes to shit then Odin will bail out his favored son more often than not (or is he still dead? I’m not caught up on the current status quo).
The Doctor is pretty awesome at stopping invasions, but he does so through cleverness and problem solving. Thor could just blast them and toss them back to wherever they came from with little difficulty.
Hmm. Thor. This is just the kind of scenario he’s good at; bad guys to smash, innocents to rescue. The Doctor could handle it I’m sure, but he’d likely be slower; this is the sort of situation where the faster action is taken the better.
Yes, the guy with the time machine might be – hang on a second, I think we’re going to be okay; the Tenth Doctor already spelled out why I should choose him over Thor, and what I should do in the meanwhile, by recording a one-sided conversation for me on an old-timey VHS cassette.
I’m not sure how likely Thor is to call in the Avengers on an SOS aimed specifically at him, particularly one outside their purview as this obviously is. Contemporary Thor might, but not 60s/70s/80s Thor. At most he might call Tony Stark or Hercules specifically. The Thor I know & love rarely actually needs the Avengers. He just likes hanging out with Tony, Jan, Steve, & Clint.
Besides, he won’t be bringing along Asgard’s armies; he’d see that as inappropriate. If he’s knocking boots with Sif when he gets the call she’ll insist on coming along; likewise the Warriors Three if they’re out hunting trolls at the time. But not otherwise.
I’m not sure of the current status quo, but I think that’s a lost ability. During the Judgment of the Celestials storyline from decades back, he sacrificed most of Mjolnir’s time-travel mojo to save all reality from something or other. (I also recall that at the end of the adventure he was suspicious that Immortus had engineered the entire affair specifically to arrange that.) Before that he could travel backwards in time as easily as pre-Crisis Superman; afterwards he could dimension-hop, but not go back & forth.
I want the Doctor specifically because you said smash 'em bash 'em Thor. The Doctor solves problems through reason and cleverness; he is the triumph of brains over brawn. I want that, every time.
Any NuWho Doctor’s fine with me. Probably any Doctor at all, but having not seen the earlier stuff, I can’t say for sure.
(Apparently people who like Thor don’t vote. For all the Thor-love so far in the comments, it’s currently running about 67% Who, 17% Thor, 17% lasagna.)
I didn’t say he necessarily would, but he certainly could. You’re not too specific with your alien scenario, in all likelihood he could deal with it easily on his own, but for all we know that single ship could contain thousands of beings on a Galactus-like power level. If it came to the point where he decided he couldn’t do it and millions/billions would die then I’m fairly certain he’d make the call, he’s stubborn but he wouldn’t sacrifice a city for pride. The Doctor has allies too of course, he could certainly call in an army’s worth if need be, but nobody he could call in has the kind of power that either the Avengers or Asgard could offer.
In this particular sort of situation, that can be resolved by kicking butt and taking names, I would go with Thor, since that’s his specialty, and he’s quite good at it. There are a great many other problems that can’t be neatly resolved that way, though, and for any of those, I’d definitely prefer the Doctor.
I started on Nine and loved him best for a while, but once I really got into the show, I fell in love with Ten. DOn’t get me wrong, I love Eleven, but he’s always going to be a step down.
And I love pretty, even movie Thor, but please recall I started the thread entitled “Thor is stupid; let’s throw rocks at him”. I like movie Thor and I like him 10x better in the Avengers. I don’t accept just pretty in my men, though; they have to have brains, too. It’s why I prefer Aragorn to Frodo, hands down, every time. That and the height.
Seems to me The Doctor dealt with exactly this sort of situation in his first Christmas special in his regeneration as the Tenth Doctor.
The thing about The Doctor is, you don’t really get to choose your incarnation. I have a deep-seated fondness for the Ninth Doctor, myself, but deep down, they’re all the same Time Lord.
Fifth Doctor please! He was my first Doctor, and my introduction to Dr. Who. After that the Fourth Doctor. If I had to choose from the newer Doctors, Tenth, Ninth, then Eleventh.
I assume you’re talking about Peter Jackson’s Aragorn & Frodo, not Tolkien’s. I rewatched Fellowship, Towers, and those parts of King I can stand recently, and I was struck by how dumbed-down & wimpy movie-Frodo is. It starts with Jackson castrating him in order to give Arwen more screen time by having her be brave and defiant at the Fords rather than having Frodo stand up for his own damn self.
I don’t remember the Thor is stupid thread, though I’m sure it exists.
Part of me wants to say that my preference for the Eleventh Doctor stems from the fact that I was introduced to Who through him, but honestly I just prefer Matt Smith’s odd mixture of goofiness, brilliance, coldness, and warmth. I thought about making this threads specifically about the lead-up to the events in “The Wedding of River Song” but it lost the coin toss. Anyway, to me, Matt Smith is the real Doctor, and other guys are the adequate-but-not-entirely-pleasing variations. Likewise, companions (other than River Song and Rory Williams) are judged by their similarity or lack thereof to Amelia Pond.
Of course you get to choose your incarnation. Max is calling the TARDIS; she’ll know how to route the call to get to the Doctor you specify. In fact I’ll argue that she HAS to know that to put the call through at all.
As an aside, I’ve been wondering something one of you Whovians may be able to help me with. It’s canon (I think) that the current Doctor’s incarnation has lasted at least 200 years of his personal time. Is it ever specified how long, by his own measure, he was the Tenth or the Ninth?
I’m actually not that fond of Amelia Pond. She’s all right, and by no means my least favorite, but I prefer Donna.
And definitely movie Aragorn. But I also love Viggo.
I really came in here to post that of the Avengers, my favorite Avengers are Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Hawkeye. Two of them are hands down by far the brightest members of the cast and certifiable geniuses. I always loved Spock, best, too.
I’d go for the first Doctor. Then the maximum death and destruction caused by the aliens would be capped at the BBC’s budget for a TV episode circa 1964, compared with the death and destruction that can be envisioned by a comic book artist or that can be produced for a 21st century blockbuster movie.
The Doctor. If there is a giant alien mothership, hovering over my city, The Doctor will get rid of it with a tirade of technobabble, and a wave of a screwdriver.
If it was Thor, then the giant alien mothership, hovering over my city will soon become a smashed alien mothership, falling on to my city
