I've been in a Doctor Who mood, this last week, like whoa...

[capri0mni]

So this morning, I went through my journal archive, and read through the posts tagged "doctor who." That's when I found this response to a Doctor Who meme of yesteryear. And with the fiftieth anniversary, and a whole new regeneration cycle, I thought it was worthy of a polish and a repost:

1. The Doctor is fully alien, at least, until his eighth body, which became half-human in a very alien way (more on that, later -- I wonder if I can make it come out at #8).



2. The Doctor, and all Gallifreyans, are sexual and womb-born, and of course Susan was his real, biological granddaughter.



3. If the Doctor started out with one heart, and later grew a second for his third body, than it's because that's what happens to Timelords at that stage of life.



4. Timelords regenerate and non-Timelords don't because early attempts at time travel were imperfect, and altered the genomes of those Gallifrayens who went traveling. Later in history, they used this genetic difference, and their "practically immortal" status to rise to the political elite, and stay there.



5. Rassilon Totally Marty-Stued himself into Gallifrey's history, then passed laws to prohibit others from going back in time far enough to discover his secret. Maybe the Doctor broke those laws, and that's why he had to run, or maybe he went on the run first, and delibierately stole a broken TARDIS, because in a broken one, he could more easily bypass the time firewalls (That last bit just popped into my head, right now).



6. The TARDIS has been sentient and telepathic all along, despite the First Doctor talking about her like a machine; She has been jealous of certain companions, and is the Dom in their relationship.



7. Of course there has been hanky-panky in the TARDIS, but not between the Doctor and the the humans, because inter-species sex = squick (you can make arguments to the contrary, but this is my personal canon.)



8. The Eighth Doctor became half-human because he regenerated in a morgue, surrounded by human bodies instead of the Galifreyan matrix encoded into the TARDIS (the last time he regenerated outside the TARDIS, it didn't go so well, either, and had to retreat to the Zero Room Coffin). With each of the regenerations since then, he's lost a little bit more of that half-humanness. Tenth is, maybe, 1/4 human. (Yay!)



9. Yes, the Doctor did go back to visit Susan. They had a nice time, overall, but there were family tensions, as to be expected.



10. Susan and David never did get married. It just wouldn't have worked out. He was younger than she was, after all, and yet he still insisted on treating her like a child. After she'd gotten over her separation with her grandfather, she decided she'd had enough of that.

[Eta #1 (2007): Re: #5 And that's why the TARDIS loves him. Re: #10 I wonder, did Susan ever get her own TARDIS? She Totally deserves one.

ETA #2 (tonight): Yes, I remember, now, that his third regeneration (into Tom Baker) was outside the TARDIS, but just barely... I'd argue that he was still within the TARDIS's sphere of influence... he certainly wasn't as far away as he was in his next regen (when he needed the Zero Coffin) And also -- thanks to Mr. Moffat for making my items #4 and #6 closer to official canon]


Three More, for Smith, Hurt, and Capaldi:

11. Regeneration is actually a relatively slow, painful, process, while consciousness is retained during all changes to muscle, nerve, and bone. Regeneration is preferable to death, but a Time Lord wouldn't agree while going through it -- no way is it an "easy out."
    
    
12. Gallifreyans don't really look like us, at least up close. The Doctor et alia are able to pass as human due to a telepathic/hypnotic power similar to that of the Lectroids from Planet Ten (q.v. The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension)
    
    
13. Just as I refuse to believe that any of the Doctor's ancestors had sex and children with humans, because of personal squick, I also refuse to believe that Clara is any more special or "impossible" than the rest of us... After all, according to one of the most popular conjectures of quantum theory, we all split off into alternate, parallel, universes every time we made a decision... it's just that all those different universes are cut off from ours (in one universe, I did not survive the first night of my life, in another, I majored in Peace Studies, instead of English, etc). If anything, it was something weird going on with the Doctor that he bumped into different versions of Clara, rather than she being an extra special snowflake...

Comments

[gordon_r_d]

6 - definitely, the TARDIS has definitely reacted negatively to some companions, in the series we had the TARDIS not trusting Clara until her whole multiple lives thing was sorted out and in the audios the TARDIS took an active dislike to Charley Pollard when she travelled with the Sixth Doctor due to her being chronologically "wrong". SHe also likes to mess with the Doctor too, as seen in a couple of the minisodes where he's trying to downplay the number of attractive female companions he's travelled with and the TARDIS has promptly displayed them all on the monitor.

12 - Dave Stone in his New Adventures novels describes something like this, but regarding the TARDIS console room, claiming that what it really looks like is so beyond human comprehension they'd go mad if they saw it. A bried glimpse involves the console being alive and something snapping at the Doctor's hand as he hits some swithces.

13 - I think Clara being "impossible" is more to do with the fact that they've made a big thing through the series of travelling between alternate/parallel universes being a very, very difficult thing, more so since the Time Lords vanished.

[capri0mni]

6. *nod* I think I added that to my personal "fanon" back when there was a debate on RADW as to whether the TARDIS had always been alive or whether that view of her was a modern conceit. ... My feeling is that she's been an explicitly living character ever since "The Edge of Destruction."

12. No wonder the Doctor is so jumpy, as he works the "controls"!

13. Hm. I hope, at some point, that her (the writers'?) feelings of grandiosity ["I was born to save the Doctor!"] get taken down a notch or two ["Humans! Always thinking that what they stumble into doing must have been their destiny!"].

[gordon_r_d]

The "I was born to save the Doctor" stuff was only in the one episode and it was definitely a line more designed to tease the viewers ion a bit than anything else, as it was said during the pre-credits sequence to the episode showing her with the other Doctors and making the audience wonder even more what was going on.

Clara was even better in the anniversary and Christmas specials because the whole mystery/special stuff was dealt with and none of the grandiosity was continued. The TARDIS definitely likes her now too.

[capri0mni]

The TARDIS definitely likes her now too.

Well, that makes sense, now that the TARDIS and Clara know where each other fit...

Here's a thought I just had: The Doctor was initially threatening and hostile to Ian and Barbara because he was being protective of Susan. The TARDIS is cold/hostile to new travelers because she's being protective of the Doctor. ...The Doctor's softened as he's grown older. The TARDIS is just as curmudgeonly as ever...