I thought he aged this time cause he spent that time without the TARDIS. So maybe the Tardis helps with the aging. May not be true, but it helps made it work in my head.
I thought he aged this time cause he spent that time without the TARDIS. So maybe the Tardis helps with the aging. May not be true, but it helps made it work in my head.
I liked this, not as much as the 50th special though. I did appreciate the way that all the overarching 11 Doctor storylines got pretty much neatly tied into a (timetravelling) bow.
When the wooden Cyberman appeared I thought "great this explains..." and then I paused. When was that exactly? Then I realised the mysterious wooden robot was from MTMTE (and still hasn't been answered)
I had the same thought. Travelling in the Time Vortex is probably very good for your skin. The Doctor keeps running, because if he stays still, stays in one place for a long time, he grows old. He'd grown old before he stole the TARDIS afterall. The Time Vortex boost from "Bad Wolf Rose" keeps Captain Jack looking young despite him having several centuries of life too.
The physical aging thing bugged me for the same reasons griffin mentioned . . . then I accepted it after Smith Doctor explained to Clara that he was the last regeneration. For me, when the War Doctor "broke the promise of being the Doctor," it somehow 'dropped' him from the Doctor's life cycle, but after DotD reestablished the War Doctor as the 9th, then it bumped up the regeneration count, stripping Smith Doctor of his final regeneration.
Aargh... fans shouldn't have to try to make awkward explanations... the story should make sense within itself.
The nudity thing was weird, but Michael Bay has desensitised me to such subtle acts of lewdness. I did quite like Handles. Poor Handles.
Not all of his regenerations were so dramatic though... perhaps it's unpredictable as to whether or not a regeneration will expel massive amounts of energy (if at all); as in one of those "individual results may vary." But something I did wonder about when I watched DotD was, during the scenes of the Daleks invading Gallifrey and shooting down Gallifreyans soldiers and civilians... why didn't any of them start regenerating? Or why didn't the Daleks use disintegration weapons? We see their bodies fall rather than disintegrating. Surely if you're at war with a species who can regenerate, then you'd use disintegration weaponry! Or at very least head-shot each fallen body?
But yeah, if some of them would've regenerated, you'd think at least a few of them would be destructive enough to damage the Dalek Fleet. Heck, send crews of Time Lord commandos to storm Dalek ships -- as they fall they'll regenerate, and some of them should do so while expelling a good amount of destructive energy - they get up again and continue fighting. Being a Time Lord soldier must be like being a soldier in a computer game because you get to freakin' respawn!
Yeah but good scifi/fantasy should make sense in the context of it's own world - e.g. Tolkien, Bladerunner, Beast Wars etc.
^This. The new Doctor Who series have become more like Michael Bay's Transformers... great when you first watch them, but things fall apart when you think about the story/plot in detail.
Come to think of it, where did Handles come from? I tuned in at 7:30 to find it'd already started. Did he get picked up in the first five minutes or something?
Any figure that comes with swords demands wrist articulation.
The story makes sense within itself. Ask the millions watching who aren't captial F "fans" (the who know Doctor Who back to front) and it wouldn't be confusing to them. The Doctor stayed on Christmas for hundreds of years and grew old fighting a war to protect people.
If you're a fan, it also makes sense. If you're a Timelord fighting wars is not good for you, it ages you, makes you tied and your exterior appearance reflects that. The War Doctor grew old in the Time War too. The Doctor doesn't stay in one place for a long time and here's why. He grows old. Adventures in Time and Space in the TARDIS preventing/retarding ageing is not an awkward explanation... it makes sense and is not particularly inconsistent with anything we've seen? *
* Unless you count the sentence in the third paragraph on the 124th page of the tie-in novel that was published by the BBC in 1967 and is therefore canon. The sentence has a typo, it was obviously meant to be semicolon
While I have an interest in Dr. Who and enjoy following the series, I'm by no means a fan. I should've just said "audiences" in my last post rather than "fans." Your reasoning is sound, but it wasn't apparent to me at the time that I was watching the episode. Perhaps something like a quick line to remind audiences about how the War Doctor had aged during the Time Wars might have been helpful.
I'm not going to lie -- I didn't enjoy the Xmas special. I've only been a casual fan since the series started again, keeping abreast of most of the major stories and so forth, but something was amiss for me.
It said that the battle on and above Trenzalore wiped out every species except the Daleks, so in the future, only the Dalek's are left..?
TRANSFORMERS: DEICIDE -- The Beast Wars 20th Anniversary Comic Book series that could have been...
TRANSFORMERS: UNITY -- the BotCon 2016 Comic Book that should have been...
In this ep? The other aliens gave up and went home (the Mother Superior said) except the Daleks.
People tend to forget that most iconic piece of Dr Who history which fully explains why he can have more than 13 regenerations. In an alternate reality the Doctor (played superbly by Rowan Atkinson) went through his last half doz regenerations in about 3 minutes. But then 'even the universe was not ready to loose the Doctor' so time and space itself gave him another regeneration -
- complete with Dalek bumps!
In regards to the Doctor aging, he has done that before. When the Master had the 10th Doctor captive he aged him with his Laser Screwdriver by hundreds of years and he became an old man. He did it again but by a lot more and he became this little gnome thing.
They also did a time skip on the Doctor twice in Time of the Doctor. The first time they specifically mention it had been 300 years and he had aged a bit and needed a cane. The next time (when the Doctor had help from the Silence) they do not mention how long it had been. It could have been another 300 years, if not longer, which would explain why he looks so old by the end.
They say that the danger of the Time Lords coming back wasn't because of the Time Lords themselves, but because of the Daleks restarting the Time War with them. Even if the Time Lords came came back in peace, the Daleks would open fire and the Time War would start all over again.
That being said, it has been shown in the past that some of the Time Lords (like the High Council) are also pretty dangerous. Remember that the High Council's final plan included the destruction of all of creation (a dick move in my books). They have also tried to screw over the Doctor by rigging a trial against him and bribed the Valeyard (a being spawned from the Doctor's penultimate regeneration) with the offer of more regenerations (another dick move in my books). The High Council has shown that they are also dangerous because of their arrogance and contempt for other species.
It has been established that a Time Lord can have the regeneration process stopped or be killed in a particular way that prevents the process starting. The 8th Doctor died in a space ship crash. River died when both her hearts were fried. The Silence also knew they could kill a Time Lord mid-regeneration by 'killing' them again. The 5th Doctor was concerned the disease he had picked up could stop the regeneration process implying that there were diseases that could. River almost killed the Doctor with a poison that would prevent a regeneration (that being said if they knew he didn't have any left they wouldn't have had to bother.)
Since the Dalek's weapons appear to be an instant-death-beam for other species, you could assume it is the same for Time Lords, hence the no regenerations seen.
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