New Doctor Who

The Beeb announced that S5 will be airing in 2010 and they'll be having 3 DW specials in 09. No announcement whether DT will be staying on as the Doctor through S5. My guess is DT and RTD both leave after S5 and the show transitions to a new Doctor, number 11, and a new showrunner.

What do you think?

 

I don't doubt it. From what I understand, their production schedule is pretty brutal. Last year, I think they started filming Runaway Bride in either July or August. I know they were shooting Family of Blood in late December and probably didn't wrap up Last of the Time Lords until February. Of course, this doesn't include the hours of writing it takes to write a sophisticated show like Doctor Who. RTD and team needs a break in order to keep the show fresh.

The BBC's hand was somewhat forced on this, because it came out in the last week or so that David Tennant will be playing Hamlet (Patrick Stewart will be in it as well) next July, meaning that there's no way he'd be able to shoot Doctor Who also. I think lots of fans were thinking the sky was falling and that Doctor Who was going away again, so the BBC came out to reassure us that the Doctor will be around at least through 2010.

 

Now that Utopia has aired on Skiffy (Scifi), I thought I'd post some of the things that were said about it in non-spoiler fashion.

First, he's ba-aacck! In the Confidential for either Utopia or Sound of Drums, RTD said that he's always had a rough plan for bringing back the iconic figures of Doctor Who, the Daleks, Cybermen, the Master, and the rough plan isn't finished. So, who is the iconic figure for S4? I think I know who it is and you don't even have to know what the rumors are to know who.

Remember in Smith and Jones when the Doctor does the cheap trick with the tie? Since Martha has heard the Master's voice, it's pretty obvious that the same kind of thing has happened with the Master. This is what's so brilliant about Blink, btw. Not only was it a fantastic story on its own, but if you buy into its premise, you have no choice but to buy into the idea of the Master going back to 2006 and influencing events. Brilliant piece of planning and execution by RTD and team.

The last time we saw the Master was in The Enemy Within. At the end, he was trapped inside the Eye of Harmony. Setting aside the obvious problem of the Eye of Harmony being inside the Doctor's TARDIS, an explanation still needs to be forthcoming. Anybody who hasn't seen Sound of Drums want to wager a guess? Rest assured that we will have an explanation in Sound of Drums.

Sir Derek Jacobi was fantastic when he "changed" from Yana to the Master. It was all in the eyes. Brilliant acting.

I know the lurkers may not have seen Sound of Drums or Last of the Time Lords, but the Master was the big secret of S3, and while there are individual questions about the next 2, to say anything else would spoil it. There is a line spoken in S3 that I think doesn't help us figure out the "Big Bad" of S4, but I think it helps us know what the "Big Bad" goes after in S4.

So, who's the iconic figure that will come back in S4? Let's work it out.

Doctor Iconic Enemy
1 Daleks
2 Cybermen*
3 Master
4 Davros

*Yes, I know the Cybermen first appeared in 10th Planet, Hartnell's last story, but it still fits. By my count, which is not an exact count, 2 faced the Cybermen 3 times (Tomb of the Cybermen, Moonbase and Wheel in Space) and faced the Daleks only twice (Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks).

The Davros rumor came about when it was reported that Ben Kingsley was signed to play Davros (reported by the Sun, which, as I understand, is notorious for wild rumors). Kingsley is a fantastic actor, and definitely has the physical stature and facial features to be a great fit for the mad scientist Davros.

I have an idea of what the story would be for Davros coming back as well, but I'll share that at a later date.

What do you guys think?

 

When I first heard the rumor about Kingsley and Davros, I had pretty much the same thought. However, if done right, as it was with The Master, I think it could play well. Here's my idea for the story.

At the end of Evolution of the Daleks, Caan makes another temporal emergency shift. When he makes the shift, he winds up coming across a ship that can travel through space. He's low on power and damaged, and knows that he won't be capable of recreating the Daleks, but he knows that the creator can do it, Davros. So, he goes searching for him and finds him. If I remember right, Davros is nothing more than a disembodied head at the end of Remembrance of the Daleks. I assume that he would have missed the Time War, as there was no reason for the Daleks to have both Davros and an Emperor, since Davros would never allow an emperor other than himself.

Wherever Caan lands, he gets some slave labor to build the kind of lab they had in DiM/EotD and basically, "Davros... reborn." Davros gets right to work and starts recreating the Daleks. I'm not sure how the Doctor finds all this out, but he does and he confronts Davros. I have a vision of an episode 12 cliffhanger where Davros, in his inimitable freaking-out voice, displays his new creation to the Doctor, who stands horrified as an army of Daleks comes rolling out of a "warehouse", for lack of a better term.

"I was there when the Dalek Emperor took control of the Cruciform."

The Master said that to the Doctor (won't spoil a thing for any lurker to read that) and all of fandom is asking, "What's that?" We don't really know, but I have an idea. The shape of a Cruciform is really just a cross. But, think about the point of intersection. What if the Cruciform is the point at which all universes converge? It allows anybody who controls it to move between universes at will. The result of the Daleks controlling it would be horrifying.

In Parting of the Ways, 9 says that the Time War was "... the war between the Daleks and the Time Lords, with all creation at stake." It's my belief that the Cruciform was what the Daleks started the war over. When the Emperor took control of it, that was when the Doctor knew the war was over and the Daleks had won. His last plan, the one he knew would end the war, was to focus the Eye of Harmony on the Gallifreyan sun (This isn't something I conjured up, btw, but I don't have a link to prove it, sorry), causing a Supernova that would cause Gallifrey to burn, and to cause all the Dalek ships to burn. That was the action he had avoided all along, knowing he would kill his own people at the same time as he wiped out the Daleks. I suspect that, in addition to The Master being there when the Emperor took, Lord President Romanadvoratrelunder was there also. She would have actually given the Doctor the order to cause the Supernova.

A couple of other things I was thinking about as I wrote this. The only Dalek who figured out what was going on and went into temporal emergency shift was the Emperor. He fell through time yes, but it was of his own doing. The Dalek from Dalek survived because he was caught in the Emperor's wake.

Anyway, in this story, the Doctor himself uses the Cruciform to send the Daleks into the Void and, although the Doctor attempts to save Davros and convince him to turn his genius to something besides evil, Davros doesn't and disappears into the Void as well, which, of course, will kill him instantly.

***spoiler***
There would be no picking up of a ring like what happened at the end of Last of the Time Lords either. As I understand it, RTD did that to leave an opening for the next showrunner if he/she wanted to bring back the Master again.
***spoiler end**

If done right, and RTD tends to get it right more than get it wrong, I think the Davros story could be a really good one, possibly even better than Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords. And I like those 3 stories very much.

 

I completely agree with that. Destiny wasn't bad, but the real problem was that Davros was played by David Gooderson instead of Michael Wisher. Gooderson wasn't terrible, he just wasn't Wisher. I rather liked Resurrection, but that had far less to do with Davros than it did the overall story. Revelation was an awful story in general, and I liked Remembrance, but, again, that had much more to do with the story than Davros' appearance.

Ha!

When I first started watching the show, I became rather obsessed with it, yes I know you're shocked to hear that, and used to dream up Doctor Who stories. Complete with cliffhangers and all. Back when the Doctor and Romana barely visited Earth, I had them landing on a planet where a mad scientist was harnessing static electricity of all things. I dreamt up a Dalek story that started in the bitter cold of Siberia, and basically went halfway around the world, making stops in a small town in New York state, Cleveland, Ohio and somewhere else. At one point in that story, the Doctor was trapped by the Daleks in an automobile garage and he used an oxygen tank, used for an acetylene torch, to escape. I know there were others, but I don't remember them now. I've thought about trying my hand at fanfic, but I'm rubbish as a writer.

Thanks. If he is surfing through and likes what I've written, I hope to see some royalties if he decides to use it. :laugh:

I'd like to see the Sontarans in a 1 or 2 part episode and the Zygons as well. I don't see either of them as an "iconic figure", thus neither would be a "Big Bad", but a 1 or 2 part episode would be good.

 

Not a bad choice at all. We have no idea what happened to him after Enlightenment.

Since you brought it up, I have a few questions about Blink.

How did the Doctor know to write what he did on the wall of the house? Especially the "no really duck!" part? The words that Larry transcribed were the Doctor's. We're led to believe that the Doctor used the transcript to know what Sally said and what he's supposed to say. But, how would he know how long to pause between answers? If he read from the transcript (which he may not have), that means that the origination point of his words was when, exactly? Early on in the conversation, he said, "Of course I can hear you." How can he possibly hear her?

The 1st problem is that Davros has no clue who the Doctor is when they met in GotD. It's a great idea dramatically, but I think it would be a huge mistake to actually do it.

 

Remember how we made such a big deal about Mister Saxon = Master No Six? Turns out that it was a total coincidence. See what RTD has to say about it.

 

Cool! Another Whovian!

I know many people who give Blink the title of "Best story of S3". I have no argument with this, although I think that title goes to Human Nature/Family of Blood.

Utopia was a rather pedestrian story until Yana took out his fob watch. The last 10 of 15 minutes was so very good. BTW, Raise your hand if you'd like to play poker with Martha Jones. :laugh:

Believe it or not, but Sound of Drums is even better than Utopia. Back in June, I said that I had never anticipated a Doctor Who story as much as I did Family of Blood. That anticipation was doubled for Sound of Drums and did it ever deliver. The ending of Sound of Drums was, well, haunting, for lack of a better term. I watched it over and over in a kind of morbid fascination.

I've tried to watch Torchwood, but I haven't been able to thus far.

Hey, Matt, did you watch the premiere of "The Sarah Jane Adventures", or whatever it's called?