New Who Review for the Name of the Doctor
Posted By Kathleen David on May 20, 2013
I am asking for speculation only. I have managed to avoid the 50th anniversary spoilers so far. This entry goes up to the end of this season and stops. All previous episodes of Doctor Who may be discussed in comments.
Overall this half season has been good but not Great. I have enjoyed that nods to the previous incarnations of the Doctor. There has been great affection to the previous incarnations of the Doctor and it is nice for them to re-enforce that 8 is canonical.
I enjoyed the Name of the Doctor and thought that, over all they played fair with it. It did bring together all the threads starting with the Christmas episode and the rest of the season along with the previous part of the season. Moffat seems to like doing the making each episode important at the end and has done so with varying success.
I am looking forward to the next episode a lot.
Spoilers behind the cut and in the comments since I am assuming that not everyone has seen this episode yet.
So Clara was genetically encoded on a leaf? I am really fuzzy about that. That she would sacrifice herself to save the Doctor I don’t have a problem with that had been set up back in the Snowmen. I also would have perfectly happy for her to have been a normal human being that did something extraordinary rather than having been bred for the role.
It was nice to see Richard E. Grant again as the Great Intelligence. And the idea of the “body” being a timey whimey kind of thing didn’t bother me at all. The Doctor is not his body but his deeds and actions.
It was nice to see Alex Kingston as River even if she is only the echo from the library. I had sort of forgotten that she “died” in Forest of the Dead. So we saw her end before her beginning.
And we still don’t know his name but I expected that from the moment I heard the title of the episode.
In the interest of Full Dislosure, I am a big John Hurt fan and have been for a very long time. So I heard the voice and my brain went “wait a minute I know that voice” but the reveal had me in one of my rare squees. It’s F’ng John Hurt as the Doctor. I haven’t been this excited since it was revealed that Derek Jacobi, another actor I am a big fan of, was the Master. My concern is that this will be 15 minutes and then we are back to the status quo or a new (old) Doctor. I honestly don’t care what the story is, I know that Mr. Hurt will act rings around all other comers unless Jacobi show up and then it would be an acting throw down (anyone else remember I, Claudius?).
So overall, enjoyed it and looking forward to the anniversary episode. And if this brings John Hurt to the SDCC, all the better.
I am grateful that Doctor Who is still going.
Well. Now I won’t be happy unless we do have a Hurt/Jacobi faceoff. I’ve always thought the best Masters are the ones who are an evil complement to the Doctor they’re facing, and that would be an awesome pairing.
I didn’t get the impression that Clara was encoded on the leaf. I saw that as more of a metaphorical thing–the time winds were scattering Clara throughout space and time, so the Doctor gave her the memory of the leaf as something for the original Clara to focus on, to preserve herself by anchoring herself to the memory of the moment that she started.
I do think River being preserved at the library is going to be important in the anniversary special. The recap she gave Clara of her death seemed unnecessarily specific otherwise, and the taunting “Spoilers!” seemed an indication that she still has an important role to come.
Whatever happens, I’m really looking forward to November.
During the conversation between the Doctor and Clara near the end of the episode, and then between the Doctor and his other self, we get a suggestion that this man is a past incarnation; but we also get a suggestion that he’s a future one. This statement by the Doctor to Clara suggests the latter:
The Doctor: “My name. My real name. That is not the point. The name I chose is ‘The Doctor.’ The name you choose, it’s like a promise you make. He’s the one who broke the promise.”
The implication is that this “breaking of the promise” comes after this man chose to call himself “Doctor”, and that if this is a future incarnation. “Our” Doctor knows of his future actions by virtue of having entered this energy stream/time winds. He sees what he will become and wants to hide it from Clara.
The problem with this idea is the question of why Clara didn’t see him prior to that moment. His being “invisible” to her because he didn’t think of himself as the Doctor seems an unsatisfactory explanation.
As to the Doctor’s other self being a past version, there’s this:
Other Doctor: “What I did, I did without choice.”
The Doctor: “I know.”
Other Doctor: “In the name of peace and sanity.”
Doctor: “But not in the name of the Doctor.”
When I saw the scene, my first thought was of the Time War; and I understand some people have theorized that John Hurt is the real Ninth Doctor. And that his subsequent incarnations don’t want to acknowledge he ever existed, so the Tenth called himself the Ninth; the Eleventh called himself the Tenth, and so on.
Interesting idea, but I don’t agree with it. Within the fictional universe of Doctor Who, if the Doctor was so ashamed of his actions during the Time War that he’d deny the existence of a particular incarnation (even to himself), why would he even mention the Time War to anyone?
And from a TV production point of view, Stephen Moffat is perfectly capable of coming up with his own story idea for the 50th anniversary story. He wouldn’t need to address the Time War (a very recent idea inDoctor Who’s 50 year history), yet again.
And being the fan of the show he is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds some way to tie in the First Doctor’s comment to Ian and Barbara about himself and Susan being exiles.
Curiously, despite the suggestion of a past event in this Doctor/Doctor exchange (one that led this particular Time Lord to adopt the pseudonym “Doctor”), the “but not in the name of the Doctor” comment again suggests a promise broken after he took that name.
If John Hurt is portraying a past incarnation of the Doctor, my theory is that he’s either a younger version of William Hartnell’s Doctor (even though the two actors look nothing alike, and Hurt is older now that Hartnell was then) or, that he’s a previous incarnation of this particular Time Lord. If that were the case, Hartnell would still be the first Doctor, because he took that name upon regenerating from his John Hurt incarnation, as a way of atoning for past actions and/or crimes, but he wouldn’t be the first incarnation. Or to reference another series, this particular Time Lord taking the name Doctor is analogous to the warrior general Darius becoming a man of peace after taking the quickening of a “saintly” immortal in Highlander.
Or you can imagine a Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus parallel.
I’m not sure I’d want them to go the route of John Hurt playing the Time Lord who later regenerated into William Hartnell, because it’d be a bit of an insult to Hartnell. It’s been established over and over again that Hartnell was the first, with the implication that all subsequent Doctors who specifically identified themselves by incarnation number (such as the Eleventh Doctor to Craig) were identifying which incarnation they were on, not that the _____ Doctor was saying he was the ___ out of Nth incarnations to adopt that particular pseudonym.
If Hurt is portraying a part incarnation, I’d much rather he be a younger Hartnell (despite the lack of resemblance;) or something akin to “The Other” from the novel Lungbarrow, who was, essentially, a previous reincarnation of this particular Time Lord.
As to the Doctor’s name, it wouldn’t have much of an impact unless it were A) the name of some well-known Gallifreyan (whether famous or infamous) and that B) there were peoples in the fiction universe of Doctor Who who’d recognize the significance of that name.
It’d also have to have some significance to the viewing audience, especially the casual viewer who isn’t immersed in the show’s fictional history.
To use a comics analogy, within the fictional DC Universe, most people around the world know who Bruce Wayne is. Or they’ve at least heard the name. If Bruce Wayne were revealed as Batman to the public, everyone would be talking about it. Probably for years.
On the other hand, if Batman were “John Q. Citizen, and his identity were revealed, people in the DC Universe would be saying “who?”
And if Batman were just some guy, but he was being funded by Bruce Wayne, people would be talking more about Bruce than the nameless guy in the bat costume, asking why he was funding Batman, and so forth.
Likewise, the general public knows the names “Bruce Wayne” and “Batman.” If DC decided to have Batman’s identity revealed, there’s be news stories all over the place. If it were some lesser-known character, very few media outlets would pay attention.
I doubt we’ll ever learn the Doctor’s name, because the only “big name” Time Lords we’ve heard of are Omega and Rassilon, and both have been established as separate people. Also, the average viewer of the current series, one who didn’t see (or doesn’t really remember) the original series, wouldn’t know the name “Omega.” That character only appeared twice; the last time in 1983. Also, if the Doctor is revealed as “(never before mentioned) Big Name Time Lord X”, the audience would rightly wonder why they’d never heard the name before.
And if he was just John Q. Time Lord, it’s a letdown.
On the other hand, if we’d never met Rassilon in “The Five Doctors” and “The End of Time”, and he’d only been a name from the past that got mentioned from time to time, then a reveal that the Doctor is really Rassilon could work (Likewise if some other important Time Lord had been mentioned but never seen). To use another Highlander analogy, “Rassilon” would be Methos and “The Doctor” would be Adam Pierson.
All things being equal, I’m leaning toward John Hurt playing a a younger Hartnell or a pre-Hartnell version, rather than the “real” Ninth Doctor or a future incarnation.
And yes, I’m looking forward to November, too.
Rick
As to where John Hurt would fall into the timeline of various incarnations of the Doctor, how many regenerations have been unseen by the television public? I didn’t obsessively watch the orginial series, but it’s my understanding that every change from Hartnell’s First Doctor to Second, onward has been seen in the series leaving no real opportunity to insert a new incarnation in without it seeming like a cheat (absent some really clever writing that I don’t put past Moffet). Even the regeneration from Seven to Eight in the Television movie was there. So if my assumption are right, I only see three spans where Hurt’s Doctor could be.
1) Before Hartnell’s First Doctor. I don’t think that would go over well, even if we could maintain the numbering we’re currently using by calling Hurt the Zeroth Doctor…
2) From some point after Smith’s Eleventh Doctor. I don’t personally like it as Smith’s Doctor’s talk of Hurt as his Secret and my general impression of the scene is that the Hurt Doctor’s actions are a very painful MEMORY of some past action. Also, when Smith’s Doctor rescues Clara at the end of the episode, she only remembers Eleven Doctors. We presume that there will be other actors playing the Doctor after Smith and that even if the show ends with him, they won’t kill off the Doctor with the show. She should have seen his later incarnations. I think the reason she didn’t see Doctors numbers 12+ is because she con only remember Doctor up to the moment in the Doctor’s timeline that the Doctor stepped into it to same her. That’s the point in his lifetime he was at when he went in to save her, so that’s as far forward as she can remember when he finds her. However, Hurt’s Doctor is still there. So I think that he came “before” Smith’s Doctor. Which leads us to…
3) We never saw the regeneration from the Eighth to the Ninth Doctor. Christopher Eccleston just shows up as the Ninth Doctor ans no mention is made of how we moved from McGann to him. I’d always assumed the the Eighth Doctor fought and ended the Time War and that whatever happened at the end of it forced his regeneration. Although I prefer the idea the Hurt’s Doctor occupies this gap to the other options that I listed, I don’t think that the Time War is what Doctor is talking about as breaking the Promise. I think it’s something that the Doctor sees as even worse.