Actor Matt Smith Will Be 11th Doctor Who 330
Jerry Smith was among a large number of readers letting us know that the 11th Doctor Who has been named. It's Matt Smith, 26, who will be the youngest actor to play the time-traveling Doctor. The head of drama at BBC Wales said this about Smith's audition: "It was abundantly clear that he had that 'Doctor-ness' about him. You are either the Doctor or you are not."
Hmmm getting close to the 12 regenerations limit (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like they have been burning through regenerations in the latter Dr. Who series. What are they gonna do when they hit twelve? No more Dr. Who?
interesting choice (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope its not just so doctor who can become yet another 'only beautiful people allowed' show.
Mind you, the BBC are pretty careful about casting for their prime real estate, so he may just be the best choice.
For me though, although I liked Eccleston and Tennant, I've always considered Tom Baker to be the definitive Doctor. When will they bring back the mad scarfs?
Re:IMDB link (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like he has worked with [imdb.com] Billie Piper before. Would be interesting if she was still on the show..
Re:Waiting (Score:5, Interesting)
I like how the Doctor's been getting younger and younger
One bit of Time Lord psychology that isn't so different from human. When he was young, he wanted to appear old and wise, now he's old, he wants to appear young for as long as possible.
Re:Hmmm getting close to the 12 regenerations limi (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention the little fact that Gallifrey is no more. Who knows what changes the Time Wars(tm) unleashed.
Re:Hmmm getting close to the 12 regenerations limi (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(Doctor_Who)#In_the_series [wikipedia.org]
The BBC's Series 4 FAQ suggests that now the Time Lord social order has been destroyed, the Doctor may be able to circumvent the limit on regenerations; it says: "Now that his people are gone, who knows? Time Lords used to have 13 lives.
In "The Sound of Drums" (2007) the Master is revealed to have been granted a new body by the Time Lords during the Time War with at least one new regeneration. Non-Gallifreyans are also seen to regenerate in Underworld (1978) and Mawdryn Undead (1983), but with adverse side effects.
Sounds to me like regeneration is a socially-imposed limit to keep them from living forever. ;)
But they aren't immortal... found this interesting tidbit:
In The Mind of Evil the Master points a conventional firearm at the Doctor and threatens to "put a bullet through both your hearts", while in "Forest of the Dead", Professor Song warns that an impending electrocution would stop both the Time Lord's hearts, killing him. From these, it is apparent that a Time Lord can die if both his hearts stop.
This quote also further supports it:
The TARDIS appears to assist in the regenerative process. In addition to the second Doctor's explicit statement to this effect shortly after regenerating from the first, regenerating outside the TARDIS has never been shown to go particularly well. Of the four occasions on which this has happened, one is forced on him by the Time Lords (The War Games), one requires a Time Lord to give the Doctor's cells a "little push" to start the process (Planet of the Spiders), one needs the TARDIS's "Zero Room", a chamber sealed from all outside forces, to help him recover (Castrovalva) and the last occurs a few hours after he has actually "died" (The 1996 television movie). That last regeneration remains the only one that takes place significantly far away from the TARDIS, without any obvious interaction from other Time Lords, though it may be noted that in The Doctor's Daughter, Jenny - a woman created from the Tenth Doctor's DNA - dies and later reanimates in a process that has some apparent similarities to a regeneration, some time after the TARDIS leaves her planet.
All these + more indicate that the limit may not be a physical one.
Another:
In "Last of the Time Lords", the Master and the Doctor demonstrate that regeneration is not an automatic process (or the process is automatic but the Time Lord undergoing it can halt the regeneration at will) as, despite the Doctor's pleas for him to regenerate, the Master instead chooses to die after being shot by Lucy Saxon
It's quite possible that it's a socially imposed limit - that is, multiple timelords can collectively decide whether you get to regenerate or not.
Re:Hmmm getting close to the 12 regenerations limi (Score:5, Interesting)
Twelve regenerations was never a biological limit; it was something imposed by the Gallifreyan leadership. ISTR that once they offered the Master an extra set of regenerations, in exchange for doing some of their dirty work. Now that the other Time Lords have been exterminated, who's to say there can't be a Fourteenth Doctor?
As for the regeneration rate, the Ninth was short-lived, but the Tenth has had a good long innings. He first appeared in 2005 in the final episode of the first new series, and is scheduled to regenerate in early 2010. So... four or five years. That's quite long for a Doctor. The First did three years, so did the Second and the Fifth. The Third did four, the Sixth two, the Seventh two (well, nine, but he was off the air for most of that), the Eighth and Ninth one each (again, the Eighth technically nine years, same objection).
It's only really Tom Baker who's outdone Tennant in terms of years in the TARDIS. And since he has an enormous TV fanbase from Blackpool, Casanova and Doctor Who, and has lately proved himself to considerable acclaim on the legitimate stage as Hamlet, I imagine he thinks it's about time to move on to some extremely lucrative roles.
Re:IMDB link (Score:3, Interesting)
Moffat is replacing RTD though, and Moffat is a MUCH better writer. Repeatedly nominated for Hugo Awards for his Doctor Who episodes kind of better. So RTD going will probably be a good thing overall.
As for the actor though...his hair really worries me. There shall be no emo in my doctor. Period.
Re:interesting choice (Score:2, Interesting)
Then when we got David Tennant in the series and watched him grow into the role more and more, he puts Eccleston to shame. After seeing Tenant and his jovial performance as the Doctor, going back to watch Eccleston's season just lets me see him as an angry pent-up Doctor.
At the end of the season finale when Rose goes back to the alternative universe and takes the human doctor with her, the real doctor says to her that the human one was born out of destruction and filled with rage, just like he was when he first met Rose. In that case, Eccleston did a wonderful job portraying the rage.
Re:11th or 10th? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure if the tenth regeneration could count either. Ohhhhh! In THAT sense! Ok. It's unclear. Time Lords may be able to change their appearance without actually using up a regeneration (Romana was way too bright to have wasted an entire life after a mere 150 years), so it would seem to follow that "partial" regeneration is possible without using up an actual regeneration in the process.
Although this is the 11th Doctor, it is also questionable as to whether each life has used up a regeneration. The Second Doctor to the Third may or may not have been a regeneration but it was under the control and supervision of Time Lord technology. The life-energy (or whatever) that is involved in the process could therefore have been external. If so, it would not have used up that amount of energy internally. The same could be argued for the Fourth to Fifth, as the Watcher was an external source of regenerative energy. (The Third to the Fourth was started externally but the energy was internal.)
If you want to take this line of reasoning further, you may also wish to consider Mawdryn Undead. In that, The Doctor was due to have all his remaining regenerations drained to kill off Mawdryn and his associates. The Brigadier intervened, saving him. But is that all he did? Action and reaction are equal and opposite, and the circuit was still complete. If the machine could take regenerations away, a reverse surge should logically add them. This should give The Doctor potentially another six lives.
Also consider Brain of Morbius. We don't know what effect the elixier had on The Doctor. It is supposed to aid in failed regenerations, so presumably provides an external energy source in addition to any other curative properties. Those who drank it did, after all, become immortal for the duration of drinking it, which suggests that it had that kind of restorative power. This potentially gives The Doctor another additional life, as he didn't require a regeneration to heal.
Finally, if you subscribe to the notion that Russel T Davis is, in fact, a Dalek Agent hell-bent on destroying The Doctor's reputation, you can disregard as much of DW:TNG as you like.
John Smith, his name should've been John Smith (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh for the love of Rassilon why didn't his parents name him John?
Re:Waiting (Score:5, Interesting)
Peter Davidson said he thought he was too young to play the Doctor.
But he turned out to be pretty good. Then again, he played it fatherly, despite having two hot young things riding on his tardis. (er. great, I just made Dr Who innuendo.) But that was the early 80s.
And the guy who came after him, despite being "old enough" wasn't nearly "good enough".
Whatever. Still mad at Tennant for leaving. Not as much as I am at Eccleston though.
WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF DOCTORS, PEOPLE.
Re:Waiting (Score:5, Interesting)
In our own time, things are not so sensible (which I really don't understand since you're appealing to a predominately male geek audience, not the popular model type kids).
That may be true in the U.S., where it's airing on the Sci-Fi channel. In Britain, you're appealing to damn near everybody. The current Doctor Who series has some of the highest ratings of any drama on television, both in terms of sheer numbers and overall approval ratings. The age range of the audience is quite broad, and though it probably skews more toward males, women watch it also.
Really this choice has everything to do with Steven Moffatt, the new head writer of the show, and what he wants to do with the character. Russell T. Davies, the man responsible for launching the new Who, has said that he had absolutely nothing to do with the casting. Perhaps the larger story arcs Moffatt wants to tell call for a younger Doctor.
Re:Waiting (Score:5, Interesting)
Retchdog again.
The trend is pretty obvious if you just plot the data. I took the opportunity to learn a little bit of google's painful chart API (no criticism please; I see how it could be prettier and I don't care):
Age of The Doctor, per incarnation. [google.com]
Re:12 Regenerations? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to what The Master did, he refused a regeneration even if he had more left. Rumor has it his lifeforce and Timelord DNA are in the ring he left behind. That ring can activated and steal a body like when The Master stole Tremas' body for his 13th regeneration.
Also the original show had The Doctor in his 12th regeneration as evil, more evil than The Master.
The Doctor is clever enough to find a way to grant himself more regenerations.
It is debatable if Galifrey still exists in some form or can be renewed again. All The Doctor need do is violate the laws of time and travel back to save it or stop the Dalek invasion before it reaches Galifrey. I am also having a theory that Romana still exists with her own TARDIS and K9 unit and has 10 regenerations left, and she could take over for The Doctor or even The Doctor's daughter from that DNA clone can take over. I have a theory that other Time Lords still exist but are unaccounted for. Since The Daleks survived, chances are some Time Lords survived as well.
Someone set up the time agency that Captain Jack Harkness is a part of, maybe they were Junior Timelords who left Galifrey to set up the Time Agency?
Re:11th or 10th? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Daleks do have two origins, but I figured out a solution to that. Some Daleks were sent to the Thaal city and had not returned at the time The Doctor destroyed the entranceway. These would have been trapped in the Thaal city and, lacking access to the computer data banks in the Kaled city, would have necessarily invented their own past in order to explain their existence. Lacking advanced technology, they would also have been forced to improvize, hence their use of static electricity.
The population in the Kaled city, however, have suffered some damage to their computer systems. They would have therefore had no ability to be aware of the population of Daleks in the Thaal city. These Kaled Daleks become convinced that they are the only Daleks and therefore do not reconnect with the Thaal Daleks.
As the Thaals possessed rocketry, the Thaal Dalek population rapidly develops space flight (hence their invasion of other worlds) and eventually develop time travel as well (The Chase). The Kaled Daleks independently develop space flight but their seclusion has resulted in a more imperial, structured regime. Eventually, these Dalek populations rediscover each other and partly re-merge. However, the inability to reconcile histories results in the split between the loyalist Daleks and the Imperial Daleks. The mythologies created by the Thaal Daleks also results in groups like the Cult of Skaro and the Emperor-God seen at the end of the 10th Doctor run.
We now have a reconciled history that "explains" the two origin stories and the factionalism that should not have existed in the lower-level Daleks. (Picture the Daleks as similar in structure to the original Cylons of Battlestar Galactica, where the warriors have one primitive brain, the more senior Cylons have two more sophisticated brains and the highest-ranking ones have three highly sophisticated brains.)
Re:Waiting (Score:4, Interesting)
Then there is the dynamic of a guy that looks to be in is mid 20's playing a character that has live over 900 years.
When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not.
Re:Waiting (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Waiting (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't mind the increaing youth of the Doctor so much as the increasing sexualisation. David Tennant was good. Christopher Eccleston is a very good actor and played the part very well, though the character wasn't that charismatic (deliberately on his part, I think). But what we've seen starting with Eccleston and much increasing with Tennant, is increasing sexual tension on the part of the doctor and his increasingly sexually interested companions. That undermines the alienness of the Doctor and I'd like to see things return to a slightly more aesexual footing. (Not that I couldn't watch Freeman Agyeman all day long). The most important thing to me though is that a regeneration results in a different character. That was always one of the most interesting aspects of the regeneration - not the physical change, but that the doctor seemed to actually recreate himself quite radically sometimes. That was a bit lost with the Eccleston - Tennant transition. They were both very similar. What I'd really like to see with Matt Smith is him come across as a genuinely new person. Still intelligent, still resolutely pacifist, but with his own set of mannerisms, relationships with people (it would be interesting to see him relate to former companions as if he were meeting them for the first time in some ways). I will wait and see. I'll certainly want to see the new episodes to judge for myself.
Re:Waiting (Score:3, Interesting)
Having not seen much of the first series, except in the excerpts that remain, and listening to the commentary, I believe the only serial that was an 'elevator episode' was the one that preceded marco polo, and that was because Marco Polo was going to cost so much money they needed a cheap serial.
Otherewise, it is my recolection, where they were entire series where we see little of the Tardis. In fact it has been remarked by Sladen that the tardis is much more pivotal in the newer episodes, and a much grander set than in her day. We can certainly see that it is much more intricate.
Which is the way it should be. As mentioned elsewhere, much of the show was quite static, shot and acted as a stage play, but with more locations. The power of tv was to get out into the world and make it look different. This is what they did. At least in the middle serials, they seemed to have a pretty good location budget.