Howling:The Name of the Doctor and The 7th Doctor Matrix Novel

When I was rewatching the Name of the Doctor I started to think about the 7th Doctor novel Matrix and some similarities with them

Both stories features a corruption of the Doctors history in the novel the Valeyard calling himself the Ripper has changed each of the Doctors lives and made them evil there are 12 shadow figures (wraiths) which are reveled to be the Doctors waiting for the 7th to join them. The 1st, 4th and 5th are seen The 5th Doctor was turned on Androzani, which was also mentioned as one of the places which the Doctor died.

Each features a graveyard and the TARDIS being used as something else in the novel a vessel for the Dark Matrix it is referenced to as a crypt and a doorway which has all of the 13 Doctors faces on it as well as the word "The Doctor". Before he enters he hears mocking words like The Whisper Men mock the Doctor and Clara.

In the novel the Doctor had lost his memories on getting them back he is said to hear "Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?" but that is just a great line to use.A-Smk ☎  21:06, June 11, 2013 (UTC)

It wouldn't be the first time Moffat has taken an idea from a novel. In Shadowmind (a 7th Doctor & Ace novel, as is Matrix), there's an artificial copy of a companion's body, animated by the companion's mind while her real body is kept dormant. That situation might seem familiar to viewers of Series 6. In the 1993 novel, however, Ace was fully aware of the situation & the point of creating a doppelganger of her was to help the Doctor. In Series 6, Amy was not aware of the situation & the point of creating a doppelganger of her was to harm the Doctor.

It's entirely possible that Moffat has taken ideas from Matrix. If so, it's well-nigh certain he'll have used them differently & changed important details. In The Name of the Doctor, there was a crypt -- or at least an underground passage -- as well as the graveyard, the whispering & the TARDIS being used as something else, so further similarities are definitely worth watching out for. But it's also worth bearing in mind that what's actually going on is likely to be quite different.

Mind you, if the 50th Anniversary Special has Clara turning into a large bipedal feline, I'll begin to suspect Moffat's going too far! :) --89.241.64.207talk to me 22:36, June 11, 2013 (UTC)


 * This is a bit tangential but, @89, what do you know about The Watcher character? In May, I was reading over different incarnations of The Doctor and was struck by this figure. Of course, physically, he didn't resemble the John Hurt character in The Name of the Doctor, but I mean the role that character played in the storyline as a certain embodied essence who merges with The Doctor. Because The Valeyard as I understand is actually a future incarnation of The Doctor. I think Hurt is more likely to be some element of The Doctor that is intrinsically a part of him (and of every incarnation), just not another, numbered incarnation.


 * I haven't read at Doctor Who novels but it sounds like Matrix might be worth picking up. Badwolff ☎  20:01, June 12, 2013 (UTC)


 * Badwolff: To understand the Watcher (from Logopolis) properly, you also need to know about the Hermit (a Time Lord), who appeared in Planet of the Spiders as both K'anpo Rimpoche (the abbot of a Buddhist meditation centre in England) and Cho Je (the abbot's assistant). When the Hermit regenerated in Planet of the Spiders, from his K'anpo Rimpoche incarnation into his Cho Je incarnation, the separate manifestation of Cho Je faded out. The Hermit -- I don't think that name was used on TV but it is in novels -- had been one of the Doctor's teachers on Gallifrey & was far, far more skilled at such things than the Doctor. The "anticipatory manifestation" of the Hermit's future incarnation looked more like that incarnation & could function much better than the Watcher could. Neither was a separate incarnation. Each was (in some way) an "echo" of the incarnation that was about to take over.


 * If all this seems obscure, I'm not surprised. Trying to explain in text is difficult. Trying to understand an explanation in text is probably much more so. Your best course would be to watch Planet of the Spiders & then Logopolis -- & only read the articles &c after you've seen the stories, so you'll then have some idea what the articles are talking about.


 * Matrix is worth reading. However, it's another one where background knowledge, if not essential, is distinctly helpful. There's too much in it that depends on knowing about the Seventh Doctor & Ace. At minimum, you ought to watch Survival before reading it, because otherwise you won't know why Ace's eyes change colour & develop slit-shaped (rather than round) pupils, nor why that bothers her in the specific way it does. Ace knows what it means & the reader is expected to know, too. (I was 89 earlier.) --2.101.53.202talk to me 22:13, June 12, 2013 (UTC)


 * Wow, I guess I have some DVDs to buy. I didn't realize it was so complicated, when I read the character bio for The Watcher, it just sounded like he appeared in one serial. And I don't know anything about the Seventh Doctor or Ace! I'm a relative newbie.


 * By the way, do you know of any DW site that ranks or rates the novels or audio programs? There are so damn many of them, it's really hard to know where to start. And then, I guess, there are comic books, too. I guess watching the new Series is just one small slice of Doctor Who. Badwolff ☎  22:25, June 12, 2013 (UTC)


 * The Watcher does just appear in one serial. However, the explanation (such as it was) was in another serial, where something similar happened with another Time Lord, & that serial aired 7 years earlier!


 * "do you know of any DW site that ranks or rates the novels or audio programs?": None I'd take any notice of myself. That means none I'd recommend to others.


 * "I guess watching the new Series is just one small slice of Doctor Who.": This is news? :)


 * Where Seven & Ace are concerned: That's still my favourite Doctor/companion team. Mostly because I think it's the one that most was a team. Seven isn't, in himself, my favourite Doctor but Ace is my favourite companion. There are many novels featuring them. Unfortunately, quite a lot of those novels get their characters wrong -- in my opinion, anyway. Not all of them do but most. One reason for this, I think, is that Sylvester McCoy & Sophie Aldred put a lot of themselves into their characters. They'd never met before they worked together on DW but rapidly became (& remain) close friends. Sophie Aldred had never worked in TV before she was cast as Ace. That was very much the same situation as their characters, as scripted, were in. The result was that a huge amount of what appears on screen never was on paper & it's difficult to get the characters right without the actors to interpret them. (It's not impossible & some of the authors did manage it. Most didn't & several missed the target by a long way.) Apart from anything else, McCoy had enough clout to get scripts changed when he thought they were wrong for the Doctor. Aldred shouldn't have had much clout but she was used to working in theatre companies that took for granted a high level of actor input &, being totally unaware of how things were supposed to be done in TV, she just carried on doing things the way she was used to. And, crucially, McCoy backed her up.


 * There's a DVD extra that illustrates the point. In Ghost Light, John Nathan-Turner tried to insist that Ace should scream at a couple of monsters. Ace had never screamed. One of the crew, talking at a DW convention (in the DVD extra) says that they just couldn't do it: "It wasn't in the character. Ace would just have started hitting things," then he added, tellingly, "and so would Sophie!" Ace never did scream.


 * One novel that does get the characters right & doesn't really require previous knowledge is Relative Dementias (2002). It's slightly timey-wimey, so really needs to be read twice -- once when you don't know what's going on & once when you do -- but it's fun (in slightly different ways) each time. Unfortunately, I can't tell you just what's special about it (apart from the wonderful title) without giving away one of the main plot twists. ("Spoilers!") From Ace's state of knowledge, the novel must be set at about the same point in her timeline as Ghost Light -- she's reasonably experienced in time travel but doesn't yet know the things she learns in The Curse of Fenric -- so it's set at roughly the midpoint of Season 26 & probably just after Ghost Light. --2.101.53.202talk to me 01:19, June 13, 2013 (UTC)

Regarding The Watcher I think he was a halfway point than the 4th and the 5th one possible description of him occurs in the Timewyrm: Revelation (novel) this story is partly set in the Doctors mind. Ace finds a gleaming polygonal room.

“Thirteen sides in each side, a sort of alcove, Seven of the cabinets contained strange, organic messes of biological circuitry, and. . . oh. Six contained people. They were half-formed male figures, white as the walls, their faces blank and their costumes basic. A kind of rot seemed to have set in, because the figures were mottled with a grey decay.”

This sound like what The Watcher was Adric says it’s like he knows whats going to happen and he was there at the point the Doctor falls to complete the regeneration into the 5th

Regarding The Valeyard the Matrix Novel makes him out as a separate entity when he 1st appears on the The Trial of a Time Lord he plans to kill the Doctor and take his remaining lives so he can obtain his freedom and operate as a complete entity he survived by taken over the Keeper of the Matrix. In the novel there are 12 wraiths Doctors adding the 7th would make 13.The Valeyard is like the Dreamlord as the Master called him an amalgamation of the darker sides of the Doctor nature between the 12th and final incarnation he is a possible Doctor.A-Smk ☎  23:44, June 13, 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all of the detailed information, @2. I can hardly wait to see The Doctors Revisited in September when they talk about the Seventh Doctor and his Companions.


 * Thanks for the background, @A-Smik. All I knew about The Watcher was what I read on this website but it seemed like he was a figure who was The Doctor but also not an incarnation of The Doctor. I thought Hurt might serve a similar function. Badwolff ☎  20:42, June 16, 2013 (UTC)


 * 89, I'm sorry but I had to remove your link to the youtube video. We don't allow non-BBC licensed videos on the wiki, and that includes external links to same. Shambala108 ☎  22:41, June 16, 2013 (UTC)

I re-read Matrix today & the resemblances between the crypt scenes in the novel & the Trenzalore scenes in The Name of the Doctor are stronger than I'd remembered. There are substantial differences, too, of course, but I think the novel must have contributed to Series 7 Part 2 -- not only to The Name... but also to Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, because the novel features the companion (Ace, rather than Clara) running through the corridors of a disintegrating TARDIS, pursued by monsters.

As an aside (& not especially important): It irritated me slightly that Matrix got Ace's age wrong. It specifically says that it takes place several months (in her timeline) after her encounter with the Cheetah people in Survival but it also gives her age as seventeen, when Survival made a point of establishing that she was eighteen by then & could finally buy drinks in a pub without the Doctor stopping her. --2.101.59.47talk to me 22:08, June 21, 2013 (UTC)