Howling:Had doctor really spent 200 years?

I wonder, due to recent information, if the doctor lied about his age being the Teselecta? Had he really wondered alone for 200 years? I see no evidence to support this: he looks 'younger' again in the eye, certainly not such old and bored as he was in Impossible Astronaut.

Please sign your posts. I don't think it makes much difference short term. Long term it gives more opportunity from which the writers may pull stuff out of the air. Boblipton talk to me 13:46, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

We know that the Doctor had to be travelling for long enough to meet River on quite a few occasions(Jim the Fish). Adding the 200 year gap there really solves one of the main problems that the show has always had, which is that we know that any incarnation can live for hundreds of years, but we usually only see them regenerate after a few years. There are obvious gaps in between Survival and the TV Movie, and Rose, and people come up with places where there may be gaps when he hasn't got companions, but this is the first time that they have specifically told us that there is a 200 year gap. We'll probably know soon enough though, given how much he gives his age in the new series. If he says that he's 909 then there was no gap, and if he says that he's 1104, there was a gap.Icecreamdif talk to me 17:03, October 2, 2011 (UTC)

Also don't forget that there are technicaly three gaps this series. First over the summer the Doctor travels searching for Melody, then after he leaves Amy and Rory but before the adventure with Craig he does some traveling, and finally after leaving Craig he does research on the Silence for a time before ending up at lake Silencio.MasterIII talk to me 15:25, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

I think Moffat is planning to spend the decades after he steps down as producer filling in those years. Boblipton talk to me 18:24, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

There probably wasn't a very long break in between Closing Time and The Wedding of River Song though. Throughout Closing Time, the Doctor talked about how he was dying tomorrow, and even though we now know he didn't go straight to his death, we saw most of this time in flashbacks when he was talkiing to Churchhill. Besides, do you think the Doctor would have been able to keep the stetson that long if he had had any adventures with River after he got it?Icecreamdif talk to me 20:52, October 3, 2011 (UTC)

Well Gareth Roberts confirmed that 200 years took place between the episodes, now it really depends on the writers remembering that the gap exists. If dialogue in later episodes suggests they forgot it could well be explained that the Doctor only gave himself such a large age because he remembers Amy, Rory and River asking him his age after they found younger him and realises he must have said his older age to them and so said a much older age in order for them to later ask the question about his age that he remembers in order to close a time loop. I mean there is no doubt there was significant amount of between the episodes but if his age is retconned it could be explained away as that. I think we hope they stay consistent like it has been so far and they keep his age at 1100+ so we don't have to worry about such things. The Light6 talk to me 01:56, October 4, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, let's hope that they keep the Doctor's age consistent at just over 1100 years. Otherwise, we will have to deal with the completely new and unique problem of conflicting versions of the Doctor's age.Icecreamdif talk to me 02:49, October 4, 2011 (UTC)
 * I wonder how many will miss the sarcasm here, but yeah there's enough problems with the Doctor's age already without adding a new one on top of it all. The Light6 talk to me 04:58, October 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * I think Moffat's explanation of the inconsistencies in the Doctor's age is probably the one to go for -- He lost track long ago and just made up what he thought was a plausible number but, from time to time, he loses track of that, too, and makes up another number. He simply doesn't know and, since the Time War, has nobody around who could authoratatively contradict him. For him and us, there are more important things to think about. --89.242.77.93 08:14, October 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree, 89, but I have given up arguing this matter. Fans demand precise answers to their questions, because Truth lives in the eighth decimal column. You might as well say "No fanwanking." If Joe Fan dislikes something on Doctor Who, then everyone at BBC Wales is wrong and everyone must know it. Boblipton talk to me 11:54, October 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * You know, when i put this question into forum, i wasn't thinking about exact numbers, but more about character. I mean, the Teselecta behaviour from Imp. Astr. is different enough from the behaviour in The Wedding. So i just was wondering what will see in 7th season: after all Smith's vision of role clearly evolved more into 'dark and serious' over the past years. So back to the roots, i suppose. 95.32.15.190 21:06, October 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * Silly and dark. Everything but spoons. I appreciate it. I enjoyed the beginnings of the Cartmel Masterplan in the series and the depth it offered. Plus, it explains part of his attraction to River. She is an overt psychopath that glories in her... well, anti-social behavior. It's tittilating to him because it allows him to indulge in that side of himself without claiming responsibility. Boblipton talk to me 21:24, October 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * Talking of the Cartmel Masterplan, there was recently a reply to a question on the Doctor Who Answers site that claimed the plan was to reveal the Doctor as God, when much of the point of the plan was to make the Doctor mysterious -- that is, to avoid revealing who he was -- as well as "darker" and more powerful. I've no way of knowing the extent to which first RTD and now Moffat heve intentionally been following the plan, rather than just having understood the same things about the show as Cartmel did and consequently come up with similar approaches, but there certainly have been notable parallels. Ace (who's still my all-time favourite companion) "fits" the revived series pattern far better than she does the previous approach -- she actually had a family background, for example, even if it was an unhappy one. Cartmel also reckoned that the best way to tell the Doctor's story is to tell the companion's story. That was definitely done with Rose, Martha and Donna and with Amy in Series 5. Although it's maybe a little early to decide, I thought Series 6 suffered from too much of a focus on the Doctor himself, at the expense of Amy, Rory and River, especially River. I can't help suspecting that the story that was told in Series 6 would have been better told by following River rather more than it did and letting us find out about the Doctor indirectly, through her story. Maybe that's just a reflection of my diappointment that we didn't get to see enough of the "little girl" (Sydney Wade) and Mels (Maya Glace-Green and Nina Toussaint-White) incarnations.


 * The reason I think it's a bit too early to decide about Series 6 is that a great deal depends on how Moffat takes the show forward from where he's got it now. He seems to have been setting things up for how he wants to proceed and we need to see how he does proceed. It's been remarked by quite a few people in various places that 11 has been developing traits that are strongly reminiscent of 7 -- "well devious", as Ace put it in Remembrance of the Daleks. The 200-year gap that's the topic of this page simply wasn't necessary for the story of Series 6 (although it did no harm) but it does leave room for future developments, which may well be exactly what it's intended to do. In terms of companions, though, Series 6 gave us a fair amount of Amy as action hero -- waving swords around in 2 episodes and a machinegun in the finalé -- not to mention identifying herself to Churchill as "Pond, Amelia Pond", which reminded me very much of "Bond, James Bond". That side of Amy is one I'd like to see developed further (and, from DW Confidential, it looks as if Karen Gillan enjoys playing Amy like that). Having a "kick ass" Amy as his mother-in-law could be rather interesting for the Doctor. --2.96.29.93 22:59, October 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * It is an interesting idea -- and you forgot to mention the older Amy on Appalucia (or however it's spelled) with her samurai moves on the handbots. My one cavil is that she doesn't seem to handle the different iterations of herself as well as the others. Technically her acting is flawless, but it calls attention to itself and so, instead of being drawn into the situation, I sit there analysing how she achieves the effects. However, I am certainly willing to give the Doctor another shot (and porobably three or four. To see my thoughts on the subject, check out my review of the Wedding of River Song on the IMDB. Or don't. It's pitched at a more general audience than these mutterings are and it's not unlikely they hold nothing more than we see here. Boblipton talk to me 23:44, October 5, 2011 (UTC)

Season 6 was a huge improvement over season 5 in my opinion. Season 5 was really the weakest season of the new series. While some episodes (Vincent and the Doctor, and Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone for example) were very good, the majority of them ranged from okay(like The Beast Below) to terrible (like Victory of the Daleks). Season 6, however, has mostly had good episodes, with only a couple of really bad episodes (like Night Terrors). My only real complaint with this season was that the finale was too rushed and should have been a two parter. (ridiculously short seasons are my only real complaint with British TV ing general) For the mid-season split to work, each half of the season really should have been more than six or seven episodes. The 200 year gap really was important during this season. Until we got to the second half of the season, we all tthought that maybe the Doctor might actually die, because the 200 year gap made it possible that they were just planning to keep Matt Smith on for a long time and just end the show. Without the 200 year gap, however, we would know that this season was definetly going to end with the Doctor omehow avoiding his death (not that we couldn't have figured that out anyway.) The whole reason for the Cartmel masterplan is that the Doctor has become less of a mysterious character over the years, after episodes like The War Games where we learn much more about him and his people. If the season had focused more on River Song than the Doctor, than the exact same thing would have happenned to her. By keeping the focus on the Doctor, the character of River Song was able to remain mysterious to the audience for as long as possible, and there are still more than a few unanswered questions about her. The Sydney Wade version, for example, was on screen just long enough to keep us all speculating for the entire first half of the season, and as I've stated elsewhere the Mels version really should have been introduced earlier. I wasn't aware that the Cartmel Masterplan stll existed, though the show does seem to be portraying him as a bit darker than in the past, and the've now started seriously drawing attention to the one last great myster left around the Doctor (Doctor Who?).Icecreamdif talk to me 00:32, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

Just shows to go ya, I thought Night Terrors was great. If we wish to start a topic covering our ratings of the season, I thought the strongest were The Doctor's Wife and the non-Moffat stories of the second half, the weakest was the two-parter about the Flesh (because the "surprise ending" destroyed the point that Flesh are people too) and the Pirate ship one. The Moffat stuff, while fast and fun, has been far too concerned with repositioning the series for my taste. I've enjoyed them, but.... still, the Gaiman piece is a classic. Boblipton talk to me 01:17, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

Well, we both agree on The Doctor's Wife anyay. That was easily one of the best one-off stories in recent years. I thought that the pirate one was okay but not particularly memorable. The flesh- well the flesh Amy never had a chance to become independant and he didn't really have any choice but to kill it, but I agree that it wasn't one of the stronger episodes.(It also wasn't much of a surprise ending because BBC America decided to wait a week to air that episode) Maybe it would have worked better if they had made that a single episode story, and they had made the finale a two parter. I thought that Night Terrors was just a pretty weak attempt at the types of stories that Moffatt did back in the RTD era, but it focused too much on trying to be scary, and not enough on the actual plot. Moffat's scary stories always had a very interesting plot (like CAL and the Library computer, or Jack and the nano-genes), with scary stuff tacked on to make it cooler. Yeah, there was the alien kid who felt rejected, but he didn't really do much except act scared, unlike CAL or Jamie who were both creepy and mysterious enough to be very memorable. Still, everybody has different opinions of different episodes, nand this is probably getting off topic. Icecreamdif talk to me 04:32, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif, "the finalé was too rushed": It was. The way it came across to me was that frantic action was being used to distract from a lack of plot resolution. Yes, we finally learned how the Doctor managed to avoid being killed and we also learned what the question was but (especially with the trick using the Teselecta), it felt as if it was presented almost as an aside: "Oh, by the way, it wasn't really the Doctor you saw, it was the Teselecta imitating him." Personally, I'd have preferred to see more of the Doctor (the "victim" of the killing) persuading the controllers of the Teselecta to help him fake his death. The Teselecta was a Justice Department ship and the Doctor could have used its attack on River/Melody in Let's Kill Hitler, combined with evidence that River/Melody wasn't the guilty one (not responsible for her actions), which makes them party to an injustice, to talk them into helping. That could have been done without destroying the suspense because we already knew of one way the Doctor could have faked his death (the Flesh) and the Teselecta would just have been another possibility, until near the end. The quality of the individual episodes varied (inevitably) and I thought The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People badly handled for the reason Boblipton gives, above. The trouble is that the the finalé was one of the weakest episodes, in terms of plot, when it needed to be the strongest.

Boblipton, Karen Gillan as Amy "doesn't seem to handle the different iterations of herself as well as the others": I strongly disagree but I suspect that's a matter of personal taste on which all we can sanely do is agree to disagree.

Back to the topic: On the 200-year gap, I disagree with Icecreamdif about it being necessary to Series 6 and I especially disagree that it helped to keep the audience in suspense. It never seemed a real possibility that they were planning to set it up for Matt Smith to be the last Doctor. Apart from anything else, that would leave them extremely vulnerable to Matt Smith leaving or threatening to leave and equally vulnerable to anything bad (illness/accident) happening to him. If anything, the 200-year gap reduced the suspense -- giving the Doctor a huge amount of time (in his personal timeline) to figure out a way to avoid being killed. Considering what the Doctor can come up with in 200 seconds, 200 years is a wildly excessive provision of thinking-time! I still think that gap only really makes sense if it's intended to be used to allow whatever Moffat has in mind for Series 7. --89.242.72.36 06:50, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

Well, one thing that can be considered either a strength or a weakness of Moffat's finales is that they don't full resolve the plot, but imply that it will be resolved in future seasons. Does anybody, for example, really know what happenned in the season 5 finale. The problem with the finale was that Moffat created the first truly arc heavy season since Trial of a Timelord, and wrapped everything up with a single 45 minute episode. (Actually, it sounds a lot like Trial of A Timelord). Even if he was doing a regular season, it would have been a mistake to end with a one parter, and in this case it was just stupid. The episode wasn't terrible though. The setting was certainly interesting, but they didn't really focus on the different periods of history all happenning at once after the first ten minutes. By showing us the Doctor's death and cremation in the premiere, Moffat didn't really have any choice but to come up with some cheap way to have him fake his death, though it would have worked better if it was like The Big Bang where the Doctor actually believed he was going to his death. Also, if the Doctor was in the eye of the Teselecta when he married River, doesn't that mean that he wasn't controlling the thing at the time? The reveal at the end of the episode was also a high point of the episode, even though nobody would really phrase the question like that unless they knew the title of the show. Still, I've been hoping that they'd finally address hisname for years. I don't really mind that the Doctor had to kill Amys flesh avatar, because there normally wasn't any alternative to killing them. It was unethical to create them, but once you did so you had no choice but to either kill them or stay in the harness forever (unless they gain independance due to some freak accident). I agree that Karen Gillan did a good job playing other Amys, and The Girl Who Waited was probably the best episode of the second half of the season. While nobody really believed that the Doctor would die, we didn't know if they would resolve it this season, or bring it up in a year or two. Even if Matt Smith left or died, well it wouldn't be the first time that happenned. How did the Doctor meet Mel again? Anyway, I'm guessing the only difference with the 200 year gap will be that the Doctor will start referencing meetings with River that we haven't seen.Icecreamdif talk to me 15:18, October 6, 2011 (UTC)

What I had in mind when I said I thought Moffat meant the 200-year gap to set things up for Series 7 wasn't to set up plot opportunities but to give room for changes in approach -- letting the Doctor say (in effect), "Well I'm older now and I've had time to think about things, so I'm not going to do it that way, any more, I'll do it this way, instead." The Doctor's "guilt trip" in The God Complex (also touched on in Let's Kill Hitler, with the images of Rose, Martha and Donna) suggests something similar, as does River's tirade towards the end of A Good Man Goes to War. --89.242.75.60 19:15, October 7, 2011 (UTC)

I do't entirely understand what you're saying, but it sounds like it makes sense. 200 years certainly leaves room for character development, and we haven't really seen much of the Doctor from after the 200 year gap. In Closing Time, he seemed to still feel guilty about his actions, and was willing to accept his death with dignity, while in The Wedding of River Song, he seemed to want to postpone his death as long as possible, until he heard about Lethbride-Stewart's death. I think the biggest difference that we're going to get out of the 200 year gap is that the Doctor will now really seem to know River Song. Of course, he was getting to know hrer before the gap, but now they will probably have more converations about events that took place off screen, and he won't consider her even remotely mysterious.Icecreamdif talk to me 03:53, October 8, 2011 (UTC)