Doctor Who IV - Everything Whovian - Would you like a jelly baby?

[BeastieRunner]

Overnights were the lowest for the specials but like with WBY it's a small dip and probably will be boosted by the Disney+, BBC player etc.

Traditional ratings are dead anyway.

[protege]

I think there was a funeral epilogue in the Sarah Jane Adventures.

I liked it, NPH was great and I loved the "well, that's ALL RIGHT then!" whenever the Doctor would mention how a dead companion (Amy, Bill, Clara) somehow survived in some manner. (I kind of found it a cop out in the Moffett era, that every companion got a "happy" ending even when their body was destroyed, etc.)

I also loved seeing the Doctor match wits with an opponent that wasn't the Master for once. I am sooooo burnt out on the Master.

The bi-regeneration would have bothered me in the past, but since "the Timeless Child" retconned everything we knew about the Doctor, it's no biggie. At least there's the possibility of more David Tennant specials in the future.

i thought at some point eleven might’ve mentioned her passing, but i’m not sure.

[ChrisIII]

The Brigadier was mentioned in Wedding of River Song I think, he basically called his nursing home to ask if they could hang out, and was informed of his death, so that might be what you're thinking of.

Kind of cool Mel was brought in for a sort of plot specific reason too. While Jo is certainly more popular and Katy Manning is probably up for more WHO appearances, I don't think computer stuff was her strong suit (Although it neither was classic Mel's to be honest) as I think she's more of an environmentalist type. And we just had Tegan and Ace have big parts etc.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

So will Tennant be in the Unit series coming as a spin-off series ? It makes sense if he's now living on Earth with Donna and Mel there now.

[ChrisIII]

There are rumors of that along with UNIT. There's still also a rumored Paul Mcgann thing that was pretty strong not too long ago.

Maybe the upcoming Mel episode could even be more of a backdoor pilot for UNIT.

Might depend on how well Ncuti's season goes perhaps?


BTW Kate mentions she fought the Yeti. Wonder if that's a bit of a nod to DOWNTIME, where although not part of UNIT yet she (played by a different actress) made her debut there.

DOWNTIME of course was one of the BBV's "Not quite WHO" productions like Shakedown, Stranger etc. Basically I think they licensed the companions and monsters separately but couldn't do so with the Doctors, although the novelizations were expanded to add the Doctor since the books had the rights. Of course there was a fair amount of stuff with Pertwee, Davison, Colin and McCoy playing Doctor-ish characters as well, even a pseudo multi-Doctor story called the Airzone Solution.

They kind of fizzled out when Big Finish, and then the new series, started.

[Mister Mets]

i thought at some point ekeven might’ve mentioned her passing, but i’m not sure.

There was a comic where the Doctor went to a comic-con in our world, and someone asked about Sarah Jane. He said she was fine.

The Brigadier was mentioned in Wedding of River Song I think, he basically called his nursing home to ask if they could hang out, and was informed of his death, so that might be what you're thinking of.

Kind of cool Mel was brought in for a sort of plot specific reason too. While Jo is certainly more popular and Katy Manning is probably up for more WHO appearances, I don't think computer stuff was her strong suit (Although it neither was classic Mel's to be honest) as I think she's more of an environmentalist type. And we just had Tegan and Ace have big parts etc.

I wasn't familiar with Mel, but I like that she was finally able to demonstrate her computer skills.

So will Tennant be in the Unit series coming as a spin-off series ? It makes sense if he's now living on Earth with Donna and Mel there now.

I think David Tennant is too big an actor to be a regular on an inevitable UNIT series.

He may make guest appearances every now and then, kinda like the original Star Trek cast in Next Generation.

A theory I heard a week ago was that they were going to keep Tennant around somehow (at that point, the understanding was that the Ncuti Gatwa Doctor would show up as a future version) so that they could do film spinoffs. I could see something like that, or a mini-series, especially as a way to offer more Doctor Who content at a time when the show would otherwise only have a handful of episodes at best (as was the case in 2009, 2016, 2019 and the last two years.)

[Mister Mets]

This was sweet on the significance of the ramp on the Tardis.

https://twitter.com/TharriesYT/statu...19461423259925

It was based on an encounter with a fan, but it was also meaningful to the actress.

[Nate Grey]

I guess I need to see it again, but where are people getting Toymaker = Timeless Child from?

Brand new Sonic. Drops the cyndrical look and is now more of a remote/compact/bottle opener/tricorder? thing.

Its basically an expensive Swiss Army Knife. I saw expensive cause those come with a screwdriver and the cheapos typically don't.

[Nate Grey]

Yeah it's kind of interesting how 'long' each incarnation might've lived.

8-Again, lots of wiggle room.

Well "Natural History of Fear" and The whole Divergent Universe Storyline come to mind. "Scherzo" maybe.

Problem is, short of saying #8's Big Finish companions' names onscreen (The "Night of the Doctor" minisode), the show otherwise ignores Big Finish. #1 [new] example of this, the Doctor encountered The Toymaker twice (Doctors #6 and #7) but here "The Giggle" said its the first time the Doctor has seen him since he was the First Doctor.

I guess I get it, you don't want the audience to do "homework", but #8 has a great and awesome run that...a lot of people don't know about.

[Vegeta]

I was hoping to get a "carrot juice, carrot juice, carrot juice" reference tbh.

[KabutoRyder]

We sooooooooooooooooooo need more TV Paul McGann. I love his Big Finish audios but the man deserves proper TV time to make up for that dreadful TV movie.

Given RTD confirmed the apparent idea that every Doctor now gets to go on forever in their own timeline I bet Big Finish are rubbing their hands over that. Think about it:

- 1 never regenerates and carries on with Ben and Polly
- 2 hopefully gets out of the spinning vortex and either gets reunited with Jamie and does Two Doctors or helps with UNIT.
- 3 keeps working for UNIT and travels with Sarah Jane and Harry
- 4 wakes until the radio tower, safe and travels with Tegan, Nyssa and Adric
- 5 recovers from the toxins and keeps travelling with Peri
- 6 wakes up to battle the Rani again alongside Mel
- 7 wakes up inside the morgue and terrifies that night guard in 1999
- 8 never becomes a warrior on Karn and keeps fighting the Time War in his own way
- War gets a true retirement after knowing the Moment didn’t destroy Gallifrey and gets to have new less awful adventures, maybe meets Rose?
- 9 gets to carry on and have adventures with Rose
- 10 doesn’t go, gets to have his reward and meets Amy
- 11 gets to continue remembering and travels on with Clara
- 12 rocks on and meets the Fam
- 13 sees the sunset and is reunited with Yaz?

And presumably Fugitive and all the past Doctors maybe carry on in a LOT of timelines, Timeless Children depending.

Now this I do not like. I want one singular Doctor. I can accept through Toymaker chicanery he somehow brought a future incarnation to the present and that the 14th eventually gets waaay older and healed and some day becomes Gatwa's version, but I do not need multi docs in their multi times lines and such.

And the whole whoniverse thing with the spinoffs and such, do we even really need that now when the shared/connected/whatevered universe idea is kinda lost a lot of the bloom on the rose it had initially?

[Catlady in training]

This was sweet on the significance of the ramp on the Tardis.

https://twitter.com/TharriesYT/statu...19461423259925

It was based on an encounter with a fan, but it was also meaningful to the actress.

Here's the full Behind the scenes video:

[ChrisIII]

So in the last two cases the Doctor didn't seem to have any post-regeneration instability/major adjustment era.

So should the whole post-regeneration thing kind of be done with entirely? RTD didn't start with it, Eleventh also seemed pretty stable out of the gate apart from the food test and some parts where his body was a bit wobbly (The 'too soon' bit). Although in both cases, RTD and Moffat used post-regeneration issues for both Ten and Twelve. Jodie also seemed kind of half and half, she knew what she was doing but forgot her 'name' and needed a bit of rest.

I guess it's kind of cool for the Doctor to have a triumphant moment late in the story of becoming fully their new selves which leads to some cool moments (Such as Tennant's fight with the Sycorax) but in other ways it kind of wastes time, or in the case of the Sixth Doctor, if they stretch it beyond just one story which I think was part of the intention, could alienate viewers.

The Seventh Doctor's a bit of a weird case as he seemed to act a lot like the Sixth when he woke up (although he did say "Who am I?") but generally settled more into character and the usual post-regeneration amnesia stuff but artificially given the Rani's potion.

[JBatmanFan05]

I watched the new animated Bluray of The Abominable Snowmen (Patrick Troughton) and I was quite surprised by how the good the classic serial was and how the animated episodes actually improved some (fairly minor) things about the serial (despite these improvements being inaccurate somewhat).

[Celgress]

All these recent out-of-left-field changes from the Timeless Children to bi-regeneration along with sinking viewership remind me too much as a comic book fan of the Spider-Man Clone Saga (1990s). Sorry, I gave the new "new" series a try but I'm out.