- 7 weeks ago
10 Doctor Who Questions That Always Confused You
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Ah, Doctor Who fans.
00:02For faithful viewers of a show all about time travel and endless possibilities,
00:07their understanding can very often be linear and unimaginative.
00:12Which is why there is always a clamour of angry tweets or message board posts
00:17each time a new bit of lore or storytelling appears to make no sense.
00:23The answers are sometimes simple, bad writing.
00:26The fact that for the first 20 years no one was expected to watch all of Doctor Who in order
00:32and subsequently find troubling contradictions.
00:35The rest of the time it's usually due to Steven Moffat vastly overestimating the intelligence of his audience.
00:42So, allow this list to pick over the questions that have been confusing you for years
00:48in an attempt to either answer them once and for all or make them even more confusing.
00:54With that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture and this is 10 Doctor Who questions that always confused you.
01:01Number 10. What is the Doctor's name?
01:04The oldest question. Hidden in plain sight.
01:08Steven Moffat teased us with this throughout Matt Smith's years before revealing that it's not important.
01:14What's important is the title they chose and how it reflects their actions.
01:19Because what name would even be satisfying for fans?
01:22Keith?
01:23The question of the Doctor's birth name is something that becomes more complex the more you think about it.
01:29Gallifrey is the planet where Ramanad Viratrolunda is a perfectly normal thing to call a child for goodness sake.
01:35We know that the Doctor was nicknamed Theta Sigma in college and only reveal their name to those they're intimate with.
01:41And that's about it. Things have got even more complex now that we no longer have a clue where the Doctor is from.
01:48A lost child, abandoned in our universe, adopted by Tectae Eun.
01:52What was that child's name? And come to think of it, what was their name after they were regenerated into a child on leaving Division?
01:59Doctor Who has never seemed like a more appropriate title for the show.
02:04Probably best we don't dwell on it and just carry on calling them the Doctor.
02:08Number 9. Where does Joe Martin fit into the line-up?
02:12When Ruth was first introduced to be an unknown incarnation of the Doctor, various speculative theories were churned out by fansites.
02:20Were they between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee in a fresh spin on the long-held belief in the Season 6 B Theory?
02:27This theory posits that the second Doctor was a Time Lord agent, spawned from the fact that an older Patrick Troughton didn't dye his hair black when he returned to the role.
02:37Whilst their story is confusingly related through the prism of a cosy Sunday night TV show about an Irish policeman,
02:44the Timeless Children makes it clear that Ruth is pre-Hartnell.
02:47Their memories were wiped and they eventually became the first Doctor we all know, which still confuses and outrages some corners of the fandom.
02:56The more militant fans believe that the very idea of Doctors existing prior to the first Doctor is tantamount to heresy.
03:03Doctor Who fans are boringly linear.
03:06Hartnell will always be the first Doctor that we as an audience encounter.
03:10The fact that the character has a whole mysterious life beforehand doesn't desecrate Hartnell's legacy.
03:16It ensures its longevity as the show approaches its sixth decade.
03:21Number 8
03:23Wait, why can't he go back and save Amy and Rory?
03:26The ending of The Angels Take Manhattan in which the Doctor states that he cannot return to New York to save Amy and Rory led to a lot of confusion and
03:35couldn't they just meet up in another city on social media?
03:39So much so that Steven Moffat wrote a lengthy response in Doctor Who magazine.
03:44There is so much scar tissue and the number of paradoxes that have already been inflicted on that nexus of timelines that it will rip apart if you try to do one more thing.
03:54He has to leave it alone.
03:56There's also a more simple emotional explanation too.
03:59The whole of Series 7A is about Amy and Rory trying to balance normal married life with adventures in time and space.
04:06Increasingly aware that one day they'll have to stop travelling in the TARDIS.
04:10That decision is eventually taken out of their hands when a weeping angel zaps Rory back in time and Amy decides to willingly sacrifice herself to be reunited with her husband.
04:21The Doctor can't go back because he knows that Amy doesn't want him to.
04:26She wants a life with Rory.
04:28It's the perfect ending.
04:30Sadly, Doctor Who fans are so focused on the intricacies of time paradoxes that they often miss out on the simple things like human emotion.
04:40Number 7.
04:41What is the Valiard?
04:43In the final stages of the Trial of a Time Lord, it is revealed that the Doctor's prosecutor, the Valiard, is actually an evil version of the Doctor himself.
04:52A distillation of the Doctor's darker impulses from somewhere between the Doctor's 12th and 13th lives.
04:59But what does that actually mean?
05:01The Master's description of the Valiard is more of a metaphorical concept.
05:05So how did it gain a physical form?
05:08No answers are forthcoming in the Trial's notoriously troubled Final Two episode, which descends into a chase across the Matrix.
05:16A chase or the writers Pip and Jane Baker running away full pelt from trying to explain the concept teed up by Valiard creator Robert Holmes.
05:25Fans have tried to answer this question through spin-off novels, short stories and audio adventures, yet these muddy the waters even more.
05:33One story states that he's a villainous version of the Doctor plucked from the multiverse.
05:38One audio suggests the Valiard was a by-product of an experiment by the Doctor to break the 12th regeneration limit.
05:45Awkwardly, this was released just a week before the 11th Doctor was granted a new regeneration cycle.
05:52All of this confusion could have been avoided if it had just turned out that the Valiard was the Master in disguise.
05:58After all, aren't they really the Dark Doctor?
06:01Number 6. Has Davros had his eyes closed the whole time?
06:04Who'd have thought that a pair of eyes would be the most controversial moment in an episode one taploid described as,
06:11Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor ponders whether to murder a child.
06:14In The Witch's Familiar, the Doctor and Davros sit down and have a chat about morality, ageing and legacy.
06:20Two bitter enemies coming to an understanding.
06:23Except that it's all a ruse by the Dalek creator to steal the Doctor's regeneration energy.
06:28It's this that the Doctor siphons off to allow Davros to see one more Scarrow sunrise.
06:33In a moment that isn't quite as moving as it should be, Davros opens his eyes.
06:38The eyes that have been obscured by scar tissue for the 40 years prior to this, meaning that he's had to rely on the glowing blue eye mounted in his forehead.
06:46Peering through the black makeup, Julian Bleach does his best to sell the emotion of the scene.
06:52A moment that was intended to humanise the Dalek's creator, instead led to perplexed fans joking about Davros' peepers on social media.
07:01And yet, the answer is staring you right in the face.
07:05That small burst of the Doctor s regeneration energy restored Davros his eyes.
07:105. What was the Grand Serpent up to?
07:13Those fans who were confused by the Grand Serpent scheme in the closing two episodes of Doctor Who Flux clearly weren't paying attention to the news during the pandemic.
07:23When the Flux ravages the universe, he sought the perfect opportunity to dominate the Earth and reign over the shattered remnants of the universe.
07:32To do this, he had to meddle with units past in order to manoeuvre himself into a position where he could control the planet's defence systems.
07:40Then he sold the planet out to the highest bidder, the Sontarans.
07:43He's basically a dodgy intergalactic PPE provider.
07:46It seems that the Doctor Who fans were too busy being outraged by the alternative unit chronology and demotion of Lethry Stewart to actually pay attention to what the Serpent's aims were.
07:58Kate Stewart literally spells it out to the audience before she goes into hiding.
08:03In The Grand Serpent, Chris Chibnall is taking aim at the opportunistic chancers who seek to profit from tragedy, even the end of the universe itself.
08:12It's his greatest bit of satire since unit was defunded just as a rogue Dalek is let loose.
08:19Which, it turns out, was all part of the Grand Serpent's plan.
08:224. When do the unit stories take place?
08:26The unit's dating controversy is a running debate in the Doctor Who fandom.
08:31Were the unit stories of Troughton and Pertwee's eras taking place in the present day or in the future?
08:37If in the future, then how has the Brigadier resigned to teach maths in 1976 in Mordran Undead?
08:44Unit's debut story, The Invasion, is set in about 1979.
08:49So how can a man retire from an organisation that won't exist for another three years?
08:54If that wasn't bad enough, Sarah Jane Smith states that she's from 1980 in Pyramids of Mars.
09:00So in what year do stories like Invasion of the Dinosaurs or Robot take place?
09:05It's a question that has flummoxed fans for decades, with attempts to resolve it in all various novels, audios and even DVD special features.
09:14The real answer is probably the simplest. The Brigadier wasn't supposed to be in Mordran Undead.
09:19William Russell, who was originally due to return as Ian Chesterton, dropped out.
09:24Writer Peter Grimwade hastily rewrote the serial by slotting Lethbridge Stewart in, adding some lines about Unit, Axon and Daleks, etc.
09:32But he forgot to adjust the dates accordingly.
09:35More simply, time is always being rewritten and reshaped in Doctor Who.
09:39So it's probably for the best that Chris Chibnall upturned the apple cart, with the Grand Serpents meddling with Unit's chronology in Flux.
09:48Number 3. Who is the woman?
09:50The mysterious woman in white, who appears to Wilf in the end of time, inspired many different theories on her possible identity.
09:58Was she Romana? Susan?
10:01The dialogue makes no clear distinction on who exactly the woman is, which fed into the endless speculation.
10:08Russell T Davies has stated exactly who she is, though, in his marvellous book The Writer's Tale.
10:13It's the Doctor's mother, and this was obviously made clear to both David Tennant and Claire Bloom, and comes across in their performances.
10:21By 2020, it was accepted that this was indeed the Doctor's mother.
10:25And then the timeless children came along.
10:27Presumably, the woman is the adoptive mother of the Doctor after the Ruth Doctor had their memories wiped.
10:33Or is it Tectaeun?
10:34We saw in the brain of Morbius that the Doctor does have repressed memories of their previous pre-Hartnell cells.
10:41Could that go for Tectaeun too?
10:42It's so confusing, right?
10:44Except it's not.
10:45Not really.
10:46The woman is the Doctor's mother.
10:48It doesn't matter that she's clearly not his birth mother.
10:51It doesn't even matter if she's a version of Tectaeun.
10:54She is the woman who raised him as he remembers.
10:57And that is all that matters in that moment.
11:01Number 2.
11:02What is the hybrid?
11:04The supposed big bad of Series 9 kept fans guessing and then predictably left them angry and confused.
11:10Because, as with all ominous prophecies, the answer is never as satisfying as the one you concoct in your fan brain.
11:18The hybrid is not some terrible combination of Viking and Murr or Dalek and Time Lord or Zygon and Human.
11:27It's a metaphor, an allegory.
11:29That's what most prophecies are.
11:31They're stories.
11:32They're not to be taken literally.
11:34We learned all that from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right?
11:36The hybrid is a metaphor for the Doctor and Clara's relationship.
11:40That's what it always was.
11:42And the various red herrings scattered throughout the series feel half-hearted.
11:46It's a far more satisfying conclusion than if the hybrid had been revealed to be Maisie Williams' me.
11:52The hybrid is Time Lord and Human.
11:54More specifically, the Doctor and his unwavering devotion and loyalty to Clara.
11:59Look at what he does to save her life.
12:01He returns to his home planet as a villain and a tyrant.
12:04Regeneration or not, he kills someone.
12:06The big bad of series 9 is the Doctor himself.
12:09And it's a gripping, devastating performance by Peter Capaldi.
12:13Can you honestly say that a Dalek Time Lord hybrid would have been better?
12:17You've seen the Cyber Lords, right?
12:20Number 1.
12:21Who is the Curator?
12:22Whilst you may not have been able to hear the dialogue between the Curator and the Eleventh Doctor over the joyous cheers and applause at the return of Tom Baker,
12:31there have been plenty of opportunities since the day of the Doctor aired to go back and listen.
12:36So the raft of Who is the Curator? think pieces and tweet threads in the months after seemed like a willful ignorance of the written dialogue.
12:46I can only tell you what I would do if I were you.
12:48Oh, if I were you.
12:50Oh, perhaps I was you, of course.
12:52Or perhaps you are me.
12:53He's very plainly a future, retired version of the Doctor who's chosen the aged face of his fourth incarnation.
13:01It's an allusion to Douglas Adams' sharder, and yet people were still in doubt.
13:06It's taken Steven Moffat's novelisation of Day of the Doctor and several big finished box sets to further assert the identity of this future incarnation.
13:16And yet, did we really need all of this to explain a sweet, lovely, not at all ambiguous nod to the show's past and future to confused fans?
13:27Who knows, eh?
13:28Who knows?
13:30And that concludes our list.
13:32If there are some Doctor Who moments that confused you that weren't mentioned in this list, then comment them below.
13:37And while you're there, like and subscribe, and tap that notification bell.
13:41I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
Recommended
12:28
|
Up next
10:38
1:37
1:08
9:58
10:38
9:48
13:25
12:10
2:03
1:02
11:38
20:39
12:07
11:48
12:32
Be the first to comment