Return of the Zygon

Steven Moffat has come out to explain his reasoning to bring back the Zygons in the 50th anniversary special.

Moffat told Radio Times:

“Every year since I took over [Doctor Who] I’ve been trying to get the Zygons in and then I thought ‘Well, it’s the 50th…’

The Zygons are beautifully designed monsters, they are so wonderful… We barely changed the design at all because it was so good.”

He also added:

“Obviously the Daleks had to be there, the Daleks had to come to the party because they’re really scary and are part of the iconography of Doctor Who – possibly the central part – so we had to have them.

”And in a way it was fun to bring back Doctor Who’s biggest monster success ever, the Daleks, and then go to maybe the smallest monster success [the Zygons] – they were only in it once but everyone remembers them – great monsters, great outfits… and they have these nice whispery voices…”

A Theory on The Doctor’s Greatest Secret

As the 50th anniversary draws clower there have been many theories concerning the overall story. One of the biggest mysteries yet to be revealed is what exactly did John Hurt’s Doctor do that was so horrible that he lost his title of “The Doctor”. Well, lets look at a few hints from previous episodes and see what we can come up with.

In the episode The Beast Below, the 11th Doctor mentions that he would have to change his name after killing the star whale because he would no longer be a Doctor. So it’s probaby safe to assume that death was involved (genocide?). In the episode The Doctor’s Wife, the Doctor admits he was responsible for the destruction of the Time Lords. One possible theory is that The Doctor did in fact kill all of the Time Lords but at a specific point in time. The time was (maybe) after the end of the largest Time Lord victory during the war at The Gates of Elysium.

Here’s the theory: after the battle at The Gates of Elysium, Davros had fallen, the Daleks were driven off Gallifrey by the Time Lords, and they were all but victorious. However, this victory wasn’t enough for the now power hungry Time Lords. They wanted to erase every last Dalek out of existence. A new offensive was led by the Time Lords and a second Great Time War began. Knowing the Time Lords had to be stopped, the Doctor took it upon himself to end this Second Time War before it started. He tells the Time Lords that he is finished fighting and walks away from the war effort. He leaves the Time War and the Time Lords to start building “The Moment”

The Doctor returns some time later and uses “The Moment” to destroy all of the Time Lords (much like the Immortality Gate in ‘The End of Time’) and converts all of them into regeneration energy which is absorbed by The Doctor (John Hurt) giving him billions of regeneration opportunities. Then using the power of all the Time Lords, the Doctor “time locks” the events of the first Time War so that the war mongering will cease.

I believe that the crimes of John Hurt’s Doctor was the desctruction of a billion Time Lord lives. This does away with his regeneration limit and also explains why there aren’t any Time Lords left after the Time War except those left locked during war time. Its possible he put them in an infinite loop of fighting the same battles with the same outcomes, always ending on the day of their demise and beginning again on the day the Daleks first invaded. This is after all just a theory…

Day of the Doctor Will Change the Course of Doctor Who

Head writer Steven Moffat has made another bold pubic statement saying that the The Day of the Doctor will change the course of Doctor Who as we know it.

During an interview with SFX (#241, out today), Moffat says:

“We’ve got to set the Doctor off in a brand new direction. It’s chapter two of his life. Now something happens to him that changes the way he thinks and the way he will adventure from now on. You can celebrate an anniversary in many ways – I think the most productive one within the narrative is to say “This is where the story really starts. This is where he finds his mission, he finds his destiny.”

Moffat also added:

“We’re not fibbing – this one is going to change the course of the series. And it’s very rare in Doctor Who that the story happens to the Doctor. It happens to people around him, and he helps out – he’s the hero figure who rides in and saves everybody from the story of the week. He is not the story of the week. In this, he is the story of the week. This is the day of the Doctor. This is his most important day. His most important moment. This is the one he’ll remember, whereas I often think the Doctor wanders back to his TARDIS and forgets all about it.”

Moffat also discussed the dynamic between the three [known] Doctors featured in the 50th:

“I wrote it as the friction version. When you’re talking to yourself there are no limitations, there’s no holding back. You wouldn’t be kind or courteous. At the same time, because they are two loveable, madcap, caffeinated Doctors, they’re also quite fanboyish about each other. They think it’s quite cool. They’re not broody, upset Doctors – it’s more “There’s two of us! Brilliant!” But that’s mostly in the playing, because they were having such a good time together that they brought that out. They get giggly with each other. It is, by lovely accident, a tremendous double-act. They’re naturally funny together. Enough alike and enough dissimilar. Matt said it was like Laurel and Laurel, as if Hardy didn’t show up – except he does in the form of John Hurt!”

“The weird thing is there’s never that much contrast between Doctors. The truth is it’s not wildly different how they’re written. I’ve written quite a lot for both of them, and you just have the voice in your head, very clearly. Where they are similar is funny, because they’re practically in unison, and where they are different is David is a cheeky, sexy, genuinely cool Doctor, up against a Doctor who thinks he’s sexy and cool but is woefully wrong on that subject! And that’s just naturally funny.”

Moffat discusses Capaldi’s Outfit and Regeneration Limit

During an interview with Radio Times on October 13th, Steven Moffat stated that Peter Capaldi is in the process of searching for his 12th Doctor’s attire.

Moffat said: “I think actually right now – I think literally right now. [Peter] was texting me ‘I’m out with [the wardrobe stylist] at the moment, it’s going quite well’ and some descriptions of clothes I did not understand. If it’s not a suit…”

He also added: “He likes his clothes. he’s got very strong opinions about clothes, he’s very dashing.”

Moffat’s input on Capaldi’s attire will be minimal though: “I’ll just let them get on with it and it’ll be ‘yes’ or ‘no’ a the end. Matt [Smith] said ‘I should be a boffin, I think I need to go with the bow tie’ and I said ‘No, absolutely not, you’re not wearing a bow tie – that’s a cartoon idea of what Doctor Who is… Oh, you are going to wear a bow tie – you look incredible in it. And from that moment on he suddenly came to life, and he put the tweed jacket on and suddenly he’s leaping round the room with a biro pen and that was it – he was the Doctor.”

Moffat also decided to tease Whovians with a cryptic statement regarding the Doctor’s regeneration limit:

Moffat today confirmed of the Doctor, “He can only regenerate 12 times”, while simultaneously suggesting there has been a miscalculation of how many regenerations he has actually been through.

“I think you should go back to your DVDs and count correctly this time,” said Moffat, “there’s something you’ve all missed.”

The Origins of John Hurt’s Mysterious Doctor

Moffat has revealed some details about how John Hurt’s mysterious Doctor came about. Speaking with SFX, Moffat said:

“Why not a mayfly Doctor, who exists for one show only? I’d often thought about that. Would it be weird in the run of the series to have the 45^th Doctor turn up and be played by Johnny Depp or someone? Would that be a cool thing to do?

“There was also the idea that if you could bring one classic Doctor back, you’d actually, impossibly, want it to be William Hartnell. You wouldn’t want any of the others. You’d want him to come and say ‘What in the name of God have I turned into?’ That’s the confrontation that you most want to see, to celebrate 50 years.

“Going round and round in circles on it I just thought ‘What about a Doctor that he never talks about?’ And what if it is a Doctor who’s done something terrible, who’s much deadlier and more serious, who represents that thing that is the undertow in both David and Matt. You know there’s a terrible old man inside them. Well, here he is, facing the children he becomes, as it were.”

The Paternoster Gang will return in Series 8

According to DoctorWhoTV:

More or less confirmed by Moffat earlier in the year, Neve McIntosh has spoken briefly about the return of Madame Vastra and the Paternoster Gang in Peter Capaldi’s debut series next year.

McIntosh told the Daily Record: “It will be sad not to be working with Matt again but I’m really looking forward to Peter taking over and seeing what he does with it.

“We’ll be helping the Doctor more, but I can’t say anything else.”

McIntosh also says that she would like the show to be ‘edgier’: “The sexual themes in Doctor Who should be talked about more and embraced more. It could be edgier and more dangerous.”

On the endlessly discussed Paternoster spin-off, she said: “We can do so much in Victorian times, it’s got that steampunk edge to it. Think how freaky that era was with the Elephant Man and all that and just add us into the mix, with time travel and all sorts of weird, wonderful stuff.”

What about The Doctor’s Regeneration Limit?

Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor has been dropping hints that the Doctor regeneration limit will be addressed very soon and that Moffat has already worked out how it will be dealt with.

Davison was quoted saying: “I know people are worried about it, but I think there will be a way around that rule. I know that Steven has put in the groundwork already in an episode so that there can be more.”

Some rumours have circulated that it will be addressed in The Day of the Doctor. It would certainly be a great way to secure the future of the show as Moffat has told fans that he is planning to do, and what better time than during the 50th anniversary.

If John Hurt’s Doctor is going to count as a true incarnation of The Doctor, it’s also something that will need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Time Travel Who-Paper

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Former Doctor, Paul McGann Stirs Up More 50th Anniversary Rumors

It must be getting old really quick for Paul McGann to have to deny rumors about making an apperance in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, but it doesn’t help that the majority of these rumors come directly from his personal Twitter feed.

Last night, Whovian excitement was stirred up with a tweet from the McGann himself saying: “Spent forty minutes this pm having to imitate Matt Smith’s dramatic delivery in VO. You have been warned….”

However, he quickly followed up the tweet with an explanation: “I should explain. It was by way of an aural experiment to find out how similar we might sound. We didn’t. And he’s better looking too.”

McGann already denied involvement when asked directly: “No, I’m not in the 50th, though plenty of beautiful and talented people are.”

Guess we’ll have to wait 50 days until we know for sure…

Steven Moffat Wants Fifty More Years of Doctor WHO!

Head writer Steven Moffat explained why The Day of the Doctor will not just be a “parade of the greatest hits” and how he hopes that Doctor Who stays on the air for another fifty years.

In an extract from The Doctor: His Lives And Times [Via], Moffat says:

“You’re going to get every kind of retrospective in the world when it comes to the 50th and you’re not going to be short. To make this show just a walk-down, just a tribute to the past, a backward glance, would be like one of those end of year shows: ‘That was the year that was! Look back and feel slightly old and sad.’ Don’t do that! Of course it’s a celebration of the legend of Doctor Who, but more importantly it’s ensuring there’s going to be a 100th anniversary.

He adds: “It’s a hugely important story to the Doctor. That was my mission statement. Very, very rarely in Doctor Who does a story matter to him very much at all. Obviously he runs around, defeats mutants, meets a space badger, saves a civilisation, causes epiphanies to happen to everyone he meets, rushes back to the TARDIS and forgets everything about it. If you asked him he might have a vague memory of the badger, and that’s it.

“My intent was to move it forward, to have a show that’s equally about the next fifty years of Doctor Who. Attaching the word fifty to anything… I almost tried to rip the logo off saying ‘Why is that good?! That show you’re watching is really old!’ Why is that a good thing to say? It’s about proving we’ve got many, many more stories to tell, and in a way, being able to say the story really starts here. People ask me how am I going to please the regular audience and I say I’m actually on a recruitment drive to get the people who’ve never watched it before to watch Doctor Who. That’s what matters. There are some people out there who’ve never watched it before, God help them. You want them to think, ‘Oh I’ve been missing out, I’m going to join in now.’

“If you’re going to celebrate Doctor Who, you’re celebrating the Doctor – well, why not tell his story? What’s it like for him? What’s it like being him, what defines him, what defines what he is? How do you make that might moment in his life? What would be the Doctor’s most important day, what would be the show that would change him as a person for ever, alter the course of his life?

“That’s what’s big enough to do for the 50th, rather than just a parade of the greatest hits. Never mind that space badger one; this is the adventure that he really remembers, and thinks, ‘That was the day everything changed.’”