A Grandfather Paradox?

[J.R. Southall]

While it certainly wasn't part of the lore up until the x-ray in Spearhead From Space, there's actually not a lot of on-screen evidence that the Doctor didn't have two hearts all along. Ian checks his heartbeat in The Edge of Destruction, and the Doctor says he was hit 'under the heart' in The Sensorites, but that's about it as far as I recall. Neither of those is terribly conclusive. In The Edge of Destruction the Doctor is unconscious and Ian is groggy (and doesn't make the most in-depth examination) so it is quite possible that either only one heart was going at the time, or else Ian simply didn't register anything beyond some form of heartbeat. As for the 'under the heart' business so often held up as clinching proof he only had one, how often do we say things like 'hit in the leg'...?

Ah yes, but what you're doing there is applying additional continuity retroactively to the series' past. Until it's stated that he has two hearts, everybody working on the series would have assumed he had one. Until it's stated that he is a Time Lord, everybody working on the series simply thinks of him as 'alien' or 'other'. Until Gallifrey is named, it has no name.

It's not like all these things are in a mission document written in 1963 and waiting to be revealed in the series' indeterminate future. The writers make it up as they go along, adding to the series' lore - but it's not fair to apply those additions to the series to stories that were created before they were added.

That's part of the fun of a series as long and as winding as Doctor Who, and part of the charm of revisiting its distant past ... enjoying stories that were made before the Doctor had two hearts, before he was a Time Lord (from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous...), before he had the ability to regenerate ... and when he still had a granddaughter.

[Jason Thompson]

It's not like all these things are in a mission document written in 1963 and waiting to be revealed in the series' indeterminate future. The writers make it up as they go along, adding to the series' lore - but it's not fair to apply those additions to the series to stories that were created before they were added.

Yes, I agree entirely. In half a century of the show (and I'll just repeat that because it really is quite amazing when you think about it: half a century!) there are bound to be alterations, changes to the character, changes to the backstory and so on. My point was more along the lines that not all these alterations are necessarily the contradictions of what has gone before that they are often held to be. UNIT dating is a contradiction: Sarah can't be from 1980 in Pyramids of Mars and working with the Brigadier in UNIT, since he retired prior to 1977 to teach in a school, for example (and yes, I know that was supposed to be Ian not the Brig originally, but I'm going purely by what is on the screen). But with the two hearts business: yes, everyone would have assumed he had one, but there is no explicit statement (visual or verbal) of that before we see the x-ray showing he has two in 1970, therefore this revelation is no contradiction. Similarly, in all the series after 1964 there is nothing that explicitly contradicts the notion that the Doctor had a biological family, one of whom he travelled with for a time. Indeed, in the new series the fact he has been a parent has been mentioned a few times.

[J.R. Southall]

Absolutely.

Here's a question, though (not too off-topic; and not just for you, Jason, but for everyone): at what point did the Doctor 'become' an alien?

Bear in mind that in An Unearthly Child, the quote "another world" is probably intended to be read in the same way we might say "the past is another country" (ie. the meaning is implicitly "from the future", rather than explicitly as with the original version of the line), and the Doctor's talk of "my people" is probably also intended to be taken in the same way as we might say "my kind" when visiting say China or India, and are talking about Caucasians ("my people", therefore, = "people from the future").

So at what point does the Doctor explicitly become a man from outer space?

[Si Hunt]

Hang about though, do we really want to discuss the series in non-fictional terms? What you're asking by "when did he become an alien" is when did the production team decide to do this, when did a writer invent that, etc. All laudable questions but who cares? Better to treat Doctor Who as "real" and the various fictional inventions as revealing facts that, yes, must have been true all along. Yes, someone invented the name Gallifrey, but fictionally the series must always have had a name. I think that's much more interesting.

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

Interesting - I've heard it claimed before (I think even by either Barry or Terry on one of the DVD extras) that when the show started the Doctor wasn't obviously an alien. But for me, I think the first episode is pretty clear (in as far as anything is clear after that first episode) - he talks of being "cut off from our own planet" and Susan refers to herself as being "from another world". So I don't think there's much ambiguity is there?

[Jason Thompson]

So at what point does the Doctor explicitly become a man from outer space?

Um, he says:

"Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? have you? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day. one day." (emphasis mine).

It retained the gist of the 'we are not of this race, we are not of this Earth' original line. The use of the word 'planet' explicity separates them from Earth, since they are on Earth at the time they refer to being cut off from their own planet.

The Doctor was always an alien, right from day 1.

[J.R. Southall]

Oops! My bad - forgot that line. (Although I suppose it could be read as meaning "cut off from our own [version of this] planet"...) However, there's still a huge amount of ambiguity on the matter (as Andrew points out; I think it being more likely to be T. Dicks who said that) until later in the first Doctor's tenure. Interestingly, the "genesis" documents (on the BBC's website) by Newman and Wilson and others describe him only as "an old man" (never an alien; and even name him explicitly as "Dr. Who" - a name given to him by the companions), and even though there is this mention in Episode One of being from "another planet", nothing more is made of that for quite some time. I'm still curious as to at what point it became absolutely explicit that the Doctor is an alien...?

Incidentally, all this talk of 'reverse continuity' is getting my writing buds going. There might be a Starburst column on the subject...

[J.R. Southall]

Hang about though, do we really want to discuss the series in non-fictional terms? What you're asking by "when did he become an alien" is when did the production team decide to do this, when did a writer invent that, etc. All laudable questions but who cares? Better to treat Doctor Who as "real" and the various fictional inventions as revealing facts that, yes, must have been true all along. Yes, someone invented the name Gallifrey, but fictionally the series must always have had a name. I think that's much more interesting.

Si.

Ah, you see, that's where we differ. I find the subject of the fiction of Doctor Who a little dull (after all, it's right up there on the screen; why talk about it rather than just watch it?), and it's the behind-the-scenes stuff (the thinking behind the decisions, the compromises, the choices) that I find fascinating!

(And Si, I'm about to send you a PM on Facebook about something Top Secret (TM), so keep your eyes peeled for it!)

[Jason Thompson]

I'm still curious as to at what point it became absolutely explicit that the Doctor is an alien...?

I think that depends how you define 'absolutely explicit'. Clearly from the dialogue in the pilot episode and An Unearthly Child the intention is to indicate he is not human, even without saying 'by the way I am an alien'. To me, the reference to being cut off from his 'own planet' is explicit. He refers to going back to 'own planet' in The Massacre, but the first time I can recall where he explcitly states he is an alien is in The Evil of the Daleks when pondering what he might do if the Daleks set them free to Victoria ('We still couldn't go back to Earth. ...I might even try to take you all back to my own planet. ... I live a long, long way away from Earth') and explaining to Jamie why the Dalek Factor machine didn't work on him ('I don't come from Earth, Jamie!'). Of course by that point he's already regenerated, so it's pretty clear he's not a human anyway....

[Andrew Curnow]

I don't think personally there's any doubt about his alien credentials right from the start, but what about the Doctor's great age? I'm pretty sure Sydney Newman's original outlines refer to him being several hundred years old, but the earliest example I can think of off the top of my head is at the very start of Tomb - does Hartnell at any point mention his age?

[J.R. Southall]

You guys are completely right, you know. It's just that all that talk of retroactive continuity and An Unearthly Child set my mind a-wandering ... I shall know better in future!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Susan describes her home planet in some early story as well, maybe to Ping Cho in Marco Polo, and talks about silver plants and orange skies and things. You know, just like Earth has

[Jason Thompson]

the earliest example I can think of off the top of my head is at the very start of Tomb - does Hartnell at any point mention his age?

That is the first time any figure is given for his age. The first Doctor does refer to a number of age-releated ailments such as arthritis (notably when talking to kublai Khan and after being 'unfrozen' in The Space Museum) but never actually says how old he is.

[Jason Thompson]

Susan describes her home planet in some early story as well, maybe to Ping Cho in Marco Polo, and talks about silver plants and orange skies and things. You know, just like Earth has

Excellent point. She does indeed describe her home as being 'as far away as a night star' (though Ping Cho can't have any concept of just how far that is), and talks about the orange sky and the silver leaves in The Sensorites.

[MacNimon]

Quite simply, I feel that details such as this from such an early stage in the series were meant to be taken as a fact. So the fact that the Doctor was later shown to be a Timelord rather than a human needn't change anything in their relationship. Rather than it being a term of endearment, given that Time Lord biology is totally different to human, it all comes down to something being lost in translation. Their exact relationship, in Gallifreyan, has no exact equivalent word in English and 'Grandfather' is the closest word that translates.

There's also the fact that the 10th Doctor states at one point on screen that he 'had a family once' which backs up the fact that they're related in some way. IMO.

[SiHart]

Perhaps Susan isn't a Time Lord, but merely a Gallifreyan- hence she could be left on Earth and live a life with a human without too much bother.

[Andrew Curnow]

Perhaps she's the result of a timelord-human metacrisis, and rather than being the original Susan Foreman she's a human version spawned from her own severed hand, without the ability to regenerate and therefore totally suited to being dumped on Earth with a human to live out the rest of their life.

Na, that's just silly...

[Alex Me]

Yes she is!