Rate and Discuss: The Name of The Doctor

[Rob McCow]

WHO?!

[shada pavlova]

It's just occurred to me that this is not the first time Richard E Grant has starred alongside a character whose name is shrouded in mystery and who was once played by Paul McGann.

Make of that what you will.

[Si Hunt]

THAT'S IT?!?! HE'S CALLED FRANK?!?!?!

Not really.

Si.

[shada pavlova]

Personally, I wouldn't put even that past the Moff.

[Anthony Williams]

It's Jeff, Lord of All Pastry. It's the truth.

[shada pavlova]

Moffatt, all is forgiven. Even the smugness.

[Si Hunt]

That was certainly exciting all the way through, and that's as much as you can ask for. Oh, and a cameo from all the other Doctors! *scream*

There was lots to love here. My one qualm was that there got to a point, about five minutes before Clara jumped into the Doctors big sparkly thing, where you could join up the dots and know exactly how the episode was going to progress. Unfortunately, the ending then seemed predictable, when perhaps this would have been the point to have something completely different happen.

Also I have a nagging doubt.

And that's that it was clearly presented to us that John Hurt is the next Doctor, when, and I'm not sure but just a guess, I don't think he probably will be, so this is going to be another Scream of the Shalka style lie. But that's just a hunch.

Anyway, I really can't complain too much, not when I was glued to my seat in absolute silence throughout the whole episode. There are worse things to happen during an episode of Doctor Who!

And I think if we hadn't seen John Hurt on the set of the Special, it would have been an ending twice as magnificent. So that's my fault- avoid spoilers!

Si.

[shada pavlova]

That was certainly exciting all the way through, and that's as much as you can ask for. Oh, and a cameo from all the other Doctors! *scream*

Not quite, I didn't notice Paul McGann anywhere.

[J.R. Southall]

Did anyone see David Tennant, I don't remember seeing him myself?

[shada pavlova]

Or Peter Cushing.

[Si Hunt]

Where was Paul Monk??

Si.

[J.R. Southall]

I'm serious - if they left Tennant out because we're seeing him in the next one, what does that say about Paul McGann...?

[Si Hunt]

So the Silence didn't have anything to do with Trenzalore then? What happened to "Silence will fall when the question is answered"?!

Si.

[shada pavlova]

Wasn't this episode supposed to be part of a potential future that the Silence were trying to prevent? Perhaps the John Hurt Doctor is from an alternative timeline where silence didn't fall (i.e. he answered the question) and the Silence won after all?

[Dino]

Well, I haven't voted yet. But the bit with "Introducing John Hurt" made me so hard! Really took me out of the moment.
As for the story, well who couldn't love seeing all the past Doctors?
That said, something about it didn't quite work for me. It's like the other scriptwriters were having fun, and then the showrunner comes back to slow stuff down!
But yeah, I really thought it wasn't necessary to have a caption for John Hurt.
The dialogue made it clear this was a Doctor.

[SiHart]

I loved the imagery, especially the giant TARDIS tomb overshadowing the landscaping. Looked gorgeous, all distintegrating and decomposing. Lovely!

It was a little love letter to the past of the show- just what people have been wanting since the start of the year and gets it all pout of the way before the anniversary story. I'm not sure all the focus on the Doctor is necessarily a good thing, but this is an anniversary year, so maybe we can get away with it. The glimpses of the old Doctors werre for the most part done well, though the Troughton stuff wasn't as well done as the rest were. The Pertwee bits were the best! Lovely!

So, no answers to the bigger questions from the last three years, but I thought that might be a bit too much to wish for. The Clara explanation was good though. I liked her being heroic and then the rescue from the Doctor was lovely.

Is this the end of the River Song saga then? I hope so. It would be a good end.

And John Hurt... Blimey! Nice reveal and nice backstory. Could he be related to the Valeyard? Did he fight the Time War and make the difficult decisions? is this what Nine's guilt is all about?

Roll on November 23rd!

[Andrew Curnow]

Did he fight the Time War and make the difficult decisions? is this what Nine's guilt is all about?

I wondered that myself, given that at one point they tried to get Eccleston in the special - maybe it's now become a less specific sense of guilt, as played by John Hurt.

An odd episode, another one that's a little hard to judge without having the conclusion yet - but certainly entertaining enough, and full of twists & turns without actually (surprise, surprise) giving us the Doctor's name.

I guess, as a personal thing, I don't really like River Song so all that faffing about didn't do much for me; and, although maybe it's bizarre to say it of a programme called Doctor Who, I much prefer the show when it's not actually about the Doctor!! Taking Colin Baker's old quote about him being like the Lone Ranger, the show in recent years has been much more interested in his and Tonto's home life, and why he has a mask, and why he calls his horse Silver, and what 'kamosabi' means; rather than about saving the railroad, and beating off those bandits, and catching the rustlers!!

But-- but, hard not to be ridiculously delighted at some coloured-in, dodgily-'photoshopped' footage of Doctors & days gone by, being shown at prime-time on a Saturday evening. A lovely little dedication to the show's past (although I'd have liked to see Colin's face, I don't think we did did we?).

[Alex]

This one's really difficult for me to rate, and I have to admit to being a tad angry about it. Because last week I was reading another forum (I know, I know, a mistake in itself) where people were discussing Nightmare In Silver when someone posted a spoiler about John Hurt, and exactly who he was.

So as much as I enjoyed the episode, and especially the inclusion of the other Doctors (I loved Clara's interaction with Mr Hartnell especially) as soon as I heard John Hurt's voice I knew who he was, and the big reveal was completely and utterly spoilt. I genuinely am really really pissed off about this as it spoilt what would have been a huge reveal, and I don't intend to revisit that specific thread ever again now.

My only other issue was that the finale didn't seem particularly climatic, at least not until about half way through, and once again the Great Intelligence was barely in it. I guess we've been spoilt with some really impressive 'Big Bads' over the years, but due to Richard E Grant only briefly popping up once before this season (discounting the Christmas special) it felt a bit disappointing, especially given, as mentioned above, how clear the solution to the Doctor's woes would be.

Despite all this I did love it a lot, I just really wish the reveal hadn't been ruined for me. 8/10 then, but I have a feeling it would have been even higher...

Though the Troughton stuff wasn't as well done as the rest were.

I was watching with a friend and we both noticed that, it looked really poor compared to the rest. I'm not sure why either, the Hartnell scenes were amazingly well done but Pat's scenes looked like they were knocked up using an Amiga 500.

Concerning Clara's appearance with the first Doctor, does that mean she was, in one of her incarnations, a time lord as well then?

[Simon R]

Was Pat photoshopped into Santa Monica?

[Dave Tudor]

I watched most of it with people talking throughout - eek! - so I didn't take all of it in, and will have to watch it again. But I loved what I saw, and it was worth it just to see Clara talking to Hartnell - brilliant!

[Andrew Curnow]

What happened to "Silence will fall when the question is answered"?!

Wasn't that why we had those scenes with Vastra & Strax, where the stars were going out? Back in season 5, didn't they keep saying "when the Pandorica opens [ie, when the Doctor gets locked away 'forever'] Silence will fall" - back then, it seemed to be that if the Doctor wasn't around, the TARDIS would explode and the universe would die, which was represented by the stars going out. I think.

I'm just going through the tangled jumble, and am I right in thinking that really the only properly major thing we don't know are, why the TARDIS blew up in season 5, and (OK, so it's two major things) whose voice in the TARDIS said "Silence will fall" back then. I don't think we're ever going to find out why Madame Kovarian thought her uber-complex plan to kill the Doctor was a good idea, I think we'll just have to take that one on faith.

Anyway... if I understood last night's episode right, are we now supposed to imagine Clara popping up in every previous story? Not necessarily centre-stage, there could be loads of times where she's just wrestling REG to the ground just out of shot, but even so. Sounds like a golden age for anybody who's good with photoshop!!!



P.S. As well as all the old Doc's & old clips, how thrilling to hear REG say "Valeyard"!!

[Simon R]

Even more thrilling to see Valeyard and 23rd November trending pon the Twitter.

[Paul Clement]

So the Silence didn't have anything to do with Trenzalore then? What happened to "Silence will fall when the question is answered"?!

Si.

It could have ended up being a rather unusual play on words. Nobody could hear River answer the question, so technically the answer, for everyone there, was answered in silence.

[Perry Vale]

Say what you like about Moffat as a showrunner, but he's just gone and delivered the show's greatest cliffhanger in it's 49.5 year history, of course it deserved a caption!

Surprise after surprise after surprise for me (before the big one), I've no hesitation in giving this an unreserved game-winning 10/10.

I'm just going through the tangled jumble, and am I right in thinking that really the only properly major thing we don't know are, why the TARDIS blew up in season 5, and (OK, so it's two major things) whose voice in the TARDIS said "Silence will fall" back then. I don't think we're ever going to find out why Madame Kovarian thought her uber-complex plan to kill the Doctor was a good idea, I think we'll just have to take that one on faith.

I've never quite understood fandom's obsession (for want of a better word) with these points, for me there was something far more important that went unanswered. Just who was the woman in the shop who gave Clara the phone number for the Tardis in The Bells Of St. John. None of this could have happened otherwise. If it will be answered at some point, I have a couple of guesses, and just hope that it won't turn out to be River Song.

For what it's worth, I'd say we could assume the voice in the Tardis is either TGI or The Silence.

[Andrew Curnow]

Granted, 'woman in the shop' needs addressing too (although it could just be another Clara?) but I like to see these things dealt with in some sort of order - that's only a very new mystery!!

You may be right, but personally I don't think it's over-picky to expect an explanation for something that was/is as significant plotwise as the TARDIS blowing up. In a sense, the whole of season 5 hangs on that single event, so to (still) not give us an explanation is bizarre. It would be akin to getting to the end of Murder on the Orient Express and finding out who did it... but then finishing the story there, with no explanation at all of why!!