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Post by icecreamdf on Jul 18, 2016 23:53:51 GMT
I've never understood why people insist that the Doctor has to be played by a Brit. It isn't as if the character is British anyway. There are plenty of actors who can play the role well who aren't British. There's an element of tradition to it, I suspect. Remember that for over thirty years, the show was a British institution and is a fairly prominent cornerstone of British popular culture, so much so that the show was lauded in the Wilderness Years for that very same quintessential quality. It's so prevalent that it has become embedded as a recurring character trait of the Doctor -- the Victorian gentleman explorer. Casting an American or Chinese actor into the role, for example, can be interpreted in much the same way as dismissing the Doctor as a moral, almost at times idealistic character. Mind you, the whole concept of the show as a British institution has been eroded recently with analyses and judgements that claim the show has been Americanised. Your own mileage may vary. I feel like the Doctor should be a character that anyone can identify with though. For the same reason I don't think he should always be a white man, I don't think he should always be a Brit. I kind of get the impression that the Doctor doesn't really understand why the world is divided into different nations. If he isn't British, there would be a few jokes about the new accent, and nothing else would change. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2016 2:09:14 GMT
There's an element of tradition to it, I suspect. Remember that for over thirty years, the show was a British institution and is a fairly prominent cornerstone of British popular culture, so much so that the show was lauded in the Wilderness Years for that very same quintessential quality. It's so prevalent that it has become embedded as a recurring character trait of the Doctor -- the Victorian gentleman explorer. Casting an American or Chinese actor into the role, for example, can be interpreted in much the same way as dismissing the Doctor as a moral, almost at times idealistic character. Mind you, the whole concept of the show as a British institution has been eroded recently with analyses and judgements that claim the show has been Americanised. Your own mileage may vary. I feel like the Doctor should be a character that anyone can identify with though. For the same reason I don't think he should always be a white man, I don't think he should always be a Brit. I kind of get the impression that the Doctor doesn't really understand why the world is divided into different nations. If he isn't British, there would be a few jokes about the new accent, and nothing else would change. I think there would be an initial wave of discomfort, but if the actor performs well then people will come to accept the change as they do with all Doctor Who. |
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Post by constonks on Jul 19, 2016 3:48:55 GMT
I think the Doc should always be a Brit but it's not like I'd abandon the show if he (or she) wasn't.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2016 8:21:04 GMT
I've never understood why people insist that the Doctor has to be played by a Brit. It isn't as if the character is British anyway. There are plenty of actors who can play the role well who aren't British. The doctors a British timelord, British on his mothers side. |
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Post by mrperson on Jul 19, 2016 14:50:44 GMT
But nobody was talking about cancellation. They were recasting. They could simply have replaced Hartnell with Troughton and just said it was exactly the same character. It's common enough for a television or film series to do this. It was only at the script editor's suggestion that they introduced regeneration to the story. The point is your argument is all about A. Inconsistencies. B. Something happening because the writer thinks it's cool. C. Real world instead of in-universe reasons When all of these major changes that took places over years within the Who universe have happened because of real world issues, or because a writer wants it to happen, and they can cause inconsistencies. Romana's regenerations are massive inconsistencies when stacked up against the regeneration limit. As are the visions shown in Brain. If you're trying to argue that the Time Ring is part of an in universe reason then so is gender change in Time Lords. If the fact that there are others forms of time travel technology shouldn't be mentioned until there's an in story reason, why should it be any different for regeneration between genders? If Time Lords already know they can regenerate between genders why would they need to mention it to each other unless it's actually happening or has happened? We saw four different incarnations of The Doctor before it was mentioned that there was a regeneration limit. Given that we actually witnessed three regenerations then surely one of The Doctors could have mentioned it? Just because they didn't it doesn't mean that the regeneration limit can't exist. In exactly the same way just because no Time Lord mentioned it before Matt Smith it doesn't mean that gender change isn't possible. We know gender change is a regeneration fact now, just as race change is a regeneration fact. The option is there for any other writer to use it if they want to. I don't think it'll be done for a long time because it would all feel rushed on top of it happening with Missy, certainly any change of Doctor is not going to be decided by a showrunner who is leaving. If Capaldi does regenerate when Moffat leaves it'll have been Chibnall who picks the replacement rather than Moffat. Well, I can't really respond without saying the same set of things all over again. I'm not claiming that my view is objectively correct; I just feel that it's a rather big deal if a society that has seemed to resemble Earth's in terms of the interaction of the sexes - the Doctor was married, had grandchildren, etc, implying similar reproductive systems - is suddenly said to actually be subject to random sex-change regeneration. (I mean..what do you do if you are only attracted to one sex and suddenly your spouse turns into the other?). It's the kind of big thing that if you don't mention it for 50 years, you should probably just leave it alone. It'd be like JJ Abrams having Spock be a female in the next movie, and then justify it by having him say a few lines about how actually, Vulcans morph from one gender to another and back at some point in their life. On you're view, it wouldn't be inconsistent because nobody said that this is impossible in the lat fifty years of the franchise. It would definitely be inconsistent on my view (as well as bafflingly pointless) because that seems to me like one of those things that you would really have thought to mention if you'd spent so many years of the Star Trek franchise exploring what a Vulcan is. That seems to be the irreconcilable difference between our views on this... |
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Post by constonks on Jul 21, 2016 1:05:27 GMT
I'm not sure what is more inherently believable about William Hartnell and David Tennant being the same character than about, say, Peter Capaldi and Celia Imrie.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2016 1:34:22 GMT
Well, I can't really respond without saying the same set of things all over again. I'm not claiming that my view is objectively correct; I just feel that it's a rather big deal if a society that has seemed to resemble Earth's in terms of the interaction of the sexes - the Doctor was married, had grandchildren, etc, implying similar reproductive systems - is suddenly said to actually be subject to random sex-change regeneration. (I mean..what do you do if you are only attracted to one sex and suddenly your spouse turns into the other?). It's the kind of big thing that if you don't mention it for 50 years, you should probably just leave it alone. It'd be like JJ Abrams having Spock be a female in the next movie, and then justify it by having him say a few lines about how actually, Vulcans morph from one gender to another and back at some point in their life. On you're view, it wouldn't be inconsistent because nobody said that this is impossible in the lat fifty years of the franchise. It would definitely be inconsistent on my view (as well as bafflingly pointless) because that seems to me like one of those things that you would really have thought to mention if you'd spent so many years of the Star Trek franchise exploring what a Vulcan is. That seems to be the irreconcilable difference between our views on this... That's the trouble with any long running series, there comes a point in the show's history where you simply cannot retcon something into existence without there being some kind of kickback. Introducing something new like the Last Great Time War made sense because there hadn't always been such a conflict since the beginning of Who's history. RTD didn't say that the First Doctor had always been running from this thing, it was instead an evolutionary step that the show took in order to remain relevant and keep its continuing history interesting without doubling back and rewriting what had already happened. The same was true of the Watcher, the Doctor says in Logopolis that nothing like that had ever happened before. It was building upon the pre-existing idea rather than ripping it up from the roots. It's why theories like Marc Platt's Ancient Gallifrey hypothesis, Paul Cornell's Season 6b theory and Steven Moffat's War Doctor insert have met with mixed responses throughout fandom. There are some things people believe are acceptable revelations about previously unseen events and there are others which seem to leak inconsistencies like a winnow. Basically, the longer a series runs the greater length, width and breadth of history you have to contend with and what may have been easy to accomplish fifty years ago is now painfully difficult to do so now without acknowledging that something has changed. We know that later Time Lords in the War were able to regenerate into different species due to modifications that had been made to their regenerative cycle by that time, so why not say it's something similar? An alteration that was instigated in the Last Great Time War for soldiers fighting in the conflict? It hasn't always been this way, but now it is. I'm not sure what is more inherently believable about William Hartnell and David Tennant being the same character than about, say, Peter Capaldi and Celia Imrie. Acting, mainly. Little quirks that bleed through from incarnation to incarnation occasionally like Sixy clutching his lapels or Ten panicking and his voice rising like Five's sometimes did. If our new leading lady has at least a basic working knowledge of her predecessors, she should be more than fine. |
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Post by constonks on Jul 21, 2016 1:45:01 GMT
I'm not sure what is more inherently believable about William Hartnell and David Tennant being the same character than about, say, Peter Capaldi and Celia Imrie. Acting, mainly. Little quirks that bleed through from incarnation to incarnation occassionally like Sixy clutching his lapels or Ten panicking and his voice rising like Five's sometimes did. What I mean is, if an actress embodied those exact same things - adopted those quirks and foibles - why wouldn't she be the Doctor just the same as everyone else? If Peter Capaldi had been Petra, and had been a 55-year-old Scottish actress who acted 100% the same as Peter Capaldi except was a woman, would she have been a worse Doctor? Or even necessarily a different one? (ignoring of course that there would be gender jokes with Moffat I am sure he would not be able to resist) |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2016 2:34:36 GMT
Acting, mainly. Little quirks that bleed through from incarnation to incarnation occassionally like Sixy clutching his lapels or Ten panicking and his voice rising like Five's sometimes did. What I mean is, if an actress embodied those exact same things - adopted those quirks and foibles - why wouldn't she be the Doctor just the same as everyone else? If Peter Capaldi had been Petra, and had been a 55-year-old Scottish actress who acted 100% the same as Peter Capaldi except was a woman, would she have been a worse Doctor? Or even necessarily a different one? (ignoring of course that there would be gender jokes with Moffat I am sure he would not be able to resist) Oh, absolutely not. There are some really nice suggestions floating out there like Helen Mirren, who I would be very interested in seeing play the part, but I don't think that the actress is really the issue with most. It's a question of the writers and in particular, the Moffat gender jokes that people feel would belittle or otherwise sabotage the character. You could have had the wonderfully darling Audrey Hepburn playing a Doctor in the 1960s, but if the writers stopped every two minutes to go -- "Oh, look! A woman!" -- then her interpretation would have sunk after the first two episodes. I think that is the greatest fear people have at the moment, that we will get a brilliant actress to play a female Doctor and she will be driven into the ground because the writers (and therefore the audience) cannot help but judge her on the basis of her gender rather than the marvellous job she may be trying to do in the role. It's one of those seemingly no-win scenarios where you have to simultaneously draw attention to the gender change (because people will want to know why this hasn't happened before) and ignore it wholeheartedly (so the character can stand up on her own merits). I'm not against the idea in theory, but if they do it in practice then they will have to be very careful to keep her credible and that can run into the Mary Sue issue -- a female character whose "strength" derives from the fact that in the eyes of the show can never make a mistake and is therefore unrelatable, even self-contradictory. Her gender shouldn't be an issue, but because the show has been running for fifty years, it sadly very much is, because there are so many ways it can go horribly wrong if they're not careful. If they hit the nail on the head and treat her not as a "strong" female character but instead a complex one, a genuine and real one, then I have no real problem with the idea. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2016 10:45:16 GMT
It's why theories like Marc Platt's Ancient Gallifrey hypothesis, Paul Cornell's Season 6b theory and Steven Moffat's War Doctor insert have met with mixed responses throughout fandom. There are some things people believe are acceptable revelations about previously unseen events and there are others which seem to leak inconsistencies like a winnow. Basically, the longer a series runs the greater length, width and breadth of history you have to contend with and what may have been easy to accomplish fifty years ago is now painfully difficult to do so now without acknowledging that something has changed. We know that later Time Lords in the War were able to regenerate into different species due to modifications that had been made to their regenerative cycle by that time, so why not say it's something similar? An alteration that was instigated in the Last Great Time War for soldiers fighting in the conflict? It hasn't always been this way, but now it is. Aaaand headcannoned. Thanks! No worries. Happy to help.  |
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Post by icecreamdf on Jul 21, 2016 16:41:48 GMT
Aaaand headcannoned. Thanks! No worries. Happy to help. That doesn't make sense though. BF has shown us Time Lords changing gender before the Time War. |
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Post by paulmorris7777 on Jul 21, 2016 18:40:35 GMT
No worries. Happy to help. That doesn't make sense though. BF has shown us Time Lords changing gender before the Time War. Remember, it's not just a war, it's a TIME war. So time could have been affected. |
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Post by barnabaslives on Jul 21, 2016 22:29:17 GMT
Indeed, Romana's regeneration established that it was possible to regenerate into a blue alien, so why would changing gender be any more unlikely. Romana's regeneration strikes me as atypical in a number of ways. As noted by mrperson, it was a parody of the 3rd Doctor's regeneration into the 4th and one I find most delightful, but as far as continuity I'm still trying to figure out what sort of variation on a Blinovitch Limitation Effect Limiter allows one to try out and pick their next regeneration like trying on clothes, and presumably without each trial not counting against one's quota of regenerations. (Imagine how hopeless my headcanon would be on this without The Trouble with Drax, which is of course very recent assistance and thank you, Mr. Dorney). So far it amuses me to imagine that whatever apparatus could mend the continuity gap here was procured from a Sontaran by Romana after he grudgingly gave up on it having militaristic value, but she is a very clever girl who could probably build such a thing from scratch, so whatever works eh? It's one of those seemingly no-win scenarios where you have to simultaneously draw attention to the gender change (because people will want to know why this hasn't happened before) and ignore it wholeheartedly (so the character can stand up on her own merits). I very much agree, it seems as if you really can't not make too big a deal of it and the same with some other possible changes. Also, I think they've probably run head-on into just this problem already with The Master. As a high-profile character, they can't quite not address whether she should get a female persona with a female body, but couldn't figure out how to go about it without disaster ensuing, even while the same thing is succeeding with low-profile characters (i.e., Big Finish) because we don't have occasion to revisit them so we never have to address any issues (in fact I think the regeneration in The Black Hole comes with zero regeneration fanfare vs. the traditional bumpy starts for Doctors). Anyway, I don't mind the show taking on issues, but I hate to see the show tripping over them. Her gender shouldn't be an issue, but because the show has been running for fifty years, it sadly very much is, because there are so many ways it can go horribly wrong if they're not careful. Agreed again. I wouldn't mind the basic idea whatsoever, but it's a challenge I really wouldn't wish on the showmakers, especially with how many other irons they have had on the fire already trying to make a really good show - and the later in the game, the harder I think it does get to get away with certain things. A Doctor of different gender or ethnicity has become one of a number of things I'd like to see, but still don't think I want to see them try, or see them feel obligated to try. I console myself considerably with the notion that the right holders might never allow the risk to be taken - in fact, the definition of the Doctor-Companion relationship as Man-Earthgirl may have never been quite so rigid as it seems to me now - although I wish I felt a little more certain after Missy. If they hit the nail on the head and treat her not as a "strong" female character but instead a complex one, a genuine and real one, then I have no real problem with the idea. I guess I would hope we'd have a character who is all those things and strong. I can't help thinking of The Doctor as a dramatically strong character in any incarnation, The Doctor usually if not always seems the most something in the room at any given time - the calmest, the smartest, the bravest, the most impetuous, the silliest... Are we still talking about this? Yes, we're still chipping away at the azbantium, lol. (I blame Stan Lee, since curiously enough, the very same thing works with adamantium, but then again I seem to blame all kinds of things on poor Stan so pay no heed whatsoever)...  |
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Post by Whovitt on Jul 21, 2016 22:52:59 GMT
Hi guys! I just thought I should point out that not all of us have listened to The Trouble with Drax (and, to what seems a lesser extent, The Black Hole). Though I know there is a lot of contention at this point on the forum about what should and shouldn't be classified as a spoiler, I think, with The Trouble with Drax still being VERY new, all references to any part of the story (in this case, the gender change regeneration) should have been in spoiler tags. I, myself, have not yet listened to it, and thus don't know what significance this has on the story, but it's still a spoiler and I wasn't expecting to find any in this particular thread. I'm not saying anyone should go back and change their posts, but just a heads up that not everyone is completely up to date on all releases  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2016 1:27:40 GMT
That doesn't make sense though. BF has shown us Time Lords changing gender before the Time War. Remember, it's not just a war, it's a TIME war. So time could have been affected. Exactly right, it's meeting the effect prior to the cause. The Reaping, The Crystal Bucephalus and Blood of the Daleks all would not have occurred without what's implied to be a little bleed over from the Time War and Alien Bodies was all about the Eighth Doctor stumbling upon a huge cosmic event that hadn't occurred yet for him. One of the auctioneers in that novel states quite sharply that he's not supposed to be there yet. It's so prevalent, I'm not even wholly convinced myself that the reverse isn't true as well and that The Day of the Doctor is the latest iteration of the end of the War when all those quantum probabilities collapse. I think that something very big and very unprecedented happened when the Doctor stepped into his timestream in The Name of the Doctor, his presence and the presence of his companion may have allowed him to jump a time track into a period of his own history and tamper with it in some fashion. Maybe while he was in there he was the catalyst for an entirely new incarnation? A butterfly effect caused by a temporal anomaly (in this case, the Eleventh Doctor) injected into biodata (the Doctor's timestream), we've seen how this sort of thing can happen in stories like Interference with the Faction Paradox virus and what was attempted in the first Dark Eyes. The War Doctor is the man from the Mearns poem Antigonish. Yesterday upon the stair, we met a man who wasn't there. At least, not originally. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2016 5:20:37 GMT
I've never understood why people insist that the Doctor has to be played by a Brit. It isn't as if the character is British anyway. There are plenty of actors who can play the role well who aren't British. I agree 100% for myself but looking at a wider fanbase and playing devil's advocate at least some of the appeal of the show, especially from abroad is in the "Britishness" of the show. It's part of novelty to some in the same way that Bond being a American and say being CIA wouldn't appeal to a lot of fans. We can say British but we've not had Welsh or Northern Irish Doctors have we? 3 Scots, 9 Englishmen. There should be protests in Cardiff and Belfast over the lack of diversity even within the UK! Actually...we haven't had Welsh or Irish companions on TV in the whole 53 years. I think we may be onto a conspiracy here! |
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Post by whiskeybrewer on Jul 22, 2016 12:04:39 GMT
Remember, it's not just a war, it's a TIME war. So time could have been affected. Exactly right, it's meeting the effect prior to the cause. The Reaping, The Crystal Bucephalus and Blood of the Daleks all would not have occurred without what's implied to be a little bleed over from the Time War and Alien Bodies was all about the Eighth Doctor stumbling upon a huge cosmic event that hadn't occurred yet for him. One of the auctioneers in that novel states quite sharply that he's not supposed to be there yet. It's so prevalent, I'm not even wholly convinced myself that the reverse isn't true as well and that The Day of the Doctor is the latest iteration of the end of the War when all those quantum probabilities collapse. I think that something very big and very unprecedented happened when the Doctor stepped into his timestream in The Name of the Doctor, his presence and the presence of his companion may have allowed him to jump a time track into a period of his own history and tamper with it in some fashion. Maybe while he was in there he was the catalyst for an entirely new incarnation? A butterfly effect caused by a temporal anomaly (in this case, the Eleventh Doctor) injected into biodata (the Doctor's timestream), we've seen how this sort of thing can happen in stories like Interference with the Faction Paradox virus and what was attempted in the first Dark Eyes. The War Doctor is the man from the Mearns poem Antigonish. Yesterday upon the stair, we met a man who wasn't there. At least, not originally. I can get behind that theory and the only reason that 11 knows who the War Doctor is when he sees him at the end of Name of the Doctor is because he's remembered as his history is rewritten again. Also that is why he reverts back to being the big man on campus rather than in the shadows like he intended |
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Post by paulmorris7777 on Jul 22, 2016 13:03:14 GMT
And, also remember that all the Romana test bodies were ALL women.
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Nov 5, 2016 19:36:42 GMT
With rumours about Blair Rowan taking over musically, I wonder how that'll compliment Chibnail's written direction.
More bombast like Gold, or something smaller?
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Post by dalekbuster523finish on Nov 5, 2016 19:54:44 GMT
With rumours about Blair Rowan taking over musically, I wonder how that'll compliment Chibnail's written direction. More bombast like Gold, or something smaller? I'd imagine they'd keep it bombast because it would be odd if the music became drastically different at this point. |
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