No, it was a way for the Doctor to die - to get him to the point of actually, really, truly dying - without it being the result of one of his enemies. The Daleks might be able to take out one of his incarnations, but they shouldn't be able to kill him outright.


I expect his body would have regenerated long before it did, if it could. As it is, the Doctor regenerates much more frequently than a normal Time Lord would, due to his habit of putting himself into danger.


I think most people agree, by this point, that he has no idea how old he is and he only guesses. Evidence for this is usually along the lines of inconsistencies in the numbers he's given at various points in his life.

And that shows what you know about writing: nothing.

I've been so bored and disinterested in the show these past few years, I didn't even notice. Knowing Steven Moffat, it's probably to annoy fans and get people talking about his stories.

Moffat has written about how he was worried generally about how Day of the Doctor would be received, but most concerned about what the fans would think. Why he was so delighted with the recent DWM poll. He's a lifelong fan...why on earth would he want to annoy them/us?

You know Steven Moffat, do you? Personally? You have the inside track on his motives? Tell you his deepest thoughts, does he?

I don't think so.

It's disgusting how many so-called "fans" turn a dislike of the stories he's written or direction he's taken the show into a personal hatred of the man and all his devilish works!

And then go on to post utter cr%p like that.

Delete!

I Dont Really Like Steven Moffat, But I Wouldnt Say Bad Stuff About His Writing Because Of That. I Didn't Really Like The Way He Handled Matt's Regeneration, The 50th Or The Wedding Of River Song, But Thats Just My Opinion Based On What Kind Of Stories I Like.

But I Also Think He Has Written The Best Stories Of Doctor Who In All Its 50 Years, Such As The Impossible Astronaut/Day Of The Moon, A Good Man Goes To War And Name Of The Doctor So For Me Its Just Ying And Yang

Agree, GDK. RTD, another lifelong fan got personal stuff too, and I remember some of the stuff hurled at JNT from certain quarters back in the day used to cross the line.

Also dislike all this "Moffat fanboy" or "RTD fanboy" stuff that gets bandied about. No era is perfect, but I hugely enjoyed Matt's tenure, but, you know, I don't hear people being called a "Lambert fanboy" or a "Hinchcliffe fanboy" and those eras are big favourites of mine too.

Then again, maybe I'm a Doctor Who "fanboy".

(Ha. At my age?)

Edit: whoops, pressed the wrong button there. I AM getting old!

For me this makes far more sense than the Eccleston and Tennant Doctors (all 3 of them) living for a grand total of 4 years under RTD.

That always jarred a little with me.

We all know he's a fan. He's told us like a billion times. He's the ultimate Doctor Who fan, and knows more about Doctor Who than the rest of us put together.

But whatever our opinion of him, you can't deny that he enjoys winding fans up.

Winding up? Don't get that myself. And if he's ever claimed to be the ultimate and most knowledgable Doctor Who fan in the Universe....I missed that interview!

False! In An Unearthly Child, the Doctor states his age in "Earth years". So I believe Gallifrey is different.

I didn't particularly care for The Time of the Doctor essentially equating to half of all of The Doctor's life. Whilst his age has always been a bit of a questionable point, the fact is that before that episode it felt more or less like we'd known the character well and consistently, and now he's had twice as much time to change and develop...from a character development perspective, these time jumps are a nightmare.

I recall back in Series 3 how loads of people were shocked that the finale skipped ahead a whole year, because it hadn't been done that way before under RTD. The same kind of shock happened when Moffat did the same with the end of Series 6, introducing a jump of nearly 200 years. But both of those are comparitively tiny compared to the most recent jump.

IF (and it's a big 'IF') the writers acknowledge the time jump in future to a small extent, I'll be more than satisfied. The show is admittedly about moving forward, but you can't just wave off half of your protagonist's lifespan in an hour out of 50 years of television and expect there to be no repercussions. We don't need explicit reference, but just reference to how Trenzalore was such a monumentous thing in The Doctor's life that it has made him the man he is now, and that it has changed him for better or for worse. He could have been there longer than he was ever on Gallifrey, and he was there longer than all the time he's spent on Earth - it's going to leave an impression...or not if the writers handle it badly. The whole concept is flawed a bit already - Clara turning up on the one and only day in a 300 year window where Handles snuffs it is a mighty coincidence to say the least... I want something a bit more substantial.

Basically, I want the show to address that time travel does have consequences. It was something that Eccleston delivered with monumental brilliance - the respect and almost-fear of time travel, rather than the whimsy that we got later on. The timey-wimey fairy-tale needs to be done with.

When reading the title I thought this would be a thread about the casting of Peter Capaldi! I too disagree with the OP. While I think the episode itself was a bit poor, I do believe that the Doctor, knowing himself to be (literally) on his last (pair of) legs, would want to carry on living for as long as possible - he's always delighted in the universe and I can't see him wanting to cut that short.

Agreed. No-one is above criticism but the often infantile and vitriolic attacks on both SM and RTD (and anyone who tries to defend them) serve no purpose.

Express opinions.
Like or dislike.
Be critical.
Be constructive.

But don't get personal.
Someone defending their opinion and criticising yours is not an attack on you.

Same, and while i thought the aging of Matt Smith's Doctor was a little in excess I thought it balanced out what we had in RTD's Era where Christopher Eccleston's Doctor was 900 and by the end of David Tennant's run he had only reached 907! To me those doctors only living around 7 years between them was somewhat saddening and rushed, and had always felt as if they had never had any adventures besides the ones seen or mentioned on screen.

Well a year has a very specific definition - the time it takes for a planet to do one full orbit around it's star (for a very simplified definition) so each planet has it's own year depending on how far from the star it is, its orbital speed etc so the notion that a year on Gallifrey is the same as a year on Earth is very highly improbable but not impossible.

Yeah, sorry. Typing on my mobile and realised that I left out the crucial word in my comment! I meant to say that a assume a year on Earth, Gallifrey, Trenzalore etc ISN'T the same length of time. I guess it's slightly irrelevant if he reginerates every x amount of years anyway, but it would be nice if he knew when his birthday was at least.

Chris Chibnall did the exact same thing to Jack Harkness in Exit Wounds. In fact, he aged 2000 years in a shorter time scale, so he's got the Doctor beat.

I think the problem's that we know the Doctor is 900-odd years older but we don't feel it - we only see a couple of minutes. I suspect they would've needed to structure TotD very differently to sell it to the audience. It's a great idea, but slightly thrown away in the blitzkrieg of other great ideas - Time of the Doctor, for want of another fifteen to thirty minutes, becomes a little less than the sum of its parts. Still really enjoyed it the last time I watched it, though.

Oh, yet another Moffat bashing thread has arrived!

Well done!! <claps hands a few times>

Age is not the worst thing. Loyal fans can be very forgiving. We can overlook minor continuity errors and the odd duff story / episode. Long as the main things are still there. Very clever but slightly crazy man in a blue box. Traveling time and space with his friends running a lot and fighting baddies.

...in an Earth context, it surely has to be November 23rd

I sort of agree with you. I think the massive time jump would start to annoy me a lot less if its ramifications on the Doctor's life were to be dealt with in future episodes. Whether or not they actually will be is another matter entirely. My personal feeling is that I don't think it will get much beyond maybe one line, but I'll wait and see what happens.

Take a look at the how the average age for a new Doctor to be on debut has changed over the years...


55 when the show started
50 at the end of the sixties
47.8 by the end of the seventies
43.4 by the end of the eighties

42.5 following the TV movie
40.2 by the start of the 2010s

42.9 following the old War Doctor's appearance in The Night Of The Doctor
...adjusted to...
39.8 following the young War Doctor's appearance in The Name Of The Doctor

41.1 following Capaldi's first appearance in The Day Of The Doctor
(...or 43.8 if you don't count the archive footage of Hurt in The Night Of The Doctor
...or 41.4 if you don't count the War Doctor at all.)



I think they've done exactly the right thing by putting the brakes on the gradual lowering of the age the audience expects the actor in the role to be, and pave the way for future incarnations to be more reminiscent of the classic series


.... and of course how can people claim Capaldi's too old when eveyone loved John Hurt's appearance?
..... clever one that Moff

I thought that was a brilliantly "Doctor" thing to do - after so many centuries on the run wanting to explore, he gives it up to protect a small village of strangers for a thousand years, knowing he'll die there. We know how much he despises "the slow path", but he does it anyway, in a heart(s)beat, because otherwise a small village of people will die. If there's a single act that sums up what makes The Doctor The Doctor I can't think of it off the top of my head.

I'm not defending the execution of the idea (in fact, to be honest, I thought that Time was a bit... well... crap), but the idea itself was very good.