" Hey guys! Come and have a look at this. The Brits have sent us over another one of their school play productions to evaluate."

That's 'cause Chris Carter was a surfer dude who got lucky. Right idea, right pitch, right time and a cast with real chemistry. Problem was, he never expected it to last beyond two series, and had no idea of where he was going. Morgan and Wong, the X-Files writers who could've got him off the hook, quit to do their own show.

Back to matters Who, if at long last the story of Who becomes bigger than whose Who, then I shall be a happy chappie. A proper, Babylon 5 style story arc, with a dealy serious theme, is what Dr Who has needed for (re)generations.

Given what RTD said today and the fact this storyarc will most probably have been carefully plotted out over the whole series I think we will not just the regeneration to look forward to but a number of revelations/twists regarding the Time War/destruction of Gallifrey... the constant references to the big bad wolf is some kind of clue I think but what it means is anyone's guess...

Could be a load of old cobblers of course but fun wondering what it all means...

You have some good points there and I'm inclined into thinking that CE has quit or is about to quit.

However...all the stories regarding CE's departure seems to have originated from the BBC. I have not seen any interview with CE or quotes accredited to CE in the press stating that he has actually quit the show. All he has mentioned in public was the filming schedule and being away for ten months.

Different from quitting...maybe I'm just being cynical!

As far as I can tell the reference has not been to the "Big Bad Wolf", but simply to a "Bad Wolf".

That distinction might turn out to be important.

I don't know about face-saving, but I read somewhere that when Russell T Davies was aware that Chris was leaving, he "apparently" rewrote certain bits.

"Apparently", everything was filmed, and the stories more or less intact, but a few changes here and there were ready to be put into place should Chris decide not to do a second series.

So, I imagine that it would be plausible to film one or two alternate scenes that could be edited into the appropriate parts in each episode.
The basic story arc could still remain intact, but certain elements in respect to The Doctor himself could have optional outcomes depending on whether Chris does a second series, or his stand-in David Tennant takes over the role.

Seeing as it appears that there were two alternative ideas for Jabe's readout on her scanner, it does seem that this may be one example of a deliberate choice of option for a storyline.
Not forgetting also, that she never said that he was The Doctor, she just knew who he was. But we as viewers, from our perspective, naturally assume that she meant he was The Doctor which is not necessarily the case. Which still leaves enough ambiguity to leave the story open for alternative options.

I also read from a different source a week or two back, that all the remaining episodes are not in their finalised version, and little tinkering is done here and there in sound and visual edits, so they can react to feedback, and make any necessary minor changes.

I too noticed that the incidental music and sound was so invisible that I wasn't as conscious of it in last night's episode. That may be due to many people who have commented on the irritating sound before, and that feedback could well have been taken on board by the production team on the show to tweak it a bit to get it right.
And if you don't notice the incidental music, then I guess that's a good sign that it works, and becomes part of the drama, as oppossed to unecessary noise that annoys you.

I thought the pacing was much better last night too. But again, the end of the story was resolved far too quickly and rushed to an ending. But I still thought the show was very good despite that minor complaint.

It seems to be getting better every week.
Next week's episode looks the best by far.

As ever, thanks for doing the polls, when I was referring to the polls being "late" it was not a complaint, I was just telling a poster that to date all the polls have been setup a few hours after the episode finished.

Plots, subplots, references, hints, clues, arcs - WOW!

This is (IMO) leading to a dénouement where we can honestly say that all the clues have been given to us.

This new incarnation is giving us themes and threads that will keep people talking and analysing for years to come.

Last night's episode was dark & delicious - a Christmas ghost story worthy of Dickens himself.

The maid, although "possessed" retained enough of her humanity to save the day - an echo of Jabe's sacrifice last week.

Another couple of pieces of RTD's cosmic puzzle handed out (wolves? time wars?)

The conversation with Rose about time not being linear - will she end up being the key to it all?

The poignancy of the fact that Dickens will never finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood (and turn it into a sci-fi horror ).

The fact that Death is this Doctor's constant companion. This Doctor is not a time travelling adventurer - he is embattled and embittered, bordering on manic depression

This is definitely a Doctor Who for the 21st Century - bold daring and brash, whilst still attending to the long-term fans.

Rock on!

Perhaps I misheard what Gwyneth the maid said to Rose in the wash room in last nights episode...she may well have just said "bad wolf" but as it is something that reappears next week on the side of the TARDIS it does appear as if RTD is keeping this "theme" going.

The distinction might turn out to be nothing but no harm in speculating....

lol, I'm tittering here...I'm guessing the 'apparently's are to safe guard you from the 'tirade and hoohaa' you got last week m8

Good post from you, as always. There's a few of you on here that make me reconsider things, and I like that


A

Heh, yes I was trying to make sure I left no margin of error this time.

But if I come across where I read that info from, I'll post the link, or quote where I read it from.

I have to say, that when I considered the theory before about The Doctor being the Master a few days ago, I noticed that nother poster on this thread (was it re-offender?) was thinking alonf the same lines.

And now this "Bad Wolf" thing is changing what I considered to be just a random option, into a very real possibility.
He may not be the Master,..but he might be what the Colin Baker was becoming in the novels.
I haven't read the novels myself, I'm just going by what people tell me on here.

If you try to put yourself in the position of a writer, you probably wouldn't use "Big Bad Wolf", because you'd more than likely give the game away too easily. "Bad Wolf" is a bit more subtle.

And if "Bad Wolf" is spray painted on the Tardis, well...in real life graffiti is used to vandalise property to intimidate and idividual.
Example, in the 80's "Scab" was spray painted on the houses of miners who broke the picket line. Or name-calling graffiti is used in many other examples when an angry party wants to vent their anger at an individual by defacing their property.

So as this graffiti is painted onto the Tardis, I personally think that this is targetted against The Doctor.

Don't Doctor/Master me!!! I'll get all over excited again and bounce in my seat. I'm full of questions and conundrums myself, and loving the journey ..bad wolfs, wars..last survivors....I really am turning into 'comic book guy' from the simpsons, and it scares me lol

If I ever meet RTD, I'll def give him a big big kiss

A

p.s@alrightmate..it wasn't me that went off on you last week by the way, I only commented cos I remembered and your 'apparently' made me laugh

More from the "spot the reference" department... did anybody else think that the footprint left in the snow by Rose's tentative step out of the Tardis was reminiscent of the famous photo of an astronaut's footprint on the moon?

That's one small step for a Doctor Who companion...

When I saw the soldiers in the trailer last night I thought, 'Ooh, UNIT troops'. The Doctor seemed to have taken command of them. "Defence pattern Delta. Come on, move. Move!", he ordered.
Last edited by afcbfan : 10-04-2005 at 17:06

I'm glad there was no farting in the clips they showed. Hopefully that particular aspect of the story will be very, very minor!

[Nods], yep, LOVED that!

Doh,..I've just added a bit more to my post. I was editing it while you posted.

Yes, I'm rethinking the Doctor/Master thing. I just haven't got all my thoughts together yet.
But I will say that this Doctor doesn't necessarily have to be The Master,....he could just be someone who isn't the Doctor. Or maybe he is the Doctor, but not exactly the Doctor we assume him to be.
Or he could be for example, that thing that Colin Baker was becoming, before Sylevester McCoy stepped in.(According to the novels).
Could be that Russell is using that concept in the TV series.
It's a relatively short incarnation of the Doctor. One series, so it makes it more plausible than if Chris was the Doctor for more than one series.

And don't forget that we never saw Paul McGann regenerate into Chris Eccleston. We just assume he did. As we didn't see it happen, it is still open as a possibilty that this isn't The Doctor as we know it.

Stuart above said that Russell definitely wants to do a regeneration scene. But Rusell also said that he didn't even consider a regeneration scene at the very start, and it didn't even enter his mind.
Didn't consider it?
Didn't enter his mind?
Sounds a bit odd when you consider he thinks it's important to show a regeneration at the end.

Maybe it didn't enter his mind to do one at the start,....because it wouldn't fit into the story if he decided to go into a certain direction should Chris decide to only do one series. Maybe he wanted to keep an option open there as it wasn't definite that Chris would go for more than one series. In that case I could imagine him not considering a regeneration at the start of episode one.

This Doctor is constantly making mistakes.
As another poster mentioned. Rose saves the day in episode 1. Charles Dickens saves the day in last night's episode.
You could say that this Doctor is making a mess wherever he goes, and someone else manages to bale him out.......

...go back to episode 1 and Clive.
Clive says asks Rose when showing her historical photos with the Doctor in them..."This is your Doctor???"
He was very specific...The Chris Eccleston Doctor.
Why is this significant?

Well according to Clive this Doctor is the touch of death. And whoever he comes into contact with ends up in mortal danger.
Now this wasn't always the case with Doctor Who, was it?
Okay The old Doctors may have made mistakes, but look at the Chris Eccleston Doctor;
Assassination of John F Kennedy.....
The sinking of The Titanic.....
The destruction of the homeworld of The Nestene Consciousness......
.....The Destruction of Gallifrey??????


When this Doctor cocks things up,...he seems to cock things up in a big way.
I'm wondering if this is why Clive was very specific about this Doctor being dangerous....Just this one.

And it does seem that we are given little clues here and there in the episodes, that indicate that this Doctor makes mistakes.
Last night there was a brief little bit where The Doctor told Rose that he had made a mistake, and they weren't in 1890, but they were in 1899 in Cardiff.
He was supposed to have made a mistake with the Tardis setting or something.
But by sheer coincidence, he gets the date wrong, and ends up meeting an alien race that was involved in the Time War that is connected to himself.

Now why would that have been written into the episode?
There must have been a train of thought going on for the writer to deliberately put that bit in there.

His judgement is well off.
He trusted the aliens because he wanted to trust them. he put other people at risk, and didn't consider the consequences of his own actions. It was as though he wanted to redeem himself for a past misdemeanor, and was oblivious to what could go wrong. He didn't even consider the life of the servant girl, despite the protestations of Rose, as he was so obsessed with helping these aliens. He just wasn't listening. He was almost tunnel-visioned about helping these aliens at the risk of everything else.

What was also notable was the subtle look that The Doctor gave Rose when the aliens mentioned the "Time War". Again, just like in the first episode, The Doctor was showing a subtle hint of what looked like could have been guilt.

This could be the reason that in regards to this story that this Doctor must die.

I have read somewhere that Rose begins to learn during this series that this Doctor is not going to be with her for long, and the series will gradually reveal clues to her that imply this to her.
(And possibly imply to us the viewer too).

It could well turn out that whatever the Doctor is doing right now, maybe trying to save Gallifrey,..then the course of his present actions is what leads to the destruction of Gallifrey, and other worlds.
His very attempts to remedy the situation right now, could possibly the very thing that destroys his own planet.
It's a series about time,....so why not?

He could be in a never ending timeloop, where Gallifrey, and other planets are destroyed, The Doctor survives, and tries to fix things. But his fixing of things is the very thing that destroys Gallifrey. A catch 22 situation.

He may not be the Master, but bearing in mind that I haven't read the novels, The Master maybe always was the Doctor. A future incarnation of The Doctor possibly.

But personally I have my doubts anyway, as I just feel that they wouldn't do that for one or two reasons.

But I still think it's quite possible that The Doctor isn't who we assume him to be.
Maybe he is the Doctor, but is the Doctor that Colin Baker was becoming, or something similar.
This Chris Eccleston Doctor looks to be causing death and destruction in his wake.
He appears to be doing more harm than good.

And as we never saw Paul McGann regenerate into Chris Eccleston, then there's nothing to say that this Doctor actually was the next Doctor after Paul McGann.
Maybe the Chris Eccleston Doctor is a Doctor from the future. A later regeneration.
Maybe Paul McGann never did regenerate into Chris Eccleston. Maybe the Paul McGann Doctor regenerated into the next Doctor David Tennant......not Chris Eccleston.
We could see a final scene where Chris Eccleston meets a figure right at the end of the series who turns out to be David Tennant. If you take a leap of imagination, I can really see how this could be crafted into an incredibly powerful, dramatic scene.
It could be that David Tennant is the Doctor who can fix things, and is the one who destroys the Chris Eccleston by morphing into the same body as him. A bit of a twist on when Tom Baker morphed into The Watcher character,...and then the Watcher regenerated into Peter Davison.

I think it's possible that like Clive said, this Doctor leaves death and destruction in his wake, and that it was part of the storyline that was very specific to this particular Doctor.
This Doctor appears to make very bad judgements, and mistakes, that really seem to have major consequences.
I think it's possible that this Doctor needs getting rid of because of the damage he eventually causes by his very being.

I don't know. Again, I'm not trying to convince anybody of any of this. Even I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas and possibilities.
But this "Bad Wolf" that I wasn't aware of before, is really making me lean towards some of the ideas above, even if not all of them.

How do you know it was not filmed in high definition?, I first saw BBC high definition outside broadcast units in the mid 80s and programmes were made in colour long before transmission was a goer in the UK

I've watched the episode again today and the maid definately says "Big Bad Wolf"

I saw a clip of "Dalek" and it addresses CE as Doctor...

Sony approached the BBC about making it in HD but things were too far advanced in terms of pre-production to take them up on their offer.

Bloody hell, Alrightmate, you need to get out more!

Just kidding. I agree with some of what you say but i think the Doctor's mistakes / vulnerability / paranoia are all because of his involvement in the war which has been mentioned every week so far. I think he will have played a part in the downfall of Gallifrey and this has adversely affected him.

We'll have to wait until the end of the series to find out but that's my theory, for what it's worth.

More thoughts on The Big Bad Wolf

I was wrong earlier. As has been pointed out, Gwyneth the maid does refer to "The Big Bad Wolf.

Her exact words are: "The things you've seen: the darkness; the big bad wolf."

Gwyneth was in the middle of probing Rose's memories and everything she was mentioning was somehow related to her life in London - the metal boxes, metal birds, etc.

What if The Big Bad Wolf, or just Bad Wolf is the name of a band? That would be a simple explanation for why it turned up as graffiti!

The Darkness, Bad Wolf are names of bands Rose has seen, with the last one an invented name!

But that was what I was suggesting.
It's actually exactly what I was suggesting.

It's the one thing that I am more sure of than anything else, amongst the different scenarios or possibilities.

It's the one thing I've stuck to in all of my posts previous to this. I even suggested so before I saw anyone else did immediately after epiosde 1.

So I don't understand why you feel there is a contradiction there.

Yes, you're right - I somehow missed out a big chunk of what you wrote earlier!

Time will tell - it usually does.

Just out of interest, Simon Callow also played Dickens in the 2001 Christmas film "Christmas Carol:The movie". He played the same part in that film as he did in DW. he was reading "A Christmas Carol" to an audience, but instead of handing over to ghostly beings, he made way to the main animated segment!