As said elsewhere, Romana was a Time Lord. She travelled with the 4th Doctor for a long time. If you go with the novels, she eventually becomes President of Gallifrey (in both the Virgin and BBC series).
There's also Flavia, another president and a couple of others that I probably can't recall now.


Right, to get an answer to this you have to go with the novels. You may take it as canonical if you wish, given this was somewhat where Andrew Cartmel wanted the series to go before it got cancelled...
The Time Lords are basically barren and are now created in great Looms, genetically. So a Time Lord has Cousins, but no actual brothers and sisters. They're born into Houses which, like elsewhere, often determine their social status.

But what about Susan, you may cry. She called the Doctor "Grandfather". Well the theory is - and this is where it gets complex - the Time Lords weren't always barren. They were cursed into barreness by the Pythian leader a long time ago (I think pre-dating time travel). Susan was born in this ancient time to the family of a great Time Lord called the Other. Through various shenanigans she gets dragged to the time of the Doctor (who is a sort of reincarnation of the Other) and is thus his "granddaughter" but still allowing for the Time Lords to procreate asexually. Yeah....


I bloody well hope not. Don't need no pregnancy storyline in a series like this....

On the bbc3 re-run tonight they cut out rose saying to the doctor about him
not dressing up And he said he had changed his jumper ?
Anyone else notice this ?

No they didn't.

Seriously? I can't imagine how much worse he could have been. I'm already dreading it.

I've surprised myself by how much I've enjoyed this series so far, especially as I've never really been a Dr Who fan. I thought my interest would go out of the window when it was announced that CE was only doing one series, but now I feel as though I have to wring every ounce of enjoyment from it instead.

Naughty!

Tom Baker married her.

But nice.

Kate O'Mara as the Rani?

Yes!





<filler>

I remember his line about "What is wrong with this jumper" or something and thinking that it was very odd, out of context even, but that was on the BBC1 broadcast!

It was definitely in...i only watched the bbc3 version as my sky+ decided I didn't want to watch the saturday one! Argh! Thank goodness for repeats!

Going off on a tangent, down the conspiricy theory path... In the Paul McGann movie, it was suggested that the Doctor was half human. In episode 1, Clive made a slight mention of a father to son inheritance of the "Doctor" title, which we all though to mean regenration. Could it be that the new Doctor is the classic Doctor's father?

ahh...i only meant Romana, not Mary Tamm who was rather tasty....as was Lalla Ward (more so!) who also played her in a later regeneration and is the one Tom Baker married.

I've not actually expressed an opinion on the latest episode so far, so I will now.

Outstanding! And I was not initially looking forward to it. 'History' stories not being my favourite, unless they're done really well.

But this one was - I shudder to think how it would have went if they didn't get Simon Callow. So far it's the best of the three. And next week's looks even better.

I must stop saying that!

That happened to me too! My sky+ sabotaged my viewing, even though it was set to record.

And it was definitely on tonight's episode, the repeat on BBC3.

Yes - that's what I meant. He married Lalla Ward - for a brief period.

No.

That's just Clive's comprehension of things.

The Doctor IS half human. Like it or not, the BBC have accepted it. So now he might get involved emotionally with his 'assistants'. And the Doctor and Rose is supposed to be a love story.

(Of sorts, I'd say).

I thought about Fenrir/Fenric as well. It's like you thought of it first though!

I'd expect lots of these kind of references.

Loving this thread, everyone. I'm no Who-obsessive by any means, in fact I haven't watched it since the Peter Davison days, but I have been enjoying the new series.

Just a small point, re: regeneration, and whether the Doctor is the real Doctor. Someone mentioned the Doctor in Rose's flat looking in the mirror and complaining about his ears, but he also mentioned regeneration in that same scene, something like, "That's the trouble with this regeneration thing: you never know what you're going to get."

Also, the Big Bad Wolf thing: in the fairy stories, the Wolf was an invader, he wanted to take the three little pigs' houses away from them. Could it be that the Bad Wolf is actually a reference to the aliens invading Earth in next week's episode?

Anyway, let the speculation continue!

But surely he can travel to a time when the other Timelords still existed?

I go away for 5 minutes and you all go and have this marvellous debate on "who is the doctor" and continuing the question I posed regarding "the big bad wolf" issue.

Does anyone know if there was any reference made in the first two stories about the big bad wolf? We know the Time War/destruction of Gallifrey has been mentioned but I was just curious as to whether RTD slipped the quote in somewhere else.

Really enjoyed reading the various theories and suggestions everyone has thrown into the ring and I hope I can join in tomorrow if the debate is still ongoing in the forums.

The big bad wolf quote was in The Unquiet Dead made by Gywneth to Rose in the washroom until the Doctor entered and interrupted them.

A lot of people on the forums think there is a theme running through each story as yet again next week we same bad wolf painted in the side of the TARDIS.

The speculation on this subject is endless and so much fun...

Yes, the Moxx mentioned it to the Face of Boe in the second episode, in the scene after the steward dies.

"Indubitably, this is the Bad Wolf scenario", he says, and then mentions something about a multiverse.

Vic

The "who is the Doctor?" question has certainly got a lot of people thinking!

I got a little anoraksick at work this evening (V quiet), and came up with this idea:

The Doctor IS the Doctor - he's just not himself right now.

Successive regenerations have messed up the Doctor's head. Doctor #4 went a little loopy (and could have reprogrammed the Xoanon computer - I warned you I was an anorak!); Doctor #5 needed the healing powers of the Zero Room to help him along; Doctor #6 was as mad as a hatter; Doctor #7 went amnesiac.

(Doctor #8 was different, but that in itself was supposed to be a "reboot" (but the option never got picked up).)

So far this Doctor is having a VERY bad time of it. As I mentioned in an earlier post he is virtually a manic depressive (which is no surprise considering the death of his world!).

The way my mind is going is not that the Doctor is not so much a Watcher, but that this regeneration is somehow incomplete. He is therefore more of an avatar than a full-blown Doctor (the character of Cho Je in The Planet of the Spiders springs to mind - he was more fleshed out than a Watcher, but was still only a "future echo" of Abbot K'Anpo ).

So what we "really" have here is Doctor #8.5

If this (proto) Doctor is seriously injured, it would trigger a regeneration within a regeneration. The result would be the 9th Doctor.

How am I doing?

The other interesting bit of thread is the wolf reference, which a few people have already linked to Fenric. This would be a lot of fun to explore! Perhaps Rose is one of the Wolves of Fenric herself?

Another thing about Fenric is that he can create time storms, so his race have some form of temporal power. Although it was never stated, it could be that the Haemovores in Curse of Fenric are somehow related to the Great Vampires (from State of Decay), who waged war with the Time Lords many thousands (millions?) of years ago.

I don't know if nay of these ideas have been explored in the novels - although I was a big fan of the programme, I only read one "original" novel & it was so terrible that I never went for another one (mind you, after seeing how Mark Gatiss handles the material I may have to scour the charity shops).

What is becoming incresingly clear is that the writers are having a lot of fun playing with viewers (new and old). As the series unfolds I'm sure that the forums (fora? forae?) will be full of "I told you so"s.

Indeed.

Has anyone spotted the 'Bad Wolf' reference in Episode 1? I thought I'd go back and look at it again. Sure enough, it's there.

Told you this was a good one. Number 8 is is the best so far!