Big shame the series was cancelled and we never saw the completion of the cartmel masterplan.

Yes, but, we avoided another whole season of the 7th Doctor and Ace . . . #SilverLining

I would say no, given that whatever they have established about the Doctor's past in the new series either ignores or contradicts the idea.


I really don't think it's a shame at all. I think it was a horribly ill-conceived retcon kludge. Bring back the mystery to Doctor Who by providing a deeply unsatisfactory, contrived explanation of who he really is, clumsily stitching together a few bits of continuity that the original writers had never intended to be all part of the same story? I'm really glad I never saw that happen.

Was "The Other" only hinted at and never directly referenced by title or name on screen?

If not mentioned by name, I would answer my own question with "No". Not canon.

The Cartmel Masterplan sounds like the sort of thing that could have become a sort of Novel for television (discussed in the Arcs vs Standalones thread). If it had ever materialised it could have been the end of Doctor Who as it seems it would, over time, have revealed far too much of its proposed backstory of the Doctor.

No, the idea of the Doctor being "the other" was only ever vaguely hinted at in Silver Nemesis. On neither occasion when the Doctor has met Rassilon do they give the impression of having been BFFs from the dawn of the universe.

Some good stuff on the survival dvd on what could have been.

Good for you, bad for everybody else.

Suits me fine too, actually.

First of all the more seventh doc I watch, the more respect I have for his era.

Second!y, I've always wanted to see Brian blessard as rassilon..!

Quite a bit of it ended up in the New Adventures.

I loved the Cartmel Masterplan but hated the "Other"="The Doctor" idea. I also hate that the New Series makes the Doctor so important to the Time Lords (a similarity with the Cartmell idea). I just think the character was much better as a regular, average Time Lord that just wanted to escape from the madness of the society he lived in. Even though it's sci-fi, it makes the character more relatable to me.

Yeah agree with that the esteem he's held in doesn't really make a lot of sense to me,he was never held so high before and certainly not revered above Rassilon

The show had lost about half its viewers by the end and McCoy isn't a well-remembered Doctor. Its either him or Colin Baker who typically lands bottom of any 'favourite Doctor' viewer poll.

I think the Cartmel stuff could have played out quite well with Tom Baker's Doctor, or even Colin Baker's. But McCoy just wasn't a good enough actor by a long shot. Neither was Sophie Aldred, to be honest. Watching those episodes, I actually cringe in a way I don't with any other Doctor/companion.

Disregarding the disastrous Season 24, I think McCoy is a criminally underrated Doctor and Seasons 25-26 make it seem like he was born for the role. I think New Who could take a leaf from him (if they haven't already with Capaldi) as McCoy is proof in my opinion that a Doctor who is enigmatic, cold and manipulative can be better than a Doctor who acts like a bumbling and over-excited child.

Ace could be annoying sometimes, especially her first appearance in Dragonfire, but she had some brilliant moments going on, and had a great chemistry with McCoy despite being the polar opposite to him: an ordinary teenage girl to his mysterious and alienating figure. She did this far better than Rose, I think.

As much as I'm not keen on the "Doctor = Other" idea I do think the Cartmel Masterplan was a great step in making the final few years of a dying show fantastic ones, with Seasons 25 and 26 being some of the best since the Hinchcliffe years, and it's a much better way of portraying the Doctor than some of what we've had with the modern show.

But this notion that the Doctor was in fact "the Other" (smirk) is pretty much central to the whole concept, isn't it? Or was it just the whole, general idea of making the Doctor a bit darker and more machiavellian that you liked?


Thing is, though, just every time the Doctor went back to Gallifrey for some reason or other he ended up saving the place. Stands to reason he'd become quite important after that, but I certainly object to making him some kind of semi-mythical entity as Cartmel was setting out to do. That wasn't who the Doctor had been for the previous twenty five years, or the way he'd been written.


Well, he ended the Time War, he saved Gallifrey (again) and it seems that he'd been out on the front lines being heroic while Rassilon maybe wasn't enhancing his own reputation quite that much.

But I think that's still true - every time there's a hint that the Doctor had some dark motive or terrible secret, it's dismissed as soon as it arrives. The Doctor's current significance is that he's saved the Time Lords and all reality so many times, they can't help but acknowledge that.

Even back in the Five Doctors, he was made President.

I can't say i have seen Mccoy at the bottom of any favourite doctor poll. He is very well liked. And Mccoy was a good actor, so was Colin Baker.

Thanks to the Big Finish stories starring Colin Baker as the Doctor I would rank him very highly among the Doctors myself, he's a truly talented man who can mix charm with supressed fury. I think a lot of people simply don't give him a chance and hate him because it's what everyone else says. Certainly he had some terrible stories under his tenure on the TV show but I would say there were moments when he made them worth watching.

Without a doubt, he had some great moments and episodes. I would say he was one of the best actors on the show, but got royally stitched up by the BBC.

If there were any justice he would have ended up staying well into the 1990s (if he'd wanted), getting a decent outfit and regularly being voted one of the top three Doctors in viewers' polls. I don't suppose that would have fitted Grade and Powell's plans for the series though.

I've always liked the idea of knowing less about The Doctor. He's one of the few characters on TV that's actually enhanced by knowing less about him. I don't think we need to know his name, or why he left Gallifrey, or who his parents are and Cartmel understood this which is why he tried to inject some mystery into the series, The "other" idea came afterwards I think. For some reason I always thought it was an invention of Marc Platt, though I may be wrong. I thought the Cartmel idea didn't stretch further that "hint heavily that what we know about The Doctor is wrong".

I do like the darker Doctor idea. But maybe that's because I prefer the more sane, thoughtful version of the character. I've always thought that a being as clever and old as The Doctor would be less wacky that we often see on TV. I confess that I absolutely loved the New Adventures and even the later BBC books. It's a shame we don't get books like them now.

The "other" concept was codswallop though

If we ever learned the full story of the Doctor it would be the end of Doctor Who as a TV programme.

I agree the Doctor has to remain somewhat mysterious. This is necessary to avoid changing the programme format too much. The Cartmel Plan would have shown us too much of his past.

I don't know how many of the ideas came from Andrew Cartmel and how many came from other people, but I recall reading a Radio Times interview with him some time around 1988 in which he said they'd pretty much worked out a complete backstory for the Doctor to be used when and if needed. I suspect in fact that they were working off it when Remembrance of the Daleks and Silver Nemesis were being written. There were only hints on TV but I think it was all worked out.

I read the DWM interview with Cartmel's about his time on the show and I also saw the DVD extra about it too. From what I recall, the "Masterplan" wasn't anywhere near as formed as people believed (I might be remembering this wrong though ). Cartmel didn't really have any backstory for the Doctor or anything more than just injecting some ambiguity into the Doctor's established history. The idea of "The Other", the looms and larger parts of Gallifrey history came from Marc Platt but I think that came during the New Adventures. They really embraced the core idea of the darker, more mysterious Doctor and ran with it. Subsequently the New Adventures often gets lumped into the Cartmel Masterplan.

Frankly speaking, they really screwed up during McCoy's first series. McCoy was well known for comedy and they had him play to those strengths. Can you imagine if Barry Letts had done the same with Jon Pertwee? Horrible thought The darker Doctor really suited McCoy's Doctor better and actually suited McCoy better too.

That directly contradicts what he said in the Radio Times interview when Doctor Who was still on. He said quite distinctly that they had a backstory worked out, although it's entirely possible that it came mostly from Mark Platt and it got developed a bit more until it became what was featured in the novels. But whatever he did or didn't say, I'm just glad it never got on TV.

All that said, it was still way better than the utter tripe that was the McGann series mythology. One of the few times I've ever thought "no series at all is better than THAT series"